Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Cutting Calories When Cutting, Late-Night Carbs, Training & Soreness, & More...

Episode Date: March 19, 2015

In this podcast I talk about how to properly reduce your food intake to keep fat loss going, whether or not you can train when you're sore (26:05), why eating carbs late at night isn't an issue (31:50), and more. Join my book launch here: http://www.muscleforlife.com/launch/ Want to submit questions for me to answer? Go here: http://www.muscleforlife.com/ask-mike-anything/ ARTICLES RELATED TO THIS VIDEO: 8 Signs of Overtraining That Most People Don’t Know: http://www.muscleforlife.com/8-signs-of-overtraining/ Water Retention and Weight Loss: You Can Lose Fat, But Not Weight? http://www.muscleforlife.com/water-retention-and-weight-loss/ Why and How I Use Fasted Cardio to Lose Fat as Quickly as Possible: http://www.muscleforlife.com/fasted-cardio/ The Definitive Guide to Why Low-Carb Dieting Sucks: http://www.muscleforlife.com/low-carb-diet/ The Top 4 Scientifically Proven Benefits of a High-Protein Diet: http://www.muscleforlife.com/high-protein-diet/ How to Reduce Muscle Soreness: http://www.muscleforlife.com/reduce-muscle-soreness/ Does Carb Backloading Work? A Scientific Review: http://www.muscleforlife.com/does-carb-backloading-work/ 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 this podcast is brought to you by my books. Seriously, though, it actually is. I make my living as a writer, so as long as I keep selling books, I can keep writing articles over at Muscle for Life and Legion and recording podcasts and videos like this and all that fun stuff. 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. Now, these books, they basically 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 grind away in the gym every day doing workouts that you hate. Now you can find my books everywhere. You can buy books online like Amazon, Audible, iBooks, Google Play, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and so forth. And if you're into audiobooks like me, you can actually get one of my books for free, one of my audiobooks for free with a 30-day free trial of Audible. To do that, go to muscleforlife.com forward slash audiobooks. That's www.muscleforlife.com forward slash audiobooks. And you can see how to do this. Now also, if you like my work in general, then I really think you're going to like what I'm doing with my supplement company, Legion.

Now, as you probably know, I'm not a fan of the supplement industry. I mean, I've wasted who knows how many thousands of dollars over the years on worthless supplements that really do nothing. And I've always had trouble finding products that I actually thought were worth buying and recommending. And well, basically I had been complaining about this for years and I decided to finally do something about it and start making my own products. And not just any products, but really the exact products that I myself have always wanted. So a few of the things that make my supplements unique are one, they're a hundred percent naturally sweetened and flavored. Two, all ingredients are backed by peer-reviewed scientific research that you can verify for yourself because on our website, we explain why we've chosen each ingredient and we also cite

all supporting studies so you can go dive in and check it out for yourself. Three, all ingredients are also included at clinically effective dosages, which are the exact dosages used in the studies proving their effectiveness. This is important, of course, because while something like creatine is proven to help improve strength and help you build muscle faster, if you don't take enough, then you're not going to see the benefits that are seen in scientific research. And four, there are no proprietary blends, which means that you know exactly what you're buying. All our formulations are 100% transparent, both with the ingredients and the dosages. So you can learn more about my

supplements at www.legionathletics.com. And if you like what you see and you want to buy something, use the coupon code podcast, P-O-D-C-A-S-T, and you'll save 10% on your order. All right. Thanks again for taking the time to listen to my podcast and let's get to the show. Hey, Hey, Mike here. Thanks for stopping by to listen to another episode of the podcast. In this podcast, I'm going to take a few questions from my Google moderator, which I'll link down below. If you don't know what that is, you can submit questions and then other people can vote on them if they would like them answered or not, basically. And then you can vote on other people's questions. So I will, every other podcast or so, I take questions from there and answer them.

So the questions this week are going to be related to working out through soreness. If a muscle group is sore, can you still work it out? Is it good? Is it bad? And then we're going to talk about carbs, eating carbs at night, even before bed. Is that good or bad? And then last but not least is going to be a question. I didn't pull it from the moderator. It's probably in there somewhere. Cause I got

asked it fairly frequently. And that is how do you reduce your calories when you're cutting? How do you do that correctly? Um, and then also I'll talk about, cause it kind of goes with it. How do you increase your activity level? Uh, how much can you increase your activity level when you're cutting before it starts to become a problem. And this is particularly relevant because when you start cutting, you know, things are going to go smoothly for, let's say, four or five weeks. And then what usually happens for most people is at that point, the fat loss starts to really slow down, almost becomes negligible. And then what? So you have to either move more or eat less. And how do you do that correctly? Uh, so you can, uh, not just not only reach your, your goal when you're cutting,

which is, you know, reaching your target body, uh, composition or body weight, but also do it in the, in the least painful way in the way that's going to, you know, preserve as much muscle as possible, preserve as much strength and, strength and workout intensity as possible, help you avoid major problems with hunger and cravings and so forth. Yeah, so those are going to be the main topics of the podcast. And then I want to talk about one other thing, kind of a cool concept that I ran into in a book that I was reading. I want to talk about one other thing, kind of a cool concept that I ran into in a book that I was reading. And it's a concept of what kind of scorecard you're keeping in life and how that can affect your perception of things, especially relating to success and happiness.

Yeah, so when we get there, you'll see what I'm talking about. All right, so let's just start with, well, I'll start with the one that I get asked most frequently, which is this, uh, reducing calories when you're cutting, um, or increasing activity levels. So a first, uh, something that is worth, uh, clarifying right off the bat is when you start cutting, um, like what I like to do is I like to start in a 20 to 25% calorie deficit, which means that I'm going to be eating 20, 25% fewer calories than I'm burning every day. And the point where you want to start is where you are currently eating. So some people have particularly fast or particularly slow metabolisms and the standard type of TDE calculation, you know, if you do like a catch McArdle on what your total daily energy expenditure should be, obviously any sort of formula, it's never 100% accurate. It's kind of

like it gives you a semi-accurate guess basically. But I'll hear this mainly from guys that have either reverse dieted, meaning they've slowly increased their calories over time, or they just have fast metabolisms where according to the catch McArdle, their TDE is, let's say 2,800 calories, but they're eating 3,500 calories a day and their weight is staying the same. So, uh, which, which indicates, uh, obviously a state of neutral energy balance. They're not over if you were to take their weekly food intake, because I mean, most people, unless they're following a very, very strict meal plan, their calorie intake is going to fluctuate on a day-to-day basis. One day, maybe it's 3,100. Next day, it's 3,800.

But let's say it averages out to 3,500 a day. And when you look at their total energy intake versus energy expenditure over a week, it balances out. They're in a state of more or less neutral energy balance. out. They're in a state of more or less neutral energy balance. So I'll hear pretty frequently from guys like that that are then asking, okay, so they want to start cutting. Should they take their catch McCardle TDE and start with eating, let's say 75 to 80% of those calories, or should they start from where they're currently eating? And the answer is start from where you're currently eating. If you're eating 3,500 calories a day and you want to, let's say, start with a 20% deficit. Obviously now you're going to take 700 calories off that. That's where you start. Um, you, it's just not necessary. Like the reason

why is because if you were to start from, let's say 70% of the 2,800 number, that's a large deficit to jump right into. That's going to be uncomfortable. You're going to be hungry. You're going to be particularly hungry. You're probably going to have problems with cravings. Your workouts are going to suck. It's just going to be a shock to your body. And then also, ideally, before you're cutting,

you would have your food intake as high as you could possibly get it without just continually putting on fat, essentially. Because what that does is it buys you room for when you're cutting. So let's say a guy's at 3,500 a day, and he starts cutting from there, and he goes to 2,800 a day, and he starts losing weight, losing weight. And let's say that four or five weeks of 2,800 a day with his exercise routine the way it is, let's say he's weightlifting four to five times a week and doing maybe an hour, hour and a half of cardio a week. And then he stops losing weight after four to five weeks. Let's say he loses a good four or five pounds of fat in that time. Now he either has to move more or, uh, reduce his calories. But the cool thing is one, and this is what I'll kind of get into. He can, he can exercise a bit more. Uh,

you can do a bit unless, well, yeah, I mean, I've worked with so many people and I, and the vast majority of people, um, what I found are their bodies are similar to mine. And like what I can do is when I'm cutting, I do about five hours of weightlifting a week and about two, yeah, two hours of high intensity interval cardio a week. Not very much exercise. It's, you know, six to seven hours, six and a half to seven hours of exercise a week. And for my body, I know that that's about as much as I can do while also running like a 20, 25% deficit without causing overtraining problems. I've tried to do more. Uh, and eventually my body just doesn't feel good. My workouts don't feel good. I have low energy throughout the day. Um, but if I keep it in that

range, then I feel totally fine and I'm able to lose fat. So let's say the guy, he starts at 2,800 and then he stops losing fat, which would be determined by weight not going down anymore and waist not shrinking anymore. And you can also see in the mirror as well. So now he has an option here. Either he's going to eat less or he's going to move more. I always, my first, like my go-to is move more if you can. You want to use calorie reduction as a, I wouldn't say a last resort, but if you can exercise more, do that.

And that means if you have the time for it. And that means if you aren't already maxed out in terms of your exercise, like I just mentioned earlier. There is a max. if you aren't already maxed out in terms of your exercise, like I just mentioned earlier, there is a max. You can't, where I, the type of issue I run into more with women, for instance, is that have been trying really hard to get really lean, is they're usually doing too much exercise, especially too much cardio, very, very common. You know, I'll hear from women very frequently that are doing, you know, they're exercising six to seven days a week. And in total time, I mean, in some cases, it's kind of crazy, 12 to 15 hours of exercise a week plus a large calorie deficit.

That's a recipe for just feeling shitty, overtrained. And especially with women, you're going to have a lot of water retention issues because cortisol levels can be out the roof. So that can get real frustrating where they're working really hard. They're not eating that much food and they just look puffy and soft and their weight's not changing, which ironically they actually can be losing fat. But they can be replacing the fat in terms of weight with more and more water retention. So, which not only like it, obviously it obscures the fat loss on the scale, but it also does in the mirror too, because you just look puffy and soft. It looks like fat. You wouldn't know the difference. Subcutaneous fat or water, you really wouldn't know the difference. Um, so increase your exercise

before you decrease your calories, max that out. And you know, you're gonna have to learn your body. But I think that a reasonable ceiling would be probably four to five hours of weight lifting a week. And two to let's say two ish hours, give or take, maybe you can do a little bit more, maybe you need to do a little less of cardio per week. And that's high intensity interval cardio. That's what I prefer to do for fat loss purposes because it's just more effective for fat loss and you, it takes less time. Um, I'm sure you could do if you only did low intensity walking, of course you could walk a lot more than two hours a week and, uh, you know, not over train, but that walking is going to be far, far less effective than high intensity interval cardio. Um, you know, I've written about this extensively on my website. I'll link an article down below, but you know,

for example, one study showed that 60 minutes of inclined treadmill walking, which is a very common, you'll see that in the, in the gym all the time, especially among bodybuilders. That's kind of like the standard cardio 60 minutes of that was less effective in terms of fat burning than it was. I believe it was six, uh, 15 to 25 second sprints. I don't remember this. I read this study a while ago. Um, so, but it was six sprints with, uh, a, maybe a minute or two of just low intensity in between those sprints. It was a total of like 10 to 15 minutes of exercise, uh, of high intensity interval exercise burned more fat over the next several days than 60 minutes of incline treadmill walking. So that's why I do high intensity interval cardio. And I know that some people are going to say that, Oh, you can't do hit when you're in a deficit

because you're going to overtrain. I'm just going to say that's not true. I mean, not only have I just been doing it myself for years, but I've worked with so many people at this point that do the exact same thing that I've been doing. And I actually can't remember ever hearing from a person once that what I just laid out in terms of total exercise caused them to feel overtrained or cause any problems whatsoever. The only problems that I would run into or that I do run into more frequently is overeating or undereating. Those are the problems that people more run into is that given their activity level, they eat too much or they're eating too little and that can cause problems. Um, and you know, we also have to realize that when we're doing high intensity interval cardio, um, like I, I do it on the recumbent bike. That's what I like.

I like that. It's no impact. I like that. I can really push myself on my high intensity intervals without frying my legs. Whereas an upright bike is really tough on the, on the quads, which is fine. But, um, I found that it can mess with my squatting actually. If I do that the day before I squat, I can lose five pounds on my squat just because of that. So the recumbent bike is easier on the legs, but you're just trying to spike your heart rate. That's really what you're looking to do on your high intensity intervals.

So when we're doing that, it's not the same as a study done with an elite cyclist who is on an upright bike, you know, and on his high intensity intervals, he's going all out pedaling as hard as he can. That's quite different than even someone like me. I mean, I've been doing HIIT cardio consistently for over a year now. And so my cardio is actually very good and I can push myself pretty hard, but I'm not an elite cyclist. And, you know, I've just never run into any CNS issues or it just doesn't seem to put as much stress in the body as some people think. Now, of course, it depends on what type of hit you're doing. I used to do sprints and that was rough. I used to do like just sprints outside. I'd ride sprint

probably like 80 yards sprints. So I'd sprint as fast as I can run. And then I would walk 80, walk 80 sprints. So it'd be like sprint 80, walk one 60 sprint, 80 walk one 60 yards. Um, and that was tough. That was much tougher on my body than, than what I'm doing right now with the cycling. So I guess it does depend what you're doing. But most people that I'm working with, they, or I'm just in communication with, they're doing what I'm doing, or they're doing it on the elliptical, or they're doing it on a rowing machine.

And again, never run into any problems of overtraining because of doing an hour to two hours of HIIT cardio per week. Now, of course, I've run into people that are trying to do five, six hours of HIIT cardio per week, and that is a problem. You could walk for five or six hours a week and have no problem. So there's no question that HIIT cardio puts more stress on the body than low-intensity cardio. But the great thing about HIIT cardio is you just don't need to do that much to get what you need to get out of it.

The whole point of doing cardio when you're cutting is just to assist in fat loss. I mean, that's why I'm doing it. Of course, it has health benefits, but it's not like I particularly enjoy cardio. I mean, I bring my iPad, and that's when I watch whatever TV show I'm watching. That's when I watch it is when I'm doing my cardio. So for me, it's almost relaxing. It's like I'm not working for those 25 minutes or whatever. But it's, you know, yeah, if I can get all the fat loss I need out of, you know, just doing three, four, 25 minute sessions a week.

I'm going to do that. I don't have any interest sitting on the treadmill or sitting on a stair master for two hours a day. Um, and most people are of the same mind. So let's get back now to the calories versus moving. So when once, uh, once let's go back to our guy here, he's at 2,800 calories. He's no longer losing fat. He now adds some cardio to his routine. He goes from two days a week to four days a week, 20, 25 minutes per session. And now, now he's maxed out. He's there's no more exercise that he should be doing. Uh, and then let's say that now gets him another two weeks of fat loss. So he loses a pound and then he loses a pound and then he maybe loses a half a pound and then he's not losing again. So now he has to cut back on his calories.

Now he has no option. You can either stop here, but if he wants to lose more fat, he's going to have to eat less. So what I've done here, this is what I, what I, what I personally do is I reduce carbs when I'm cutting. I don't reduce protein. I don't reduce fat because I'm already, my carb intake is, I like to keep my carb intake as high as I can keep it basically because it helps maintain workout intensity. Carbs are satiating. Um, and you know, low carb diets, uh, just for most people, the low carb experience sucks. You just don't feel good. You have low energy levels. Uh, your workouts are terrible cause you have no glycogen in your muscles. And ironically, you don't even lose fat faster. I'll link an article down below. But when high-protein diet, high-protein, low-carb diet

versus high-protein, high-carb diet, you're going to lose the same amount of fat. And that's been proven scientifically. As popular as low- low carb is these days it's just like how low fat was very popular uh you know a decade ago or so because at the time fat was the you know macronutrient the evil macronutrient so you just want to eat as little as possible now the pendulum has swung you know hard in the other direction where carbohydrate is now the evil macronutrient that makes you fat and kills you and this and that, and now you're supposed to eat as little carbohydrate as you can or as possible or depends on who you listen to. Hopefully, a decade from now, the pendulum is somewhere in the middle,

which is the reality of that because not only is it the reality of, when we're talking changing your body composition, it is a balanced intake. A high-protein diet, no question. There's just no question. That is superior for fat loss and especially superior just for overall living. Well, I would say it's superior for overall living, especially if you're physically active. But even if you're not, the RDI of protein of 0.8 grams per kilogram of body weight has been shown to be not even sufficient for retaining lean mass as you age. If sedentary

people ate a bit more protein every day, they would lose less muscle over time as they age. And that's very important for overall health. So high protein diet and a moderate carb intake, there's no reason to go super low, but there's not necessarily a reason to go super high either. Um, it is, it is flexible. I'd say if you're weightlifting regularly, then a higher carb diet is going to serve you better. Um, if you're not, if let's say you just do some cardio here and there, maybe some body weight stuff, you don't need as many carbs. So you could probably go into a moderate to lower intake. But in terms of dietary fat, your body just doesn't need any more than let's say 0.3 to 0.4 grams per pound of lean mass. That's really just for, for supporting overall health, hormonal health, cellular health. Um, that's, that's your body just doesn't need more fat.

I know high fat is very trendy these days, but it really is just a trend. And, uh, hopefully we, we come to something more in the middle, you know, uh, in, in hopefully five, 10 years from now, we're somewhere more in the middle because unfortunately, like I said, the low carb experience just sucks for a lot of people. Uh, and, and it's not a, it's not sustainable as a lifestyle. And also it's not very enjoyable. I mean, there are so many types of carbohydrates that taste great and are great sources of nutrition. Um, you know, I, anything from, from whole grains to, uh, starchy type of carbs to fruit, um, seeds, uh, so, so many good ways to get your carbs that are very nutritious for the body and very enjoyable. And I think that enjoyment is kind of, especially these days in how enjoying your diet is kind of low on the list of priorities for a lot of the mainstream diet trends where it's more about trying to sell a person on, well, this is the ultimate healthy way to eat,

whether you enjoy it or not, like suck it up because if you want to live long and be healthy and not get cancer and die, this is what I have to eat. And that type of dogmatic extremism, it just isn't true. And I'm going to be writing a pretty extensive article on this. I'm going to be starting on it soon. It'll probably take me a couple of weeks. I've done a lot of the research, but now I have to kind of put it all together and then write the whole thing. But just on kind of the healthy diet hoaxax that there is one true healthy diet. Uh, it's just not true.

The, the, the human body can, can survive and thrive on so many different types of diets. Uh, there are basic guidelines and there are basic, uh, fundamentals that you will, or commonalities between quote unquote healthy diets, but what is a healthy diet is, is that that's a very flexible, um, I guess, uh, description. There's a lot of different types of diets that, that would, that could be called healthy. And, and part of that, it does relate to enjoyment. Uh, a lot of, a lot of the enjoyment we, we, there's people get a lot of enjoyment from food and not even in a weird way where if you're like, yeah, there are the people that have weird psychological relationships with food and they're binge eaters and they can't control themselves, but then there

are plenty of people, myself included, that just like food. I like food that tastes good. Sure, I can eat bland food and I don't care that much about food, but it's a pleasurable experience to have, you know, a good meal. And, uh, and for, for many of us, good meals include foods that certain diet gurus would say are terrible and have anti-nutrients or, and are causing our bodies to be deprived of this and that. And, uh, that's so much that is just bullshit. Um, so anyways, that, that, that's more of a, that's gonna be more of a whole nother subject that I'm gonna be writing about, but to get back to, uh, the subject at hand here. So we have our guy, um, that is needs to cut his calories. I reduce carbs. I, cause I'm already on a lower fat and I want to keep my fats. I don't want my fats to get too low cause that's unhealthy. Um, so I'm reducing my carbs when I'm cutting. And I,

what I do is I cut about 30 grams of my, I cut my daily carb intake by about 30 grams. So about a hundred, 120 calories is what I'm reducing. And I keep my activity level at the same. Um, in working with people, I've found that usually the daily intake reduction of somewhere around 100 to 150 calories seems to be the sweet spot for then getting the weight loss going again, getting it back up to that one pound a week or so, which it doesn't exactly even make sense given the approximately 3,500 calories of energy and a pound of fat. approximately 3,500 calories of energy in a pound of fat. But there are other things to take into account when we're talking about energy balance and calories in and calories out. Calories in is fairly easy to track and it's fairly easy to quantify. Calories out is tougher because of things like the thermic effect of food and non-exercise activity thermogenesis and how much energy you're actually burning when you exercise. So I can't say exactly

why that 100 to 150 calorie drop seems to work best or seems to be enough to get that weight loss going again. It sounds like it would be too little, but again, I've worked with a lot of people and that generally is what gets it going. Some people do need to cut a bit more upwards of, you know, reduce their daily intake by about 200 or even 250. But I would rather err on the side of too little overreduction because if you can get that weight loss going again by reducing by 150 a day, I'd rather have you do that than reduce by 250 a day. So cut carbs by anywhere from, let's say, 25 to 40 or 25 to 35 grams a day. And then see how your body gets the weight loss going again.

And for me, what I've noticed is once I have to do that first reduction, I generally have to reduce every week or two the same amount again. So what I personally do with my body is I do a 100-calorie reduction, and then, so let's say, let's just, for simplicity's sake, let's say it's a Monday. I'm gonna reduce my calorie, my daily intake by 100. I'm gonna pull out 25 grams of carbs,

and then the next Monday, I'm gonna do it again. The next Monday, I'm gonna do it again, and I'm gonna do it again. And that keeps my weight loss steady. And especially this is especially important as you get lean and want to get really lean. Like if you're already as a guy, 10%, 9%, as you're a girl, 19, 20%, and you want to get really lean, this reduction is going to be necessary. There's just no way around it because as your body fat levels, uh, we get lower and lower, your leptin levels get lower and lower, which means that your metabolism is slowing down. It's not particularly unhealthy. It just is what it is. So you're trying to stay ahead of that and keep your body in a deficit essentially.

Um, so I reduce calories like that, keep the weight loss going. And then I stop at when I am around BMR, I won't go, maybe I'll go a hundred calories below BMR for, for the final week, just to get, if I want to get whatever I can get out of that last week. But then I stopped reducing at that point. You don't want to get into a situation where you're eating hundreds of calories under your BMR because it's just that is unhealthy and that your metabolism is going to continue to slow down. And all it means is it's going to take you longer to get back to a healthy metabolism in a sense and get your metabolism back up to speed. So once you get down to your BMR,

then now you start flipping it the other direction where you're going to be increasing your calories slightly every week to speed your metabolism back up. And you're going to gain little to no fat as you do this. It's called reverse dieting. I'll link an article down below so you can check it out. But it's very simple. The easiest way to do it is to increase your weekly intake by 100 and bringing your carbs back up. And then once you've gotten your carbs back up, let's say, you know, increased by 50 to 75 grams, you're then starting, then you're bringing your fat back up.

And again, it's laid out in the article, but it's a very simple, very workable way to just come out of a cut and get, so where your intake is, you know, quite a bit lower than where it could be given your activity level and getting it back up to that activity level. So that's pretty much everything on how to cut calories and how to use calorie reduction and exercise, more exercise to keep the fat loss going. And if in that whole period of reducing down to your BMR or under BMR, if you haven't reached your fat loss goals, then you reverse diet back up and then you start the process again. Very simple. So yeah, let's move on to the next. All right. So the next is a question from Charlie Bill from Kentucky. And he says, doesn't necessarily mean you're not recovered enough to work out a muscle group if you are still sore? And is it possible to not be recovered enough even though you don't feel sore? And those are good questions. So first, yes, you can still, just because a muscle's sore

doesn't mean that it's not recovered. I'm going to link an article down below that I actually wrote on this. So if you want to dive into it even more, you can. And, you know, actually the physiology of this isn't totally understood from at least the research that I've read on it. There is a theory that some of the soreness that we're feeling is more related to connective tissues that are holding muscle fibers together, as opposed to the muscle fibers themselves. So the muscle fibers may not even be that damaged, but the connective tissue is, and you feel that. We also know that the more muscles are exposed to certain type of stimuli, the less sore that you get.

And certain exercises can cause quite a bit of soreness, but not a lot of muscle growth, which is another kind of myth I wanted to just talk about quickly because a lot of people think that workouts need to make them really sore. And if you're really sore, that means you're really building muscle. And that's not really the case. The research has shown that the correlation between muscle soreness and muscle growth is pretty weak. Workouts that make you really sore don't necessarily help you build a lot of muscle and workouts that don't make you sore can actually

help you build a lot of muscle. It sounds counterintuitive, but it's true. And I've experienced that myself as well. I used to do very high rep type stuff and always be trying new types of routines and exposing my muscles to new type of stimuli that would make me really, really sore. But of course, I built muscle doing that because I stuck with it over long periods of time, but I built, I've built a lot more muscle, uh, working out the way that I work out now, which is a lot, lot, not, not, I don't do like, I used to think muscle confusion. I had to change my routine all the time and I don't do that anymore. My routine is built around the big, you know, big compound lifts, squats, deadlifts, big presses. And then I do change some of the additional stuff every you know eight weeks or so but these days I don't get very sore even to the touch like I even when I get massaged you know

yeah my legs get a little bit sore my back it's a little bit sore but nothing nothing major I don't even notice it until I'm getting worked and so doing those types of workouts I've built a lot more muscle even though I don't really deal with soreness issues anymore. Like, for instance, downhill running is known to make people's legs very, very sore, but you're not going to build big legs or strong legs doing a bunch of downhill running. So back to the question, if a muscle group is sore, that doesn't necessarily mean you can't train it. It more depends on when did you last train it and how is the performance. If you just trained a muscle group, let's say you did a bunch of chest pressing on Monday and now it's Wednesday and your chest is sore and you want to do it again,

your chest probably hasn't recovered from the first workout. If you did a heavy workout on a Monday, there's no way really actually by Wednesday that it's going to be fully recovered. And you'll notice that not only in soreness, but you also notice that in performance, your, your, uh, strength is going to be way down. That's a more reliable indicator. If you're, if you're not able to do what you did in your last workout, then you probably are not recovered yet. So, you know, if you were benching 275 for sets of five, and then a few days later you put up 275 and you can only get two and it hurts, then you're probably not recovered. Um, but you know, some people,

they stay sore for, it seems to be inordinate, uh, amounts of like longer periods of time. Like someone changed, changed, trains their chest on, let's say a Monday, and then they haven't done anything else on it, and come Sunday, it's still sore, then I would say that that is much more likely to be something other than muscle fiber issues, because they could probably do a good warmup. And I mean, that's just plenty of time for a muscle group to recover. Even people that recover slower could, you know, be safely train their chest again on a Sunday. I would say probably like, uh, in, in my bigger than you're stronger program, I have guys do

chest work on Monday and then do a bit more on Thursday. Um, just because that seems to be enough time, enough recovery time for, uh, it's, it's for, it's kind of a heavy Monday and a lighter Thursday. So that works well, and it's more a matter of, you have to figure that if you're doing a tough, intense workout, it's going to take your body no less than 48 hours to repair that muscle. But that's being very optimistic. I go into this in, in my book, uh, bigger than you're stronger. Also in thinner than you're stronger, I go into more of the

research on this, but if we take the average person, we can assume that it's probably more like any four days, give or take a day that it's going to, if you have like a heavy type of bigger than you're stronger workout, which entails about, let's say about 60 ish heavy reps, that's going to take your body, uh, you know, probably four days or so to, to fully recover and be ready for the next workout. And whether you're sore or not, I mean, some people, like I said, that applies to me also, uh, my body I've been working out for so long, my recovery may be a little bit better, but I can, I can, you know, I did heavy deadlifts yesterday. I don't feel anything in my back, but I worked hard. I couldn't go deadlift. If I tried

to go deadlift right now, I'm sure not only would I feel some soreness, but I would just wouldn't be able to perform. My muscles have not recovered, even though they feel totally fine. All right. So that's all on that one. I'll keep that short and sweet. Let's move on to the next, which is carbs late at night carbs for bed. Is that a problem specifically for fat loss? And the answer is no, it's not. In the first edition of Bigger, Leaner, Stronger, I had spoken about this and referenced some research regarding growth hormone production that if elevated insulin levels can blunt growth hormone production. Growth hormone induces lipolysis, which is when fat cells release their stored energy to be burned. It's called lipolysis. And a large amount of your growth

hormone production occurs in your first phase of deep sleep. So if you're eating a bunch of carbs right before bed, does that large insulin spike, which is going to last several hours, is that going to blunt the production of growth hormone? It was the theory, but since writing the first edition of Bigger, Leaner, Stronger, the new research has come out, and I've read a lot more and also worked with a lot of people. And I took that section out of the book because it actually seems like it just isn't a problem. Your body learns to deal with it essentially. So you can eat your carbs whenever you want. There is not going to be a big benefit of eating your carbs late at night. I know that like carb backloading is, I guess, semi-popular, which is where you're basically saving all your carbs for your big post-workout meal and you work out later in the day. Uh, I'll link an article I wrote down below on it. I think,

I think it's cool that it teaches people that you can be very, be very flexible with your food intake and you don't have to follow any kind of rigid dogmatic. You have to eat this at this time or you can't eat this at that time or whatever. But, um, I think that as a, as a protocol, it's very oversold, overhyped. It's not the secret to, you know, re-comping or losing fat, which is losing fat and building muscle. So, you know, I'm not going to talk about shit about it, but I think it's oversold. But what you should know is that you can, if you want to eat a lot of carbs at night, you can do that. Like if you have late dinners and you like those dinners to be very carb dense, do that. Or if you work out late, you know, let's say you work out at 10 PM and you like having a lot of carbs after

you work out and then you're going to go to bed because a lot of, um, there may even be research on this. I feel like I've seen that a large carb meal before going to bed can lead to better sleep. I feel like I've seen that somewhere. I know I've run into people that prefer it for that reason because it keeps them full throughout the night and they just feel good when, you know, they're going to sleep with, uh, that, that, I don't know if it's a carb, you know, euphoria, carb high or whatever, but they like it. So totally fine. As long as your daily numbers are where they need to be, um, you can eat your food whenever you want. Really.

The only thing I would say is that it's probably a good idea to have some protein before and after you work out. The research is a bit contradictory on this, but there's, there is research that shows that over time you'll build more muscle doing it that way. Um, and then there's research that will say that you, that you won't, it's hard to, it's in my opinion, the scales are kind of balanced on that. It's hard to choose one side or the other. So I just, you might as well be safe. Like it's not that hard to just have, I just use whey protein. So have a scoop of whey before you work out, have a scoop of whey after you work out, have some carbs too. If, I mean, I just like having carbs after I work out because it feels good. And it's a good opportunity to eat your carbs because you've kind of created a carb sink in a sense.

You've depleted your muscles of glycogen, and they're in a prime state to absorb that back. Again, it's not a huge thing, but it's kind of a why not. Like, yeah, if you can't one day, then it's not a big deal. But as a regular routine, most people, they also enjoy that enjoy that, which as I was saying earlier, enjoying your diet counts, enjoying how you eat counts and looking forward to your meals counts. Um, so yeah, that's really it on the carbs. All right. So now last but not least, I want to kind of go over this scorecard concepts. I thought it's kind of cool. So a book I read recently called Peak, which I've recommended, I think a couple times. And I do recommend it if you are an entrepreneur or interested in building your career, really, regardless of what it is, I highly recommend this book. There was a little anecdote.

Maybe he just got it from somewhere else. He was telling it as if it actually happened to him. I'm not so sure. But basically, the story is, so he's playing golf with, who is it? Oh, whatever. I made some notes here. But playing golf with somebody. And playing terribly, and the other person was good.

And he's getting all frustrated that he's never going to be good at golf. And the person's reply was, well, just because you have a high handicap in golf good and he's getting all frustrated, you know, that he's never going to be good at golf. And, and the person's reply was, well, just because you have a high handicap in golf doesn't mean you can't enjoy it. And, and also kind of, uh, to extrapolate that to life, just because if you have a high handicap, if you're not familiar with golf, a high handicap means you're bad. Uh, it means that, uh, you are shooting, it takes you quite a bit more shots to get the ball in the hole than it should, essentially. So just because you suck at golf doesn't mean, just because you suck at the technical, you know, game, at the technical aspects of golf doesn't mean that you can't enjoy it.

And the concept is, it's just, you know, yeah, you have your scorecard and you have your numbers. That measures the technical ability that you have. But there are different types of technical ability that you have, but there are different types of scorecards that you can keep. Uh, like he gives some examples. How many squirrels did you see on the course? How many cloud formations do you see in the sky? How many times did you get your grandpa to crack a smile for one of your silly jokes? Maybe he's playing with his grandpa was a story. Um, just remember you can decide which scorecard you want to use in life. I really

like that concept because the scorecard that if we have to take that golf analogy or take that, that just that golf example and kind of apply it to life. Of course, the scorecard that people are most concerned with generally is, is money. And that's the scorecard that many people, you know, that we often judge ourselves on the most and judge other people on. And that, in my opinion, is just a bad scorecard. It's just whether – and I'm not saying that like – I don't say that as somebody that dislikes people with money. I mean I make a fair amount of money doing what I'm doing, and I grew up around money. I know quite a few people with a lot more money than they even know what to do with.

So I have nothing against rich people in general, the 1% or any of that shit. I don't care about any of that shit. I'm just saying this really from this is just my kind of viewpoint on it in that because if you put too much importance on the scorecard of money, I think there are several negative aspects of that. And one, for example, is I can really apply this to my work. So Muscle for Life. Muscle for Life is a pretty big website. It gets about a million visits a month. It's growing very quickly.

Big email lists and I have quite a following on social media, blah, blah, blah. And the reality is it's under-monetized. It really is under-monetized. It makes money, of course, and it pushes a lot of sales to Legion. blah, blah. And the reality is it's under monetized. It really is under monetized. It makes money of course. And it sells, uh, it pushes a lot of sales to Legion. It sells a lot of books. We sell a lot of meal plans, but given the, uh, the, the size of the website, um, you know, I, I was speaking with someone recently that, that had a fitness website. Um, I think he said doing about 50,000 visits a month. Now it was set up to just sell affiliate

products. It wasn't set up to really be all that helpful just to make money. And I think he said he was doing about 90,000 a month profit on 50,000 visits a month. So when he heard my numbers, he was like, it almost was like offensive to him. You know what I mean? He was like, you, you should be doing at least a million dollars a month profit, at least a million dollars a month profit. Um, and my kind of rebuttal is yes, MFL is under monetized and you know, I'm going to be doing some things to address that. I mean, I don't, obviously I'm, I'm all for opportunity. Um, like I'm going to be launching a store and I'm going to sell all kinds of cool stuff in the store. A lot of that. Obviously, I'm all for opportunity. I'm going to be launching a store, and I'm going to sell all kinds of cool stuff in the store.

A lot of stuff I recommend I'll just sell myself. I want to sell shirts. I want to sell posters. There's a lot of cool things I know that people would actually enjoy that I could sell. I'm going to be producing kind of like a flagship information product, which is going to have a whole bunch of video content and, um, you know, whatever. I have some various ideas and things that yes, we'll make a lot of money. That's fine. But my, my, my scorecard with MFL is not just money. If it were just money, like a lot of people, especially in the internet marketing world, then I would, that, that'd be the direct, that's like the obvious direction for people like that. Like, why do you care what you're promoting? I like, if you've noticed on MFL, I only advertise

my own stuff, advertise my books, advertise my supplements. It's not because I don't have offers to advertise other people's stuff. If I didn't care what I advertised in MFL, I could right now, uh, be generating an additional, um, probably $75,000 a month in advertising, that's profit. Just that's $75,000 into my pocket every month if I didn't care. If I was just, you know, I just this morning, I emailed by another company, digital advertising company, where they have a bunch of clients and they want to advertise in MFL. And, you, and this space, this health and fitness space, is very, very expensive to advertise in. Advertisers pay a shitload of money to run ads on websites,

especially a website like MFL, which has a very loyal following, very, very good analytics, very, very good demographics, et cetera, et cetera. I wouldn't be surprised if I actually, if it would be more along the lines of about a hundred thousand dollars a month, uh, if I, if I also threw in some email stuff and paid posts and stuff like that, probably could pretty quickly get it up to a hundred thousand dollars a month in my pocket by doing that. Why don't I do that? Because my scorecard is not just money with MFL. because my scorecard is not just money with MFL.

My scorecard also is in how I am connecting with people. That's why I spend a lot of time answering emails and answering comments. I want to actually be helpful to people. That's more what my scorecard is. And if I'm advertising products that I have used myself and I think are good and I know are going to help people, then that fits that. And that's why my recommendations, for instance, on MFL, those are all things that I have used myself,

like all the supplements, good science behind them, the gear, everything, because that's actually helpful. But if I have some advertisement on the side of the website, let's say, that is like some, you know, let's say it's just garbage supplements, some other supplement company. One, I mean, it wouldn't quite make sense to have my own supplements, but let's just say that was the case. And you, as a reader, you go click out or even AdSense, same type of thing. So I start putting AdSense, you know, in my articles. AdSense alone, I was talking with that same person actually that was kind of like offended by how, comparatively speaking, how little money MFL is directly generating.

He's saying that AdSense alone, probably $30,000 a month. If I just put AdSense up, $30,000 a month in my pocket. But again, who's on the AdSense? Now, yes, I could control the type of companies that could advertise on AdSense, and I may look into that. I mean, I don't want to add too much clutter on MFL, and so I think it's already kind of a bit cluttered. I need to take a look at reducing the amount of the side nav stuff and whatever. But, um, so again, the point is if I just didn't care and I just, you know, but you as the reader, now you click on an ad and you go waste your money on some stupid NO supplement or something like that. Uh, that's telling you it's going to, you know, as good as steroids or whatever, I've kind of done you a disservice. Uh, so that's why I haven't done that. That's why I'd rather just advertise my own stuff. I'd rather put up my own store and sell things that I can feel good about and I know are going to help. And, you know, yes, that even all doing all that, it will MFL makes less money than it could, even if, you know, through the store and through. well, there's a point where having a store and then advertising, where you really create an e-commerce ecosystem, kind of like bodybuilding.com. Obviously, everything that's advertised on the

website, you can buy on bodybuilding.com. That's an ideal type of situation. And I want to go more in that direction because then I can control what I am promoting because people are coming to me and they're trusting my recommendations. And, you know, that matters to me. But to some, and that's because my scorecard is different. Sure, I care about money, but money is, it delivers diminishing returns. There's a point where, you know, if you're jumping from making $30,000 a year to $60,000 a year, that makes quite a difference. From 60 to, let's say, 100, that makes quite a difference. 100 to 200 makes less of a difference. 200 to 500 makes even less of a difference. 500 to a million, less and less and less and less. You know, unless you have,

unless you just want to live the most extravagant type of lifestyle and, uh, you know, you want, like you need personal assistance and you need chef and you need a mansion and you need cars and you need all that stuff. But even that, you know, okay. So if you're that driven for stuff, uh, then what's that a few million dollars a year and you can have all that. And then what? So, you know, from in most people that, though, are not like that. Like, yeah, people like to have nice things, but people that – most people, at least that I know, that have worked hard for their money are a bit more frugal with it. Like, yes, they have nice things. They live in nice homes. They drive nice cars.

But they – relative to their income, they're not very extravagant. But relative to their income, they're not very extravagant. So that also applies to Legion as well. When I first went to my manufacturer, I may have told this story before, but I'm not sure. So I'll just go through it quickly. When I was launching Legion and Jeremy and I first went to our, the manufacturer that we were using. And we gave them the formulation for pulse, the first formulation for pulse, but actually had a bit more in it. Stuff like alpha GPC, that's so expensive. We just didn't know. Right. So, but our, our, our account rep came back to us initially, like, this is wrong.

Like he knew we were new to this. So he's like, Oh, just, just so you know, you guys like, this is not what you want to do. This is a way, way too much, way too many actives. This is way too expensive. Like this isn't going to work. You should, um, here, here, here's our, here's what we recommend. And they sent some garbage proprietary blend pre, you know, this is the, I'd be the normal way like that people would, they'd just go, yeah, give me some shitty prop line product. I don't care. Right. Someone, let's say in my position where I would go,

if all I cared about was money, if that was like my scorecard was dollars in the bank and that's it, then I would have just said, Hey, people buy what I tell them to buy and I want to make as much money as possible. So I'm going to make a pre-workout for $4 and I'm going to sell it for $50.

And there we go. My scorecards look real good. That's what the manufacturer is assuming because everyone that comes to them, that's what they do. So when we were explaining to them, I had to go back and forth like three times actually. Like, no, we're doing it differently. We quote that formulation. We need to see how expensive it is. And they would come back and be like,

almost like trying to give us business advice. Trust me, you don't want to do this. You don't want to do it differently. It's not going to work. You can't spend that much on a product and get anywhere. So we were just like, his name was Todd. We were like, Todd, just shut up and quote the product, dude. We're doing it, whatever.

If it fails, then it fails. This is the way we're going to do it. And ironically, I think the first formulation came back at like $40 a bottle or something like that, that cost, my cost. So obviously that doesn't work. So then we had to like, we had to kill off a GPC for instance, cause that stuff was so, I don't remember. It was like $200,000 per kilo or something. It was absurd. So anyways, then we got it down to a formulation that we have now, which allows us to make enough money to run the business. But you know, obviously when you compare it to other pre-workout formulations, you're going to see that it has a lot more of the good stuff

than anything else has a lot more citrulline malate per serving, uh, beta-ene, beta-alanine and so forth. Um, so it's also with Legion that's been our, uh, our kind of guiding that, that scorecard. Yes, of course, to make money, but also what is more important to us though, is producing good products that actually help people that people are, because I know I used to waste so much money on supplements. I used to go into GNC every month or two and probably spend like two to $300. It worked. Cause I would just go to the back and be like, yeah, sure. I'll try that. I'll try that. And then I wouldn't really necessarily listen to the sales guys. I would

just kind of try things. And so I know how annoying that is to just waste money every month. And eventually I was like, all right, well, all this shit's just worthless. So I'll just, you know, I, I, I kind of paired it all the way down to way down to just protein, creatine, and a pre-workout because I liked something to get me going before I work out. So, yeah, I mean, I guess the moral of the whole story is you can, I think that there's value in just keeping that in mind, how you are determining whether you are winning or not is you don't necessarily like defaulting to what other people would, would consider, uh, is, is not, is not necessarily going to be good for you. There are a lot more, uh, important things than, than just making money. Or I guess another one out there would be, um, achieving like recognition. Sure. I think recognition is cool. And, uh, but it can get a bit narcissistic

where people are not just trying to achieve recognition. They're trying, they have a desire to be admired. You know what I mean? They want, they want to be famous. They want people to recognize them and tell them how awesome they are. And, uh, that's no, that's also something I have no interest in at all. Like I, I don't consider myself a celebrity at all, but even if I ever got to that point where I was a celebrity of known, whatever, I don't desire that actually. I'd much rather just kind of be anonymous to be honest. Uh, because I like doing my work. I like staying in touch with people. I like helping people out. I don't care if I'm going to get a bunch of public recognition for it. I just don't care.

I guess maybe the only thing that would be cool about celebrity is you get access to interesting experiences that you don't get access to otherwise. That would be the only thing I would actually care about. So anyways, that's it. I'm not going to ramble on and on about this, but if you like that concept, I definitely recommend you pick up the book Peak by a guy named Chip Conley. A lot of great insights in that about work and about running a business and working in a business and dealing with investors and then kind of finding your calling, I guess you could say. So that's it for the podcast.

I hope you liked it. I'm going to be lining up a lot more guests, so we're going to get back to that. But for now, I'm just doing one myself. Oh, last but not least, my book launch. It does end. I'm launching the second edition of Bigger, Leaner, Stronger, Th, my book launch, it does end, you know, I'm launching the second editions of Bigger, Leaner, Stronger, Thinner, Leaner, Stronger. That whole thing, I'm giving away like $10,000 in stuff, real stuff too, not like PDFs that

I say are worth $100 each, but real hard goods. And that's ending this Thursday, which the date, it's Thursday, tomorrow, hello. So yeah, tomorrow the 19th. So by the time this goes up, I think this is going up tomorrow. So it's going Hello. So, yeah, tomorrow the 19th. So by the time this goes up, I think this is going up tomorrow. So it's going to be today basically that it ends. And you can check it out at muscleforlife.com forward slash launch. And, yeah, that's it. All right.

See you next time.