Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Can Intuitive Eating Help You Get the Body You Really Want?

Episode Date: October 9, 2019

There are two very different philosophies of dieting. One revolves around planning or counting/tracking the calories and macros of everything that you eat. The IIFYM Diet is a good example of this method. The other eschews numbers and opts for rules about how, what, and when you should eat, instead. All forms of dieting that agitate for one form of “clean eating” or another fit into this category, including the subject of this podcast: intuitive eating. Both of these approaches can work, and both have pros and cons. The first, quantitative approach more or less guarantees results, but it requires a fair amount of technical know-how, and it can be rigid, impractical, and tedious. The second, qualitative method is generally easier to understand and apply and more flexible and accommodating, but it’s also easier to screw up, and thus comes with a higher failure rate. Now, I’m going to assume you’re here because you don’t want to go through door number one. You don’t want to have to weigh and measure everything that you cook, you don’t want to fiddle with My Fitness Pal every day, and you don’t want to learn how to count macros on the fly. Instead, you just want to eat a few balanced and enjoyable meals every day without gaining weight or ruining your body composition. Well, intuitive eating is the answer. Let’s find out why. 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.legionathletics.com/signup/

Hey, Mike here. And if you like what I'm doing on the podcast and elsewhere, and if you want to help me help more people get into the best shape of their lives, please do consider picking up one of my bestselling health and fitness books, including Bigger, Leaner, Stronger for Men, Thinner, Leaner, Stronger for Women, my flexible dieting cookbook, The Shredded Chef, and my 100% practical and hands-on blueprint for personal transformation inside and outside of the gym, The Little Black Book of Workout Motivation. Now, these books have sold well over 1 million copies and have helped thousands of people build their best bodies ever. And you can find them on all major online retailers like Audible, Amazon, iTunes, Kobo, and Google Play, as well as in select Barnes & Noble stores. Again, that's Bigger Leaner Stronger for Men, Thinner Leaner Stronger for Women, The Shredded Chef, and The Little Black Book of Workout Motivation. Oh, and I should also mention that you can get any of the audiobooks 100% free when you sign up for an Audible account, which is the perfect way to make those pockets of downtime,

like commuting, meal prepping, and cleaning, more interesting, entertaining, and productive. meal prepping, and cleaning more interesting, entertaining, and productive. So if you want to take Audible up on that offer, and if you want to get one of my audio books for free, go to www.legionathletics.com slash Audible. That's L-E-G-I-O-N athletics slash A-U-D-I-B-L-E, and sign up for your account. Intuitive eating versus macros and calories, which is better? Well, this is something that I am asked fairly often, and so I'm going to share my answer. So what this really comes down to is two different philosophies of eating that have both pros and cons. One is not better than the other for all people and all circumstances. Now, the reason for that is with calories and macros, you're obviously planning and tracking everything that you eat. And while this guarantees results, if you do stick to your numbers and you are accurate with your estimations as to how much energy you're burning and how much energy you're eating, you will lose weight or gain weight or maintain your weight as desired.

But it does require a fair amount of technical know-how. a fair amount of technical know-how and it also can be pretty rigid and impractical and tedious depending on your lifestyle. Now, the other philosophy, the other style of eating, the intuitive style is less about specific numbers, less about planning calories and macros or tracking calories and macros, and more about following rules about what you should eat, how you should eat, and when you should eat. Now, this qualitative approach is definitely easier to understand. It's easier to apply. It is more flexible and more accommodating, but because you often don't know exactly how many calories you're eating or how those calories break down into protein, carbohydrate, and fat, there are more ways to mess it up. And so that's really

the starting point from which you can evaluate which style of eating is going to be best for you. If you are very focused on achieving a certain goal, whether it's a target body weight or target body composition, and you want to ensure that you are progressing and you don't mind doing some meal planning, then intuitive eating is not for you. You are going to be better served by working out your calories, working out your macros, firing up Excel, creating a meal plan, and just sticking to it. Now, if you don't have very specific body weight or body composition goals in mind, and by that I mean specific changes that you want to happen and time periods you want them to happen in, or if you really just don't like meal planning or you don't do well with that

style of dieting, then intuitive eating can work well for you. And I'll add that it can work particularly well if you're looking to just maintain your body composition. And especially if you have experience with the quantitative side of eating, with working out calories and breaking those down into macros and making meal plans and so forth. If you do that for a bit, and then you're at a point where you just want to maintain for a while, intuitive eating is a very easy way to do that. And the reason for that is intuitive eating is not a diet. It's really just learning to regulate your eating according to your body's natural appetite. It's natural signals of hunger and fullness. And the reason for that is you are just aligning your eating with your body's natural desire to more or less stay the way you are right now. Generally

speaking, our bodies don't want to gain weight and don't want to lose weight. They just want to stay where they're at. And that remains true for people who are very overweight, just as much as people who are very muscular and very lean. Unfortunately though, intuitively eating well does require a little bit of know-how. It is not simply eating whatever you want, whenever you want, like many people seem to think it is, we could call that anarchic eating. And that is a recipe for weight gain and other problems, mostly because of the amount of very calorie dense, highly palatable foods that we have available to us at all times. And not only that, but often those foods are also very highly processed and very highly engineered to be as delightful as possible, to taste as good as possible, and to feel as good as possible in our mouths, and to just generally encourage us to eat as much of them as possible.

So let's start with three simple rules that make for good intuitive eating. The first one is to eat when you're hungry. The second one is to stop eating when you're full. And the third one is to not restrict your food choices except for medical reasons. So that's really it. If you can do those three things well, you can be successful with intuitive eating. And it sounds simple and it allows for a lot of flexibility. And that's why a lot of people are drawn to intuitive eating, but it's not as easy as it sounds. For example, one of the major reasons people struggle with intuitive eating or eating off of a meal plan or trying to just eat by feel is they don't realize how many different external factors influence what we eat and how much we eat, like boredom,

procrastination, peer pressure, and convenience. These are all common triggers that lead people to eat more than they need to or more than they intend to. And so to do well with intuitive eating, we have to know how to minimize the effect of these external factors and stop allowing them to drive our eating patterns. And so I'm going to share with you a few tips that will help you do that better. Now, the first one is something that I mentioned earlier, but I'm going to say it again. And that is do yourself a favor and spend at least a month or two meal planning first. Even if you don't like it, trust me, the main advantage this will give you is you'll start to learn the calories and the macros of the different foods that you like to eat. You'll start to get a good feel for how much food you

should be eating based on what you want to do with your body. And therefore, when you move away from meal planning, you will just make better food choices instinctively because you are going to have a good idea of what types of foods you should be eating, how much of those foods you should be eating, and how much food you should be eating on the whole of those foods you should be eating, and how much food you should be eating on the whole. And you will know what it feels like to be in a calorie deficit, at least a sustained calorie deficit, and what it feels like to be in a regular calorie surplus, and also what it feels like to more or less be around maintenance. And what that will allow you to do then is always know approximately what you should be eating based

on whatever it is that you're trying to do you'll know for example that your protein is a bit low come dinner time so you need to eat a bit more protein of course protein is very filling so that means that you are probably going to eat less of other things if you are loading up on protein for dinner. Or you might know after a couple days that you have definitely been in a surplus. You couldn't tell yourself exactly how many calories you've been eating, but it's been a lot. And of course, you know that because again, you have experienced meal planning. You have familiarized yourself with approximate calories and macros of the various types of things that you eat. Okay, so you know that it's been a few days and you've been overeating. Now, you know that you can just under eat a bit for a few days. Let's just say you're trying to maintain, right? So

now you're just going to under eat. You're going to eat a bit less than usual for a few days to negate any fat gain that might've occurred when you were in a surplus. And speaking of protein intake, this is actually my second tip. And that is to make sure that you are eating enough protein every day. Intuitive eating works much better when you're eating plenty of protein. And I probably don't have to sell you on the benefits of a high protein diet. You know, you're going to build muscle faster. You're going to gain strength faster. You're going to recover from your workouts faster. You are going to lose less muscle when you restrict your calories. And this is the important one as far as intuitive eating goes. You are going to be more satisfied from your

meals. You are generally going to be fuller. And you see, this is especially important when you are eating intuitively, because if you are not eating very much protein and you are using those calories for carbs and fats, what can often happen is you'll find yourself hungrier than you should be, or you would be if you're eating more protein throughout the day. And then you will inevitably end up eating more calories and probably more calories than you should. And it's either that, or you're just going to be dealing with hunger a lot. And that's no fun either. And so specifically, I recommend that you plan on eating three to five good portions of protein per day when you are intuitively eating. And by that, I mean 30 to 40 grams per portion.

Hey, quickly, before we carry on, if you are liking my podcast, would you please help spread the word about it? Because no amount of marketing or advertising gimmicks can match the power of word of mouth. So if you are enjoying this episode and you think of someone else who might enjoy it as well, please do tell them about it. It really helps me. And if you are going to post about it on social media, definitely tag me so I can say thank you. You can find me on Instagram at Muscle for Life Fitness, Twitter at Muscle for Life and Facebook at MuscleForLifeFitness, Twitter at MuscleForLife, and Facebook at MuscleForLifeFitness. Another useful tip and important point is intuitive eating works best if you eat quote unquote healthy foods.

Now I know no foods are inherently healthy or unhealthy except maybe artificial trans fats. Those are just unhealthy. But what I mean by that is it works best if you get the majority of your calories from relatively unprocessed, highly nutritious foods that you got to prepare yourself. Stuff like fruits and vegetables and legumes, whole grains, lean meats, and so forth. Now, there are a couple of reasons for this. One is that is just a general rule of proper dieting. By doing that, you're going to make sure that your body's getting plenty of nutrients and not developing any nutritional deficiencies that can cause all kinds of problems, including metabolic problems, I will add, but also it helps you avoid the calorie dense junk foods that I talked about earlier, the ones that are designed to make you want more of them. Trust me, if you are trying

to rely on your body's natural signals for hunger and fullness while eating a bunch of very processed, fullness while eating a bunch of very processed, very delicious, very calorie dense foods, it is not going to go well. You are either going to end up eating way more calories than you should and gaining a bunch of weight that you probably don't want to gain or constantly struggling with hunger and cravings and low energy. And eventually you also could develop nutritional deficiencies that again can then cause all kinds of problems. All right. One other tip, bonus tip for intuitively eating well is be active. Try to burn a lot of calories every day. Now I know we all have lives to live and we don't have time to be exercising hours per day, but if we can get in, let's say three to five hours of exercise per week and try to sneak in some additional physical activity, even if it's just walking, even if you find a way to sneak out

of the office for 30 minutes at lunch to just go for a walk, those extra calories add up. And you can also, for example, take the stairs instead of taking the elevator, maybe walking to lunch, maybe walking to get your food if you are eating somewhere nearby instead of driving or looking for other opportunities to walk or ride a bike instead of driving. So my point is by finding these extra little ways to burn more calories, you can actually burn another couple thousand calories per week, which just gives you more wiggle room in your diet, which means that you get to eat more food and be more flexible with your calorie intake and not really see any change in your body composition. And if you, that's assuming you're trying to

maintain. If you're wanting to lose weight, then of course it's just going to speed the process up. And if you're wanting to gain weight, it can be counterproductive if you push it too far, but it can help in that it just allows you to eat more food. And that generally makes things more enjoyable. And speaking of gaining weight and losing weight specifically in the context of intuitive eating, a simple way of going about that can be once you have settled into your routine and chances are you're going to be eating a lot of the same foods every day because you just eat the stuff that you like and then you eat it for a bit until you find something else that you like. And it takes too much time and too much thought and energy to introduce too much

variety into our diets. So we tend to just settle into eating patterns, whether we're following a meal plan or not. And so once you have established that pattern for yourself, and once you know more or less what maintenance looks like, it's pretty easy to just focus on the fullness that you feel after meals. So you're eating several servings of protein every day. You're eating a lot of nutritious foods, and now you want to lose some weight. And you know how those meals make you feel in terms of fullness, well, you can just take some food out of those meals and stop eating when you are less full than usual. And then on the flip side, if you want to gain some weight, if you want to focus on gaining some muscle, for example, or getting stronger in the gym, you can eat a bit more food and again, gauge how full you feel after the meals. So end your meals

feeling a bit fuller than you usually do. All right. Well, that's it for this video. I hope you found it helpful. And if you did, please do give it a like by clicking the little thumbs up down there and drop a comment down below, letting me know what you thought and feel free to share any of your tips with intuitive eating that have helped that I didn't touch on. And if you really like this video and you want to know when my next video goes live, just subscribe to my channel. It's free. Of course, you just click the big red subscribe button over there, and then you click the bell and YouTube will ping you when my next video goes live. All right. Thank you. And I hope to see you then. including Bigger Leaner Stronger for Men, Thinner Leaner Stronger for Women, my flexible dieting cookbook, The Shredded Chef, and my 100% practical and hands-on blueprint for personal transformation

inside and outside of the gym, The Little Black Book of Workout Motivation. Now Now these books have sold well over 1 million copies and have helped thousands of people build their best bodies ever. And you can find them on all major online retailers like Audible, Amazon, iTunes, Kobo, and Google Play, as well as in select Barnes and Noble stores. Again, that's Bigger Leaner Stronger for Men, Thinner Leaner Stronger for Women, The Shredded Chef, and The Little Black Book of Workout Motivation. Oh, and I should also mention that you can get any of the audiobooks 100% free when you sign up for an Audible account, which is the perfect way to make those pockets of downtime, like commuting, meal prepping, and cleaning, more interesting, entertaining, and productive. So if you want to take Audible up on that offer,

and if you want to get one of my audiobooks for free, go to www.legionathletics.com slash audible. That's L-E-G-I-O-N athletics slash A-U-D-I-B-L-E and sign up for your account.