Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Cutting Tips, Losing Stubborn Fat, Fasted Training, and More...

Episode Date: December 18, 2014

In this podcast I talk about my cut from 9-6% body fat in ~8 weeks, some tips for making dieting easier, what stubborn fat is and how to lose it, why you don't want to drastically cut calories, fasted training, and more... DEFINITIVE GUIDE TO INTERMITTENT FASTING: http://www.muscleforlife.com/the-definitive-guide-to-intermittent-fasting/ STUBBORN FAT: http://www.muscleforlife.com/the-truth-about-stubborn-fat-and-how-to-get-rid-of-it/ 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 audiobooks 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,

which means you can dive in and go validate everything that we say. Three, all ingredients are also included at clinically effective dosages, which are the exact dosages used in the studies proving their effectiveness. And four, there are no proprietary blends, which means that you know exactly what you're buying. Our formulations are 100% transparent. So if that sounds interesting to you, then head over to legionathletics.com. That's L-E-G-I-O-N athletics.com. And you can learn a bit more about the supplements that I have as well as my mission for the company, because I want to accomplish more than just sell supplements. I really want to try to make a change for the better in the supplement industry because I think it's long

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- 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 to the show. Hey, this is Mike Matthews from muscle for life.com. Uh, thanks for Muscle for Life figured I'll do them both at the same time. So I'll start doing other videos as well. I would do training videos and stuff, but the gym that I work out in, they're kind of weird about it and it would have to be at really weird hours and there aren't that many gyms in the area. I've called different gyms, but I'm going to work it out. It's just kind of a pain in the ass because my schedule is kind of crazy right now and I don't have that much time. there just would be

no way for me to take an entire day probably to go shoot a bunch of stuff in the gym. But I do have some instructional videos and stuff that are already shot. I actually narrate them and finish up on the editing and stuff. I mean, I won't do the editing, but I'll have to narrate it. But it's on the list. It will get done soon. I just, you know, have a lot going on with launching the supplements right now and launching a new book and running the website and whatever. So anyways, as you can see, this is my office. This is where I sit and stare at a computer

screen all day. I'm in Florida. It's nice outside. It's like 6 o'clock right now. Sun's going down. It's hot. It's like 90 degrees outside, 100% humidity. Anyway, so in this podcast, I'll talk about a couple things, talk a little bit about my cut and how it went. I just finished cutting, went from about 9% to 6%, about eight weeks or so. Just maybe give you a couple tips on how to make your cuts go faster and easier. And, you know, so you can get, because you really want to get them over with as quickly as possible. Not just because cutting sucks.

I mean, I don't actually mind it that much. But more for just the preservation of lean mass. You want to, you know, you don't want to stay in a deficit for long, long periods of time. And you also don't want to go in too much of a deficit and try to rush it because then you lose too much muscle as well. So anyways, we'll talk a little bit about that. I'm going to be talking about, I'm going to go over a couple of questions that people have asked on the blog and that I said I would address in the first podcast. We'll just get to them.

I don't want to talk about them all right here. We'll just get to them one by one. So first, on my cut, it took about eight weeks. I lost about 13 pounds. I went from like 198 to like 185. I'm hovering around 185, 184. So that's where I'm at right now. My calories, I started around 2,500, maybe 2,600, I don't remember exactly.

And lifting five days a week, cardio three days a week. I like to do HIIT cardio only. You burn more fat, you preserve muscle. Why even bother with going outside and just jogging for an hour. So I can just burn up more muscle and burn less fat than if I go on a recumbent bike for 20, 30 minutes and do HIIT. So that's what I do. The condo building that I live in has a gym. It doesn't have any, it has some weights, but it's, you know, light weights. It's worthless. Some machines and stuff, but they have a recumbent bike, which always use so what I do is I just go on the recumbent I do it at night I lift early in the morning I drive to a gym a real gym and

lift and then at night hop on the recumbent bike very simple you know I just do a little warm-up and then I bump the resistance up to like four or five and pedal as hard as I can for 30 seconds and then put it down to, uh, you know, no resistance, the level one and just, uh, you know, do,

do, uh, you know, so I think I keep it at like 14 miles an hour or something like that, um, for 60 seconds and then back resistance up, pedal as hard as I can for 30 seconds, 30,

60, 30, 60 like that. Sometimes I go 30, 30, just kind of depends, I guess how I'm feeling at the moment. I don't do the low intensity.

It's never longer than 60 seconds, though. Yeah, I like the biking. I found it also helped with my leg strength, actually. At first, my legs were kind of sore from it. It was getting a little bit annoying because my legs' days were being affected by it. But as I continued to do it, my legs, I saw an improvement not just on the bike, but also in my squats and stuff, which was nice. And in terms of a cardio schedule, what I like to do is I like to not do cardio the day before legs. For me, legs is Thursday today. So I don't do cardio the day before legs.

For me, legs is Thursday, today. So I don't do cardio on Wednesday night because I usually find, even though my legs are pretty conditioned to it now, that they'll be a little bit sore. They'll be a little bit achy or stiff or whatever, and it will mess with my lifting a little bit. So I'll do cardio like Sunday night, Monday. And then if I'm doing four days, I'll do Tuesday as well. If I'm doing three days, I'll take Tuesday and Wednesday off. So my legs are totally good. I'll lift on Thursday, uh, you know, lift legs. And then, uh, I'll do cardio again tonight, which I've actually found has helped with soreness. I don't really get that

sore, uh, these days, but I, I still will get sore really from the big lifts, like deadlifts will still make my back sore. Squats still makes my legs sore. But by doing cardio at night, I've noticed that the soreness in my legs is noticeably less come Friday, come Saturday. So that's always nice. It's not fun to try to go out on the weekend and do things and you're like Frankenstein because of legs day. Um, so anyway, yeah, that's, that's what I like to do for, for cardio and I'm cutting. I had to cut my calories 2,500 or so 2,600 took me, I probably lost, I probably went from like 9% to like maybe 7.5 on that. And then I had to cut about 100 calories a week for the final four weeks or so to get down to somewhere around 6% right

now. It's kind of hard to measure unless I were going to get like DEXA scanned. I have the calipers that I recommend on my website. And they're good. They're accurate to within 1%. But when you start getting really lean, there's just not that much skin to even grab. So it can be a little bit hard to know exactly. Am I exactly 6? Am I 6 1⁄2? Don't know.

But, you know, I'm somewhere down there, which is – I mean, how you look, that's really what we're going for. So it's, you look in the mirror and you go, do I need to be leaner? Yes or no. Um, so yeah, my, my calories, uh, at the end, or I got down to about 2000 a day, which isn't even that bad. It's, it's enough food. Like I, I'm not, I'm not particularly hungry during the day. I feel fine. So that's basically how it went. And right now, I have a photo shoot. It's supposed to be this week, but it's going to be next week. So I'm just keeping my calories at 2,000. I might as well see if I can lose a little bit more fat by the time the photo shoots roll around next week. So I'm going to do that. And then, um,

I'm going to, I'm going to maintain, and that is simply a matter of increasing calories. Um, and probably usually what, you know, what has happened last time I cut down to this lean was, um, I was increasing my calories and I'll probably do it by like, I'll probably increase a hundred calories a week. Um, I'll add in, I'll add in some carbs just cause they're great for, I mean, my body does very well with carbs. Some people's bodies don't do too well with them. Most people I find, uh, do, but if they do have any problems, uh, metabolizing carbohydrates, um, regular exercise and healthy eating usually does a lot to improve that. Um anyways, I'll increase my carbs. Just because it gives you more energy in the gym, you can lift more weight.

And, you know, that's what I like to do. So I'll probably increase them by, you know, I don't know, maybe like 30 a day or something like that. So I'll bump my calories up 100 and 150 calories a day, do that for a week and see how my body responds. my calories up 100, 150 calories a day, do that for a week and see how my body responds. Last time I was cutting to around this kind of level, it's funny, I kept on losing weight, like I was having trouble stopping the weight loss. At that time, I wound up around 178 and I was pretty lean. I was probably, you know, I was right around this, you know, six, six-ish, maybe even a little bit below that. I really had like nothing left I could grab. My skin just felt like the top of my knuckles

kind of everywhere. So, but as I, as I increased calories, you know, I was continuing to lose. I wanted to stop the weight loss at 180. And then, so I like bumped my calories up to like a hundred a day, still lost still lost weight you know about a pound that week bumped them up another 200 or so now I'm up to like 24 25 lost another pound um so and I've you know heard other people that run into that I guess it's just your metabolism does regulate itself based on how much food you're eating um so that's what I'm going to do this time I'm going to bump my calories up between 100 and 200 per day and just find uh all I'm looking to do this time, I'm going to bump my calories up between 100 and 200 per day and just find, all I'm looking to do is stop the weight loss and I'll be able, I'll stay the same in terms

of body fat. And regarding my cheating, this is also a good little tip if, you know, while you're cutting or if you want to maintain a particularly lean look is to use some intermittent fasting. I don't do it every day because I honestly don't like it that much. The fasting part doesn't bother me. What I don't like is actually having to eat really large meals. I don't like the feeling, you know, you just, I just want to pass out. Like if I go eat 1500 calories, even of good food, it just knocks, it makes me tired. And, uh, so my computer screen, there we go. So, uh, yeah, I, I don't like doing it on a day-to-day basis, but it is useful. I find it in two, uh, different scenarios where I actually do like to work in a little bit of IF. One is, um, I like to eat pancakes. Pancakes are straight delicious to me. It's probably one of my favorite cheat foods. Very high carb though, obviously. So what I'll do

is like Friday night, I'll eat my last meal, maybe like, let's say my last meal at 10 PM. I have some protein or whatever, you know, a little bit before I go to bed. And then I won't eat again until Saturday around, I'll probably do like 12 p.m. or 1 p.m., maybe even stretch as long as 2 p.m. So I'm fasting somewhere between 14 and 16 hours, which is, you know, if you are familiar with intermittent fasting, you know, I wrote an article called Definitive Guide to Intermittent Fasting. It goes over the whole theory behind it and goes over a lot of the science of it and then some different protocols. But if you're familiar with it, you're probably familiar with Martin Burkhan's Lean Gains Protocol,

which is if you're interested in IF, I recommend that's the protocol that you follow because it's particularly well-suited to people that lift weights, whereas other protocols like the Warrior Diet is just kind of stupid because you're allowed to eat fruit throughout your quote-unquote fast. to lift weights, whereas other protocols like the warrior diet is just kind of stupid because you're allowed to eat fruit throughout your quote unquote fast. I don't know how that's a fast if you're eating fruit. And, you know, anyway, there's alternate day fasting, which has, there are health benefits. And if you have health issues, there can be reasons to do that. But for people that are lifting weights, that would be terrible. Anyway, you can read more about that on my website if you're interested.

So I'll fast about 16 hours and then I'll eat usually like about 150 grams of carbs in one go. And that's pancakes and maple syrup. I don't want, I don't know, like the Walden Farms cancer, you know, I don't know. I don't know what it is. It's like one of those jokes where you just don't even know what you're eating. It's some weird zero calorie sweet syrup. No, I don't know what it is. It's like one of those jokes where you just don't even know what you're eating. It's some weird zero-calorie sweet syrup. No, I like the real shit. So I have maple syrup and, you know, whatever kind of recipe I'm feeling like for pancakes, but I usually will keep it around 150 grams carbs and low fat.

I'll use a little bit of butter, but, you know, I want to keep the fats down to, in that meal, probably maybe 15 or 20 grams. And then I'll have some protein, usually with some Greek yogurt that I put on the pancakes. I have this all worked out. Or I'll have like a protein shake and that or whatever. And so that's like a 1 p.m. just massive amount of food. And then I'm not hungry again until probably 4 or so. And then I'll have some chicken. And, you know, that's basically my big carb up. And depending on what I'm doing with my carbs, I may eat some more carbs. You know, maybe

I'll have some more at dinner. I always like to have vegetables at dinner, but I might have, you know, maybe some fruit throughout the day or something like that. But anyways, you can use intermittent fasting to, to, it'll feel like a cheat, like that huge pancake meal feels like a cheat meal, but it's not. I mean, I was doing that every week, uh, throughout my, my cut, um, which, I don't know if I said this, but it went about eight weeks or so. I lost about 13 pounds. I went from like 9% now to about six. Anyway, so I was doing that every week. And if you know, if you've read any of my work or, you know, follow the website or whatever, you know about refeeding, which is important when you're cutting, especially as you get leaner, you eat a bunch of carbs. And what it does is it spikes a hormone in your body called leptin

that basically tells it that it's fed and that it can continue losing fat. Leptin regulates the metabolism. It's actually produced by body fat. So when you have a lot of fat, your body produces a lot of leptin. When you have lower body fat levels, your body produces less leptin, and it slows metabolism down and so forth. So what I would do is, you know, when I was cutting, I was using this pancake meal as

the first meal of my refeed day, which I would usually, I would shoot for about 350 grams of carbs, about 180 grams of protein and pretty much as little fat as I could eat. It would usually come out to be about 30 grams though. And I mean, I could go lower, I guess. Some people literally try to have less than 10 grams, but I'm not too worried about 30 grams of fat. It's just not an issue. And the reason why you keep that low is because dietary fat is most easily stored

or most efficiently stored, let's say, as body fat because the energy cost to convert the dietary fat into body fat is just very, very low, whereas the energy cost to convert protein into fat is very, very high. The energy cost to convert carbohydrates into body fat is considerable. It's higher than, if I remember correctly, somewhere between 20% and 25% of the energy in the carbohydrate has to be used just to turn it into body fat. And of course, your body doesn't store carbohydrates as fat until its glycogen levels, like until the liver and muscle glycogen levels are full, uh, and then, and then it will store body fat. So, um, anyway, uh, with, with the refeed,

what I would do is I'd eat a bunch of, bunch of carbs, bunch of pancakes. Uh, and then usually I would then plan another big carb meal at dinner just cause I wasn't that hungry and, um, and just keep my fats low, keep my protein up and you know, that's it. And if I wasn't that hungry and just keep my fats low, keep my protein up and that's it. And if I wasn't refeeding, then I would eat all those pancakes and that would be pretty much like the rest of my carbs for the day. I would get about 30 more, would just be vegetables. I'd have some vegetables at dinner and a little bit of carbs to come along.

I usually like to eat some Greek yogurt at night and that that has, I think it's nine grams carbs per cup. So there was one big meal I got to enjoy, and I was still able to keep within my numbers. So that's an IF use that I like to use because it makes it fun to, and fasting doesn't really bother me. Some people get very hungry, especially women, uh, tend to get very, very hungry while, when they're fasting.

Um, the, this would make for a good article. Um, I, I've been looking into it recently just in the, what's the science behind that. And from what I've read so far, it's related to, uh, fat oxidation because what your body does, like the, the process of losing body fat, there are two steps. There's the policies, which is breaking down the, the, the, the body fat itself into free fatty acids, which are then released into the bloodstream. And then there's fat oxidation, which is where your cells actually take those fatty acids and use them as energy. So there's

a two-step process there. And if your body is not very good at oxidizing fats, and there are things that you can do to impair or improve, like let's, if you are used to eating a bunch of junk carbohydrates, let's say a very high carbohydrate, a lot of processed foods, low protein diet, your body is not going to be good at oxidizing fats. It's going to want carbohydrates for energy. So, if that, if a person that's in that, you know, condition tries to fast for long periods, they get very hungry because the body uh even though lipolysis is occurring it is breaking down its body fat and releasing those fatty acids back into the blood saying okay here here's energy um the cells are not they can't use it efficiently

so they need energy so they're they're kind of out basically is how you feel. You get that real deep hunger. That's like pain, you know what I mean? Which I know how that feels. I've had that in the past. My diet wasn't bad, but I didn't really know what I was doing. My protein, my protein is actually high, but I'd eat too many carbs and I was doing various things wrong that would affect my fat oxidation. And now, though, my body is good at oxidizing fats. It probably also has to do with I've been doing cardio regularly for a while now, which helps keep that system working, I guess you could say. So the fasting, I don't find hard. I don't even really get that hungry.

After 16 hours of fasting, you know, I'm just like, all right, I guess I'm going to eat now. But some, you know, some people do. So it's something that you will have to try and see for yourself. A friend of mine, when he would, you know, do IF, he would get so hungry, his hands would be shaking by the time he was able to eat. Like he would go 16 hours and he'd be like, this time to eat. So, uh, for him, I was just like, why are you doing this? What is the point? It's not, you know, IF is a workable way of dieting, but it's, it's not going to do anything that traditional dieting, you know, can't do either. Um, so anyway, one other, one other little use of, of IF, uh, is, uh, you know, let's say you want to go out and have a cheat meal. Let's say,

you know, let's say it's Friday, it's Friday night. I want to go out. Um, what I'll do, I mean, this isn't like totally IF really, but it's, I guess, a similar concept in terms of meal frequency and meal composition is, um, throughout the day, I'm going to keep my carbohydrates and fats low. I'm basically just going to eat, I'm going to have protein in the morning, maybe a little bit of fat, maybe a little bit of carbs, maybe like an apple with some protein or whatever. And throughout the day, I'll just, you know, I like to eat smaller meals more frequently.

It just feels better for me. And then basically what I'm doing is I'm saving, I'll save pretty much like 80% of my carbohydrates and of my fats that I'm allowed to have every day for this dinner. So I'm going to come to dinner knowing that like, all right, I'm going to get some sort of protein just because I mean, maybe I'll get it if I want to eat a steak or something cool. So I'm going to have, I'm going to have, leave myself the protein that I need for the steak. And then I'm going to have, you know, 150 or whatever grams of carbs and like 60 grams

of fat in one meal and, and just enjoy it. So that, that's also useful. I don't do that when I'm, when I'm cutting, especially as I start to get leaner, just because I prefer to know my numbers a little bit better. But that can be useful for maintenance, because you have some more leeway when you're just maintaining. I guess like kind of the full update on the cut and what I'm going to be doing from here on just to kind of stay lean through the summer, you know, for doing pictures and whatever, being lean because it's fun. So let's move on to the next thing here, which is a question that somebody asked. So here's what the person said. Said, I'm in great shape, muscular, vascular, perfect weight for height, but I have a bit of a paunch that I can't seem to

get rid of. Even when I was a national class distance runner at 6 foot 143 pounds, I had a midsection as hard as a rock, but only a four pack showing. Those bottom two abs are lost somewhere, although my paunch is very unpronounced and so on and so on. So, okay, so how do you get a great six-pack? Now, I'm assuming he's saying paunch. I'm assuming we're talking about body fat here. Like, my ab genetics suck. They just do.

It doesn't matter how lean I get. I will not have more than, like, you can see four of my abs super visibly. Then there's, like, one that's kind of up here. So it's kind of like a five-pack thing, and there's nothing I can do about that. It doesn't matter how much I train my abs, there's no way to like make them symmetrical and make them look perfect. So if we're talking just about body fat here, and by the way, you'll know like when you have ab veins, like you're lean enough. If you don't have a full six pack when you are, you know, you get to 7% and below, it's just not there. And that's, that's me,

unfortunately. Um, but, uh, this is, I get this kind of question a lot, um, where people are, they think they're leaner than they are. I mean, that's usually the problem. Like I, I'll have people that will write me and they'll say, Oh, I'm like 4% body fat, but I don't have a full six pack. Like, no, no, you're not 4% body fat. 4% body fat is bodybuilders on stage. That's 4% body fat. Like you're, you don't have fat on you. You're in everything feels like all your skin feels like this everywhere, like back here, you know, uh, lower abs feels like that. I mean, that's, you could sit, you could have straight, you're shredded, like, you know, curling, you know, crunching down. So, um, that's, that's one issue. A lot of people, they, they, they, they, uh, think they're leaner than they

are. So they'll think like, Oh, I'm sick, I'm 6%, but why am I not shredded? Like, well, because you're probably not 6% or 7%. So I'll see that often, but there also are two other things. One is a stubborn fat thing, which I talk about on my website. I have an article on stubborn fat, which is real, and I'll talk more about that in one second. And another part of it is relating to body composition. So this is where a person can actually be right. A person could be 8% body fat and look very soft and look

skinny fat. And somebody who has a lot of lean mass can be 8% and look pretty good. Like you're going to have full abs at 8%. You're not going to look rock hard, but you're going to have full abs. Um, you know, you're going to, that's probably like the look that girls are, are most girls are into. Um, you don't have crazy vascularity, but you're going to look good. You're going to, you know, have that Hollywood kind of look at 8% if you have, if you have a good amount of lean mass. Um, so that is, uh, I will talk about, I'll talk about stubborn fat first. So a stubborn fat, it is real. It's not, it sounds kind of bro scientific, but it's not, it's real. What it boils down to is the fat cells in your body, they have two different types of

receptors, which you can think of as kind of like docking stations for chemicals that your body produces. as kind of like docking stations for chemicals that your body produces. And they're called A1 receptors, or A2, sorry, A2 and B2 receptors, and the alpha and beta, right? So the A2 receptors, they play a role in storing energy, is what you can say, because fat cells shrink and expand, right? They fill up with fat, you could say, or energy, right? And the B2 cells are related to actually mobilizing that and shrinking the fat cells, which is what we want.

So certain fat cells have a lot of B2 receptors, and they are mobilized very quickly and very easily. They are mobilized very quickly and very easily. And, you know, in most people, like in guys, it's normally our arms, our shoulders, our chest, where we lose weight easily and quickly. And our stubborn fat, which is the fat that has more A2 receptors than B2, is for us guys, it's our lower abs, it's our lower back. And in girls, it's the butt, it's the hips, it's the thighs, it's the areas that are harder to lean out.

So the solution is simple. All you have to do is keep losing weight. That is all you have to do. There are a couple strategies that you can use to help mobilize stubborn fat quicker. I talk about them on the website. If you go to the website, musclefullife.com, and you search for stubborn fat, you'll see, talk about green tea extract, I talk about hay cardio, I talk about yohimine hydrochloride, and I think a couple other things in that article that you can do to mobilize stubborn fat quicker. And I would go look at the article because you're going to want to understand how these things work

and how much to take based on how much you weigh and so forth. But the bottom line is keep on losing weight and the stubborn fat goes away. It does. It's just that weight loss gets slower. So if you're quite overweight, you could lose two to three pounds of fat a week. And, you know, that's exciting. And, but there's no way to do that once you start getting leaner.

Like at this point, and I'm not actually trying to lose weight anymore, but, you know, I started off, water comes out and stuff. So it's hard to say how much I really lost. But once my weight loss stabilized, it was about one pound a week, and then it slowed down to about a half a pound a week, and that's where, and I was happy with that, because I knew that that's exactly where I needed to be. So the stubborn fat is harder to lose, it's slower, and you just have to keep on your diet, and keep on your your exercise program and make sure that your weight is going down and that you are looking leaner. And it all goes away in time. So, yeah, that's basically the answer to this question is it's either a point this person either has to lose more weight or it's a body composition issue,

which is this other point of if you don't have enough muscle, and this is something I see with girls a lot, it's unfortunate because the standard advice to a girl that wants to, you know, lose fat or get leaner or whatever is just starve yourself and do a bunch of cardio. That's like the standard, you know, in magazines and stuff and just kind of what a lot of girls get the idea that they should do. And that's the worst thing that you can do because really what it does is it burns up a lot of muscle. Yeah, you are going to lose fat, of course, when you drastically cut your calories and you do a bunch of cardio.

But you're going to lose, I mean, in some studies, people, when they drastically cut calories, they'll lose just as much muscle as they will fat and when you throw in a bunch of cardio on top of it you're probably going to lose more muscle than you're going to lose fat because cardio burns out muscle and especially when you go hop on the stairmaster for 45 minutes or something like that and some people, I've emailed people that they'll do that twice a day. So two times, 45 minutes cardio, seven days a week, and just based on a starvation diet of,

you know, maybe a thousand calories when they should be probably around 1500 or so. So, um, yes, you're going to lose weight. You're going to feel miserable. Um, and they're going to be the worst workouts like cardio, even if it's just cardio, they're going to be the worst workouts like cardio even if it's just cardio it's me the worst you just feel terrible and you burn up too much muscle and you can damage your metabolism that way i mean if you do that enough if you if people yo-yo like starve starve starve burn up burn our muscle and then what happens is your metabolism i mean one of the primary if not the primary driver of the metabolism is the amount of lean mass that you have. So by the end of doing that, the person now has a slower

metabolism and muscle is healthy. The body, you know, in there, there are studies that correlate the amount of lean mass with just overall mortality, meaning the less lean mass a person has, the more likely he or she is to die, especially of diseases. Because if you were ever to get a serious disease, the immune system pulls and needs amino acids, and it would pull on its muscle to get that. And it's seen, I believe, it was in like in AIDS patients. There's a point where if they lose too much lean mass, they die, they have a heart attack and die. And, um, like I said, there's research that correlates overall lean mass to just longevity, like especially in the elderly. Um, there's not just the fact of like, if you don't have enough muscle and you fall down, you know, you're weak, you fall down and break your hip. And that's kind of like the beginning

of the end. Um, but you know, it's, it's also just been shown that having the body wants to have muscle. So when you're burning a bunch of muscle up, trying to lose weight, and then you wind up looking skinny fat. That's the problem because you can have relatively a relatively low amount of body fat, but if you have very little muscle uh you know a leg a skinny leg can be not actually have that much fat but there's no muscle to fill it out so it just looks like a little sausage uh and that's that also can be a problem um i see it me with women that have uh you know done done a lot of the cardio, starvation stuff, but also see it with guys that have done a lot of long-distance running,

not eating a lot, never weight-lifted, and then they get this kind of skinny-fat look. So the solution is fix body composition. Start lifting weights. Start eating enough. If the person always will get people off the starvation diets. I mean, I've worked with so many women that start eating more, in some cases go from 1,000,

not losing weight on 1,000 calories a day, and then we get them exercising, and exercising, right? We get them exercising properly, get them lifting weights, get them doing HIIT cardio, increasing their calories, in some cases up to 1,500 to 1,800 calories a day, and then they start losing weight, which seems like, what are you even saying right now?

But I've seen it many times. So it's amazing what the metabolism can do when you treat it correctly and you don't abuse it. And if you do abuse it too much, you can get into a situation, and this would probably be a good blog post, you can cause enough metabolic damage that, you know, it could take upwards of six months to just fix your metabolism. Like, forget about weight loss. It's not going to happen anymore. You have to now fix your metabolism, and there are different things you can do that. It's not just eat more food. I mean, that's one of the things.

But there are certain types of foods and certain types of exercise and stuff. I mean, building lean mass is a big part of it. You're going to have to lift weights. But, yeah, I mean, you don't have to worry about that, but just know that that's why cutting calories drastically is one of the worst things you can do. Um, and you know, so stay patient, uh, one to two pounds a week for, for most people, that's all you're looking to see in terms of weight loss.

And you want to see your strength, uh, staying about the same in the gym. You don't want to see big drops in strength and, um, you should feel fine. You shouldn't be starving. Sure, you can be hungry sometimes, I understand, but you shouldn't feel miserable. You should have high energy. You should generally feel good when you're losing weight. So that's that question. Let's go to the next one here. Someone asking if exercising in the morning helps more. Uh, yeah. Fasted cardio is good. Um, uh, fasted training in general is good. I talk about it in, uh, an article on my website on, uh, stubborn fat. Actually, if you search for stubborn fat, you'll see. Um, and it, the thing is though, uh, to, to minimize the muscle breakdown, you want to have BCAAs before branched-chain amino acids,

which is there are three amino acids, leucine, isoleucine, and valine, I believe. And leucine is really the one that you want because leucine, it stimulates muscle growth is actually what it does. So what you're doing is you're, you know, BCAAs, they have a negligible effect on insulin, so they don't break the fasting state. So what you're able to do is minimize the amount of muscle loss. Because if you didn't do that, if you go work out on an empty stomach without any sort of, without any protein or BCAs, you're going to burn too much muscle in that time period, because your body is in a constant state of either breaking muscle down or building it up. And at the end of each day, you've either broken more muscle down than you had in the beginning

or you've built up more, and that's muscle growth. So you want to do whatever you can. Like working out breaks muscle down. That's what you're doing. It's a catabolic activity. The anabolism, the anabolic, the building up occurs after. That's rest, that's nutrition. So what can happen is if you train in a fasted state without doing anything to mitigate the amount of muscle breakdown that's going to occur that occurs in an accelerated rate when you're fasted so you're breaking down a lot of muscle uh when you're when you're training in a fasted state

and then you're not able to build that amount that amount that you lost plus extra back by the end of the day you could say by the end of the 24-hour period or whatever so or if you did if you maybe you're a little bit positive so you gain a little bit of muscle. Whereas if you were to do something simple, like have some BCAAs before, um, you want about 10 grams. Cause in most formulations that I give you about three grams of leucine, which is a good amount to, to, to stimulate, um, muscle growth is really what it's stimulating. Um, uh, so you have that before and then you have a, you know, a good post-workout meal after, and you just go about your day and do your normal thing on your diet. Um, so yes, fasted training, it does speed up the fat loss process. Um, I have,

I linked to a couple of studies in the, in the stubborn fat article and explains, uh, how that works. Um, but I, I would say I recommend it. It depends how your body does with it. And this kind of goes back to how well your body can oxidize fat. Some people, like I train, I lift fasted. I have 10 grams of BCAAs before I lift and I do my cardio fast. I do everything fasted and I don't have any problems. But once again, that's most likely because my body just

does very well with burning fat for energy. Also, your body learns to not pull on its glycogen stores as heavily when it's in a fasted state, simply because it doesn't have carbohydrates in its system to get energy from. So it learns to be more efficient with what it does have, which is the carbohydrates stored in the muscles, which is in the form of glycogen. So, yeah, see how you do with fasted training. Some people do, especially weightlifting, some people do totally fine.

I do fine. I can gain strength. It doesn't have any negative effects that I can tell. But I've emailed a lot of people that hated it. They just had no energy. Their strength was totally bottomed out. So I just told them, okay, let's stop. It's not like you have to do fast training to lose weight. You absolutely do not.

But it is something that can speed it up. So you're going to have to see how your body does. Cutting in, someone's asking if cardio is necessary for weight loss. That's a good question. A lot of people wonder about that. I do get asked that fairly often. And the answer is no. Cardio is not necessary for weight loss.

Exercise is not necessary for weight loss, but it depends what shape you're in. If you have a lot of weight to lose, you can lose a fair amount just through diet alone because your body is willing to just dump the fat, basically, and it's very easy. You just put yourself in a deficit, and that's it, and you lose weight. But remember that your metabolism does slow down when your body's in a caloric deficit. So there is a point where exercise becomes necessary. It doesn't have to be cardio, though. Weightlifting is great. Weightlifting burns a lot of calories. It burns a fair amount of calories while you're doing it. It burns a good amount of calories when you, in that afterburn effect, right? So that is, you know, additional caloric burn.

And then it builds muscle, which muscle requires calories to maintain. So that also kind of, it boosts your metabolism. So weightlifting only and proper diet. In my experience with myself and with people that I've worked with, it'll take you to a certain point. And some people, it really depends on your genetics. And, you know, I don't, I guess it really is genetics. How low can you go without having to add cardio? Because you can't, you can keep, reduce your calories. Like I was saying with my cut, I started around 2,500 and and I reduced it about 100 calories a week for the last four weeks or so to just keep the weight loss going. Because I was already doing three to four days of cardio per week

and weightlifting five days a week, and I didn't want to cardio myself. I didn't want to start doing cardio twice a day because that will just burn more muscle. I'd rather just cut a little bit of calories. So you can do that when you're lifting alone. You can reduce your calories. Once your weight stalls, you can cut them by 100 to 200 calories a day. But there is a point where you can't do that anymore

or you start getting into that starvation where you're just like, you can damage your metabolism. You start losing muscle. So then that's when you have to add in cardio. So, you know, usually what I recommend, you know, cardio has a lot of health benefits. I mean, I generally recommend for people to just start doing some cardio in the beginning. Start getting used to it, even if it's just like two days a week, you know, do 30 minutes of HIIT or 20 minutes of HIIT twice a week.

And, I mean, I do that even when I'm maintaining. I even do cardio when I'm bulking. I don't do a lot, but I like cardio. It makes me feel good. And it also, I find, it helps, especially when I'm flipping from a bulk to a cut, it helps my body burn fat. It keeps, and I talk about this in an article. I find that it helps keep the fat oxidation working when I keep cardio in.

So, you know, if you don't want to do cardio from the beginning, then start with diet and weightlifting as the first thing, and then there will be a point when your weight loss will stall with just doing that. And instead of cutting calories further, I would recommend adding cardio. I would say add three days of HIIT per week, 20 to 30 minutes. And then you get, it's also, I find it more enjoyable to be able to eat more food. I don't mind going and doing the cardio for me. Uh, it would be more annoying to, to cut my food back more and more than just, you know, hop on a bike for, for 20, 30 minutes and listen to a podcast. So, uh, so yeah, that's, that's kind of the answer to that one. Um, so, you know, I,

I guess I'll, I'll kind of wrap it up here. I don't even know how long. Yeah, 40 minutes. These are, I think I'm going to try to keep them shorter in the future. Maybe try to keep them to 20 minutes or something like that, or 15 minutes even. I don't know. But I hope you liked it.

This is going to be the first of many. I'll probably do it weekly or biweekly. It just depends on my schedule. Things are kind of crazy right now. And, you know, I'd love to hear what you think. Leave a comment. I don't even know. I guess we'll put it on YouTube. So you can leave a comment on YouTube or I'm not sure on the podcast where exactly it's going to go. But if you can comment, leave a comment, shoot me an email, a message, whatever. Let me know what you think. And submit questions. I'll probably keep this format where I'll talk about something random

that I want to talk about maybe in the beginning for five minutes, and then I'll just address people's questions and address various subjects that people want to know about. Same idea with the blog, with the posts and such. So, yeah, again, this is Mike Matthews, muscleforlife.com. Thanks for spending some time with me, and I'll see you next time. Hey, it's Mike again. Hope you liked the podcast.

If you did, go ahead and subscribe. I put out new episodes every week or two where I talk about all kinds of things related to health and fitness and general wellness. and general wellness. Also head over to my website at www.muscleforlife.com, where you'll find not only past episodes of the podcast, but you'll also find a bunch of different articles that I've written. I release a new one almost every day, actually. I release kind of like four to six new articles a week. And you can also find my books and everything else that I'm involved in over at muscleforlife.com. All right. Thanks again. Bye.