Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Dr. Layne Norton on Preserving Muscle While Cutting and More

Episode Date: April 8, 2015

In this podcast I interview the one and only Dr. Layne Norton and we talk contest/photo shoot prep, how to maximize fat loss and minimize muscle loss while cutting, reverse dieting, and more... LAYNE'S WEBSITE: http://www.biolayne.com/ ORDER THE REVERSE DIETING BOOK: http://reversedietingbook.com/ ARTICLES RELATED TO THIS VIDEO: Water Retention and Weight Loss: You Can Lose Fat, But Not Weight? http://www.muscleforlife.com/water-retention-and-weight-loss/ Why Rapid Weight Loss Is Superior to “Slow Cutting” (And How to Do It Right): http://www.muscleforlife.com/rapid-weight-loss/ The Absolute Best and Worst Ways to Build Muscle: http://www.muscleforlife.com/best-way-to-build-muscle/ The Best Way to Gain Muscle Without Getting Fat: http://www.muscleforlife.com/the-best-way-to-gain-muscle-not-fat/ Want to get my best advice on how to gain muscle and strength and lose fat faster? Sign up for my free newsletter! Click here: https://www.muscleforlife.com/signup/

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

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

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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-D-C-A-S-T, and you'll save 10% on your first order. So thanks again for taking the time to listen to my podcast and let's get

to the World But in case you don't know who he is, Lane is one of the probably the most respected coaches and just educators in the space. He has a PhD from the University of Illinois. I believe it's in nutritional sciences, but it's specifically regarding protein and how protein works in the body. specifically regarding protein and how protein works in the body. And as a weightlifter, he's a competitive bodybuilder. And I'm not sure what he won in terms of his career as a bodybuilder, but you can just look at his pictures online and see that he clearly knew what he was doing. And then there's a point where it seems like, I think he switched over more to powerlifting and then just got insanely strong. I mean, I remember seeing videos of him squatting 600 pounds, benching close to 400 pulling, I don't know, six, 700 pounds, just absurd strength. Uh, and yeah, he, he has kind of been behind the scenes in helping a lot of different celebrities get ready for movie roles and such.

And cool guy. Really, obviously, really knows what he's talking about. And what I particularly like about Lane and his work and his approach is he's very well versed in the scientific side of things. But also he has a ton of experience. He's worked with so many people. And he's seen just about everything and he knows what works and what doesn't. And he knows what not, you know, what is scientifically sound, but then also sometimes there are certain little subtleties of especially when you want to

get into a really good shape. There are certain subtleties that you don't find in, in, in the literature. You don't find it in research. There are things you just have to learn. Uh, you know, maybe if it's just you, you would learn it kind of stumbling across maybe not stumbling, but, but discovering it in your body. But in terms of lane, it's not just his body's worked with so many people that, um, he's just very, very, very knowledgeable. And, uh, you know, his, his approach is very practical and very balanced. And I think you will like what he has to say. So let's get to the interview. All right. Hey, Lane, thanks for taking the time to do this. Oh, no problem, Mike. I appreciate you having me on. Yeah, no, I really appreciate you,

you doing me the favor. All right. So let's jump into it here. So one of the things that I'm commonly asked about or asked for is kind of like tips and tricks for, for looking as good as possible, usually on a specific day, or maybe it's for, you know, someone's going to be going out of town for going on a little vacation for a few days, you know, single guys want to look good on the beach and stuff. Um, and obviously most people know, or at least the listeners are going to know that, uh, you know, you be, you got to be lean as the first, I mean, that's kind of the foundation, but is there anything else that you've found just in your experience as a, you know, prepping for shows and stuff that can help you essentially

boils down to just maybe like a little bit leaner, a little bit fuller, you know, on a certain day or a few days. Right. I'm probably going to disappoint a lot of listeners because I do not have the, uh, the magic trick. I don't have any, um, you know, last minute things are going to make you look like a Greek God or goddess.

Uh, I think that actually most people end up doing more harm than good in the last, uh, few days before a show or a shoot or anything like that by, by doing things like cutting out water or cutting out shoot or anything like that by, by doing things like cutting out water or cutting out sodium or anything like that. Right. You know, the, and why, why is that? Because that's the common, a lot of people that, you know, they hear that, they hear, Oh, what should I do with my sodium potassium? What should I do with my water?

So, so first things first, uh, muscle is 70% water. If you sucked, let's say you could suck all the water out of your muscle. You would be left with what looks like very soft, stringy tissue, spongy tissue. That's what muscle is. When your muscle is full with water is when it looks hard, it presses against the skin it's more you have more vascularity because you have you know more muscle tissue pressing that those blood vessels towards the skin uh full muscle with water is fantastic now people will say well you know i'm not taking the muscle out of water or i'm nothing in the water out of muscle i'm gonna take out the subcutaneous layer well they need to take a basic chemistry class because there's something called the shot liaise principle which is basically if

you have uh different processes that are connected uh you cannot mess with one without affecting the other so muscle the muscle there's a muscle amount of water that it holds and then there's an interstitial amount of fluid you hold. And let's say you took a diuretic or you cut water or any of that sort of thing. And sure, you would lose some water out of the interstitial layer, but you would also lose it in exactly the same – you would lose – Just as much? Well, actually, you'd lose more out of the muscle because you hold a greater percentage of body water intracellularly than you do extracellularly. Right.

So your body will, the goal would be to maintain that ratio. So you'd actually lose more, not on a percentage basis, but on the absolute basis, you would lose more out of the muscle tissue. So you're actually, all you're basically doing is flattening yourself out of the wall. That's what you're doing. is flattening yourself out of the wall. That's what you're doing. And so in regards to water, I think it's a bit silly.

And it's come about, I think, just because people, when they had to make weight for competitions like wrestling and that sort of thing, would always cut water. And so this kind of got archaic type of way of doing things, got passed down to physique competitions but so what would happen is people in wrestling they would cut weight and they'd notice at the end of their weight cut i mean we're talking about the 20s and 30s yeah at the end of their weight cut they'd be they'd look much harder well they lost a lot of body fat sure yeah um and but they'd always at the end of the weight cut, they would cut water

to lose that extra bit. So that just got assumed that that was something you needed to do. Um, and what you'll find is a lot of, you know, quote unquote dogma of what we do in the fitness industry really is nonsensical and it's passed down through archaic things that really have no bearing and should have no place in fitness, but we just continue to do them just because it's the way it's always been done. Right. And just kind of pass down from coach to coach where it just becomes a lore almost. That's exactly right. And nobody can actually explain scientifically how it works because it doesn't work scientifically. Right. And I actually had a client or not a client,

but somebody I was talking to backstage at the, I think it was the Arnold. And they told me, they're like, you know, I know what you say makes sense. I've observed this myself. I cannot bring myself to do it. I can't bring myself to do it the way you described. Because there's safety in numbers. You know, somebody, if, you know, if I try something different and it doesn't work, then I'm out on an island. But, you know, it's easy if i'm a

sheep and i follow everybody else and if they all look everybody you know does if it doesn't work for everybody um you know at least i'm in a group you know there's comfort there yeah so it's really a weak-minded way of thinking to be honest with you um and then what i'll always get is i'll get people say well lane you know people in the the Olympia, they're all cutting their water. Look how great they look. Well, that's the point is not do they look great. The point is, would they have looked better if they hadn't done that? And the answer is yes.

You can look at pictures of these guys and gals like, you know, in the gym a couple of days before the show, before they start cutting their water and sodium. Or actually, the more telling thing is you'll always get people, you know, the night after the show, the morning after the show, they're posting these pictures like, oh, look at me after a cheat meal. And they look insane. They look better than they did. Yeah, that's like a common common complaint. Competitors, they always look better five days later. Right. And it's like,

well, why didn't you do that? And the other thing that's interesting, and it's going to lead into my point on sodium. So they will post those pictures and they will look at that and say, wow,

I should look better. And they'll go, you know what? I just didn't carb up enough. Yeah. Well, most of these guys are eating five, six, 700 grams of carbs per day

leading into the show to carb up. No, dude. It wasn't the carbs. What happened was you went out at your quote-unquote cheat meal and you drank water and ate sodium because you didn't worry about it anymore. And that's what finally allowed you to fill out and look vascular and hard. That's the difference. You are eating a ton of carbs. What do you think eating more

carbs would have done? You only have so much muscle glycogen. The average human being only needs 400 grams of carbs to max out their muscle glycogen. Now, if you're 250 pounds and shredded, maybe you need four or five, 600 grams, but you don't need 1,000 grams of carbs three days in a row. and so there's this this lore that we need to cut sodium and water and with regards to sodium i think sodium actually cutting sodium may actually be worse than cutting water um so i wish i had a graph i could put up but there was a study done at harvard back in like 1991 and it was looking at um they were doing it for the army it was commissioned by the army

because they wanted to see what happened with electrolyte depletion so they had people basically go on a salt-free diet for seven days and i'm sorry six days and they wanted to see they tracked three different things they tracked their level of blood sodium their level of urinary sodium excretion, and then they also attract their aldosterone levels. And aldosterone, for those who aren't familiar, aldosterone is a hormone that makes you retain water. Okay. What it does, actually what aldosterone does is it reduces reductions in sodium. And as sodium is reduced, it causes you to reabsorb. So it increases sodium reabsorption, but in order to reabsorb sodium, you causes you to reabsorb. So it increases sodium reabsorption. But in order to reabsorb sodium, you also have to reabsorb it with water in the kidney.

So basically it's a hormone that's going to make you retain more water. Okay? So if you cut sodium, what's going to happen is – so what they found in this experiment – I don't have to tell you what's going to happen. What they found in this experiment, I don't have to tell you what's going to happen, but they found in this experiment was very cool, very interesting. After two days, aldosterone levels had doubled and urinary sodium excretion had been cut by like almost 90%. Wow. And your blood levels of sodium didn't even change okay your body perfectly conserves your blood levels of sodium now extend that out to six days at the

end of the experiment blood sodium levels were still almost exactly the same they were perfectly conserved it's amazing so you have yeah this i mean this is something you don't realize like if you could actually change the levels of your blood sodium, you could die. Yeah. Like your blood sodium, your sodium levels control your electrochemical gradient across your cells. That is critical for the most basic of functions, okay? Yeah, it reminds me of like pH type stuff, you know, the pH scans of like drink this water and you're going to improve the pH of your blood. Like no, if you change the pH of your blood more than just a minute amount you die so exactly exactly

your your body's buffering system and the other thing i've always i've always just not to go off on a tangent but they'll talk about the ph you so everything has to go through your stomach right this is how you know these scams are BS. Everything has to go through your stomach when you ingest it, right? Your stomach has six molar hydrochloric acid. It is one of the most powerful acids known to man. If six molar hydrochloric acid isn't getting out of your stomach, what makes you think any other acid is getting out of there? What makes you think that it's actually going to change,

that your body is actually going to allow that into circulation? And people have this, again, you can, by changing your foods, you can change your urinary pH. You can change your urinary pH. It doesn't change your blood pH, okay? That's a huge, so this is a great example, right? Because their urinary sodium changed a bunch. And if you just looked at urinary sodium, you'd say, wow, their sodium levels are dropping.

But if you look at their actual blood, it doesn't change at all. Same thing with pH. Exact same thing. So it's interesting you brought that up. Yeah, I wrote an article on it recently just because I was asked – I was going to ask about it. I'm like, all right, well, time to just debunk this. Exactly. Well, and let's be honest.

It's the same reason this water cutting and all this stuff came about because it's easier for people to believe there's a magic solution. Exactly. No, you've got to be consistent. You've got to get lean. There's no magic solution. Yeah, and you've got to tough that out because the leaner you get, if you're losing a half a pound of fat a week, you're doing well. And so that's a grind. Absolutely.

Absolutely. People don't want to hear that. Yeah. So anyway, at six days, so we've talked about what happens at two days. At six days of sodium depletion, bare urinary sodium output was almost nothing. I mean it was like – I want to say like less than 10 milliequivalents, which is very, very low. And their blood sodium was perfectly conserved. And their aldosterone, I think it was like four or five times elevated. It was way up there.

Now here's the big problem. So basically we've established that by cutting sodium, you're raising aldosterone, which is going to make you retain water, and you're not actually impacting your blood sodium levels. So it's an exercise in futility. So we've established that. Now let's look at the real problems that come in with sodium depletion. The first thing is that remember that when do people typically start cutting sodium when they're getting ready for a show or photo shoot? It's about two days out, right? So two or three days out. And so that means you're going to be stepping on stage.

You're going to be on your photo shoot with your industrial levels at least doubled. So right when you want to look your best your body is releasing hormones that make you retain water fantastic um then uh and to clarify this isn't this the body's not just going to stuff all that water in your muscles either that would be nice but that's not how it works that's my next point so what's going to happen is since you're reabsorbing that sodium, that water, but since you're cutting your sodium, your blood pressure is lower. And so all that sodium and water you're reabsorbing, you don't have the pressure to hold it in your vascular system.

And so it actually leaks into the interstitial layer. So congratulations, you've actually done the one thing that even though your body is in a preferential state, like your body as it is, holds water in a good way. You hold it inside the muscle more than outside the cell. You've actually done the exact opposite of what you wanted. You put more water in the interstitial layer and less inside the muscle. Congratulations. And this is why you hear people say, I mean, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.

And this is why you hear people all the time say, oh, I looked so much better the week before the show or the day after the show. Well, what happened? And it's like, well, you changed everything. What did you know? Your body's used to kind of being in this rhythm, and all of a sudden you go in and you change everything and you expect it not to fight you.

Your body, you know, I was talking about this with my friend Ben Esco the other night. We were having a very deep scientific discussion. We talked about how amazing the body is and that it's primary. The biggest thing your body is doing is, one, trying to survive, two, trying to reproduce, and three, I should say replicate because even on the most basic level, cells try to replicate. Three, it's fighting for homeostasis. It wants to stay where it's accustomed to being at, where it likes being at. If you try to mess with that, your body is going to really start fighting.

So cutting sodium, cutting water. The other thing about cutting sodium is at the time you're cutting sodium most people are loading carbs right so you're you're cutting sodium like two three days out for a show and most people are also loading carbs at this time right well check out check out how great this is so the sodium that i'm sorry the glucose transporter in the small intestine so this is the transporter that takes glucose from your... So we actually should clarify. A lot of people don't understand that your digestive system is separate from the rest of your body.

Okay? It is like, think about a tube starting at your mouth and ending at your butthole. As bad as that sounds. That's how it works. This tube has bulges and it goes around and around. But essentially, it's a tube. Okay? and that's

your digestive system it is sealed off from the rest of the body i mean if you actually had it like stuff from your gi interacting with the rest of your body you would have major problems that's what we call things like ulcers and sepsis and that sort of thing yeah that just doesn't happen unless we're talking about some kind of disease state all right so we've established that um so you actually if you're if you're going to get nutrients from the food you eat they have to be transported across the mostly in the small intestine right and that's where glucose is transported all right so you're loading carbs the glucose transporter in the small intestine is sodium dependent and they've actually shown in research that if you restrict sodium, you can actually reduce the activity of this transporter.

And so now not only have you reduced your vascularity, reduced your fullness, put water in the wrong place where you don't want it, you have also reduced the effectiveness of your carb load. So not only are you putting water where you don't want it, you're increasing on ostreone, you're not even getting the glucose where you want it. So with that increased carbohydrate intake, you'd also want ideally an increase in the sodium levels?

I don't think you have to necessarily increase sodium levels. You just don't want to be depleting it. It doesn't have to be a super high sodium level. But as I'm going to get to um i actually think that having like a higher ish sodium meal um kind of a couple hours before you're going to do whatever photo shoot or um or uh going on stage yeah can actually be quite effective for making you look harder and more masculine. I mean, think about if you've ever been dieting, think about like if you went out to whatever Chipotle and had like a big burrito,

what happened about an hour or two hours later, you look really frigging vascular and hard. Yeah. I mean, now if you, if you maintain that, if you eat burritos all day, the next,

the next day you're going to look real washed out, you know, filming. Yeah. But if you, you know, just for one meal, you know, you'll, you're going to look real washed out and filming. But just for one meal, that sodium will increase the pressure in your vascular system. It'll put more fluid in your vascular system. People all the time are looking for this magical pre-workout in terms to increase their pump. I just want to get a good pump. You want a good pump, go and eat a jar of pickles

before you go work out. Go eat a jar of pickles. Yeah. And some carbs. Yeah. And some carbs two hours before you go work out. I promise you have the best pump you've ever had. Yeah. It's, you know, nothing increases plasma volume like solutes. Okay. And sodium is a really, really powerful solute. So not only is sodium not evil, but it actually can be very useful. And I use it with my clients. I mean, I just had a gal, you know, win her figure pro card and she was eating like a pop tart and literally dumped a salt packet in a Gatorade two hours before she went out on stage. And that was her like two hour out meal was a Pop-Tart and some salt packet and some Gatorade. And it worked great, you know.

But yeah, I mean, it's one of those things where, you know, people just there's this dogma that's been around for so long that people. Now, I should I should qualify that. I whatever somebody's sodium intake is heading into, say, a peak week. I don't really mess with it too much. So I, if somebody's used to eating, let's say 2000 milligrams of sodium a day, I'm not going to bump them up to 5000 milligrams a day. Right. And I'm also not going to deplete them down to a thousand. I'm going to stay in that normal range.

Like it may go up and down a little bit. Like it may go up to, you know, 2800 or something like like that and may go down to around 1,600, 1,700. But it's going to stay in that normal range of what their body is used to. I'm not going to shock their body and start giving the body a reason to send out panic signals. And then for their two-hour oatmeal or whatever I'm loading them with, quote-unquote loading them with before stage, it's going to be something they're used to being able to handle. I'm going to load somebody whose normal sodium intake is 1,000 different than I'm going to load somebody whose normal sodium intake is 10,000. I've seen – actually, the girl I was just talking about, her average sodium intake per day was 12 grams, 12,000 milligrams. Wow. I'm assuming she has a balance with potassium somewhat. Yeah, yeah.

Well, of course. But here's the other big myth of sodium is that sodium causes high blood pressure. Sodium only about – you have to understand your body is – in the same way we talked about how if you deplete sodium, your body will just decrease urinary excretion of sodium. If you increase sodium, it will just increase sodium output for about 90% of the population, about 10% of people who are salt sensitive and need to control their sodium intake. Now, that can take a couple of days to get, as we talked about, it can take like two days to get kind of really those systems ramped up. So the criticism I'll get is, well, Lane, I ate saltier foods and for a couple of days I was really looking soft. And so what they'll typically do is they'll go back to a low sodium diet. Whereas if they had just maintained that higher sodium intake… Let their body adjust.

Their body would have adjusted, exactly. So the point is you want to stick with kind of what your body is used to. If you're somebody who doesn't eat that much sodium, then don't load on that much sodium. So when I – that two-hour out meal from stage or whatever it is, I'll usually – and again, I don't cut water. You know, they have their normal water intake on show day. But usually what I'll do is I'll give them anywhere from 30 to 50 percent of their normal sodium intake in that meal. And so it's high, but it's not so high that their body can't accommodate it. Right.

And so that's kind of how I'll approach it. And that has always worked really, really well. So that's one thing. The only other thing I would say that I really kind of mess with in terms of peak week is when somebody gets close to, no, I actually, in terms of carb loading, I do what I call front loading. So if somebody is competing on a Saturday, their highest carb days will actually be like Monday and Tuesday. And then I'm kind of tapering carbs down to like near their normal level by the time it's Thursday, Friday. People will go,

why do you do that? Well, I don't think it's any magic or anything like that. I just look at it from a practical standpoint. If you get somebody carb loaded, that glucose in the glycogen, it's not going a whole lot of places. Muscle glycogen, you don't lose it unless you use it. So if you're not actually out being active, that muscle glycogen is not going anywhere. Sure. So if you front load, you're going to fill out. if you front load, you're going to fill out. Now, why do I choose to front load as opposed to back loading,

which is what most people do. They load Thursday, Friday before a show or shoot or whatever it is. Well, it's a very practical reason. If I miss and I load somebody too aggressively and they start spilling over, now I've got days to fix it. Whereas if I'm loading on Thursday, Friday, I might have hours to fix it on show day if they're spilling over. Now I've got days to fix it. Whereas if I'm loading them Thursday, Friday, I might have hours to fix it on show day if they're spilling over. So I would rather have days to fix it

and be able to make subtle adjustments as opposed to get to show day, that morning they wake up, they're spilled over, and now I've got to tell them, okay, go out and do 20 minutes of hip cardio. Yeah. Or, you know, something. Go sweat, yeah.

Right, exactly. Something really drastic that's going to, I mean, is likely going to cause a problem in the other direction as well. So I'd just rather be able to make those, be able to be kind of nice and slow and make subtle adjustments. And, you know, that's just my personal preference. I'm not a slave to any one way of doing things. In fact, I had one guy who just,

for whatever reason, he just looked better the day after his highest card day. And so I tried to front load him a few times. He looked good, but he wasn't at his best. And so we back loaded him one time. He won his pro card. And it was just a case of watching somebody, observing somebody over enough period of time. But for most people, I find that that front-loading protocol is the most predictable and works well. And then the other thing I'll kind of mess with is I'll taper or I'll kind of reduce fiber intake. So fiber is great. Like fiber pulls fluid into the GI, which makes

you feel full. And you know, when you're dieting, that's great. But when you're getting ready to step on stage, you don't want to be feeling full in your GI. You want to feel empty. Essentially, you want your muscles to be full, but you want your GI to be essentially empty or feel empty. Right. And so about 24 hours for stage or shoot, I'll basically tell people, don't have to completely cut out fiber. It doesn't have to just be sugar intake. But just don't consume any really dense

foods like broccoli or a bunch of oatmeal or anything like that. Just go with more low residue foods. So those are kind of my quote unquote tricks. But what's funny is I always think of myself as a real moderate. I'm not telling anybody cut this, cut that. And I've had people tell me, wow, man, you're so extreme. Your methods are so extreme. So only in the

fitness industry would somebody who's a moderate be considered extreme. Yeah. Well, when extremism is the norm. Exactly. Exactly. So, yeah, I just, I,

you know, I'm, I always tell people, look, you might be able to mess with a bunch of these variables and every once in a while catch lightning in a bottle and just happen to get it right. But I'm not, I'm not willing to sacrifice.

I'm not willing to sacrifice 30% chasing 3%, if that makes sense. Yeah, absolutely. And my experiences have been right along the same line, just to chime in for the listeners that I've tried manipulating different things. Like you said, I don't compete, but I do photo shoots here and there for just work related things. But like everything you're saying was my experience boiled down to just get lean enough and keep everything, keep my water intake where it normally is, keep my sodium potassium where it normally is. And I played with carbs. I find with my body, if I eat a bunch of carbs, I would tend more toward the front loading where I eat a bunch of carbs and fill up and then just kind of maintain it for a few days. And that's, you know, that my experience has been right along the same line

is that really it kind of just boils down to getting lean enough and having a bit of a tan so you can see what you've got. Yeah. I mean, like, like, like I said, it's, you know, it'd be, it's, it'd be much easier for me to tell people, Oh yeah, there's this, if you do this, this is this magic thing that, you know, but I'm not willing to, to lie to people, you know? So, um, I mean, I've had people all the time. So why should I hire you? If it's just that simple? I'm like, well, maybe you shouldn't. Yeah. I mean, if it's, it is a point of learning your body, but the advantage of having someone like you is that you've worked with so many people, you've seen everything. So I mean that, yeah, sure. It's simple until, until something goes

wrong. And then you're like, well, what do I do now? Well, and I mean, I'll tell people like, look, here's the deal. Um, the real benefit to having a coach is somebody who's, whose emotions are out of it. You know what I mean? Um, somebody who's not going to, who's not, they're not, you know, freaking out because they gained, you know, half a pound one day, whereas you're going to freak out like that. Sure. That's your thing. Now it's time for like two hours of hit or something. Exactly. So the point of a good coach is just somebody give you unbiased, you know, you know, second eye to essentially be able to know when to make adjustments and when not. you know, second eye to essentially be able to know when to make adjustments and when not, and that sort of thing. And, you know, anybody who's like hiring somebody for magic. Uh, in fact,

I had a, um, there's a girl, uh, that I've been working with. Her name is Katie Rutherford and she's a Instagram Katie and 100 y'all should follow her cause you'll be wowed by her. Um, but she, uh, she's a powerlifter and figure competitor. In fact, she just did her first series of shows. So in a three-week time span, she won a figure show. The next week, she won a powerlifting meet. And the following week, she won another figure show. Yeah, I don't know too many people who have done that. But she posted pictures of her before she started working with me and after.

And people were were freaking out they're like oh i wish i had the money to work with lane and if only i could work with lane all this stuff and i'm like i came on there i was like look i appreciate the flattery but you guys are thinking i have some kind of like magic solution and i don't you know i don't have it's not a magic solution you know katie worked really really hard for a really long period of time. And that was the magic. Yeah. And she listened to me, you know.

That's the magic right there. And like I said, I think people, you know, sometimes they think that there's just going to be, you know, they'll work with this person. And, you know, if you're hiring a coach to get, like, magic, um, you're going to probably be disappointed. Yeah. And yeah, that's, I've had a similar experience where I don't do really much one-on-one. I help a lot of people over email and social media. I don't charge them for us to answer questions and stuff. But in a lot of cases, when people do ask me for, for one-on-one type stuff, my reply is, I don't have so much time for it, but also I just try to explain the exact same thing that like, look, I really lay out everything on my website and my books. I mean, it's all, you just got to put all the little pieces together correctly and work hard and

it just takes time. And anybody that's going to sell you on, if they say they have some super special insights into how to train, how to diet that are going to, you know, it's going to blow out all these other methods away. They're full of shit. I mean, that's, that's exactly right. Is, you know, that's the, that's, um, you know, and I think people in the fitness industry as coaches or people selling a product, they give into that temptation to act like they're, they're, they're magicians because they feel like people, that people won't, why would, why would they hire me if I don't have something amazing to add?

Yeah, if your sales pitch is, well, you're going to have to work really hard and it's going to require self-discipline and willpower. And that's exactly what I tell people. But you know what? I always tell people I'm not willing to compromise who I am or my integrity to just get more clients. And I think if you're good at what you do and you have, you have knowledge and you have a track record, uh, eventually you get more business anyway. And I, you know, I've, I've done very well for myself. So I think that's a good testament to, you can do it the right way and, uh, and still make a good living. Yeah. And you also then,

you don't just make money, but you also make a lot of friends and you make a lot of, uh, you actually legitimately help a lot of people that then, you know, it takes, it's a slower build, but as you say, it's a much stronger, you see, you end up with something much, uh, more influence, much better in the end in terms of from, from a business standpoint and from like a personal, just being a good person standpoint. Absolutely. It's way, way more maintainable. Yeah. Um, okay, cool. So one other thing I wanted to just talk about, cause I know this is something you've written about and I like what you had to say on it. And I know the listeners want to hear about it. Um, and this is, uh, regarding preserving muscle when you're losing fat. And I, it's, it's obviously, this is more relevant to, let's say

with guys, when you start to get into the probably 10% body fat range you want to get under for girls. It's probably around the 19% to 20% where it becomes more of an issue as opposed to if a guy starting at 25% just has calorie deficit and lifts some weights. You'll probably build some muscle if you've never done it before. You know what I mean? Yeah. So what are your kind of – and this is, again, something that obviously you do a lot because you work with guys and girls who need to get really lean without burning up all their muscle. Right.

Well, the biggest thing for maintaining muscle – after – first – okay. So the first biggest thing is maintaining training intensity and volume. Okay? This – I always tell people, look, I'm a nutritionist. I did my Ph.D. in nutrition and people said, well, it's 20 percent training, 80 percent. No, no, no. Stop it. Stop it. Body composition changes do not happen without training. OK, I mean, or I'm sorry, muscle building does not happen without training.

You can you can you can eat as good as you want. And if you're not training with intensity, it's not going to make a difference. Yes. Okay, so that's the first thing, right? So training intensity and volume has to be maintained when you're dieting down. And actually, a lot of times what's funny is people will do the exact opposite. They'll diet down and they'll say, well, I don't want to overtrain. I've got to cut my training volume. Yeah, I hear that a lot. You have to think about this from a teleological

perspective, from an evolutionary perspective. What sense does it make for your body to maintain your muscle if you're going to do less with it? It doesn't make any sense. Especially if you're in a calorie deficit and your protein synthesis rates are already a little bit impaired because of that. That's absolutely 100% correct. So I tell people maintain that training volume and intensity. Then next day, make sure you're getting enough protein intake. Now, that said, I'll see people who will go and they'll – oh, I got to go up to two grams per pound. Look, I did my PhD in protein.

I had a bias going into my PhD of I wanted to find more reasons to eat more protein more frequently. And when I got done with my PhD, I ate less protein and ate it less frequently. Now, I still ate a high-protein diet. Sure. But it's about one gram per pound. You're eating one gram per pound of body weight. You're getting enough protein. That's all the research is very, very clear on this. Um, and so, you know, but making sure you're getting enough there is important. So, um, you know, that's, that's, that's one thing. And then the next thing is

go slow. Okay. Don't, don't be trying to drop, you know, four pounds in a week. Now you may have, you know, fluctuations where you drop, you know, four pounds or something like that.

Yeah. Like don't get surprised if in your first week, because water and glycogen come out and. Right. Yeah. Yeah. But, but don't,

don't be, don't make your goal to, you know, drop, you know, four pounds per week as an average. You know, you don't, you don't make your goal to, uh, you know, drop, um, you know, four pounds per week as an average, you know, you don't, you don't want that, uh, because the evidence suggests that you are less likely to keep it off and, um, you, uh, you're more likely to lose muscle. So there's, there's that. So, so I, I, I tell people, you know, 1% of your body weight is a good kind of cap to shoot for in terms of how fast you want to lose body fat.

Again, we're talking about an average basis. So if your goal is 2 pounds a week, maybe one week you lose 4 and the next week you lose none and one week you lose 3 and then you lose 1. But you're looking for an overall average. And then if the average is 2.3, like don't freak out. You know what I mean? But you know, if you're consistently losing three, four pounds a week, that's probably too fast for maintaining muscle. Yeah. Unless, unless maybe the person's starting out very obese and. Yeah, that's true too. So, so we need to qualify this by saying that so people who – everybody has kind of this different body fat set point level that their body likes to be at. Okay? And so the – as you get closer to your body fat set point, it's going to make it a little bit more difficult to maintain muscle.

Okay? So your body fat set point is essentially where your body likes to be. It's like the, your, your natural state. Okay. So if you're above that, you know, if somebody, like you said, is very obese, they can probably be a little bit more aggressive. Although I don't know how you necessarily instruct them to just because I'm thinking about sustainability. Yeah. Yeah. But you can probably be a little bit more aggressive and still maintain muscle and maybe even build some yeah i've seen that with people where they can run a little bit larger of a deficit than than somebody that'd be leaner and feel totally fine they get to eat plenty of food they're never starving they eat the foods they like and you know because they're new to weight

lifting build muscle as well so they're pretty excited when that happens yeah absolutely that and that that's possible and i'll tell people you know that that i can because you have to look at it from an energy perspective they have such large uh reserves of fat that it's still signaling i don't want to say self-signaling energy surplus but they're not it's not their physiology is going to behave the same way as somebody who's already pretty lean yeah i mean just the sheer amount of leptin in their blood, finally their body's going to be like, okay, now we have something to do. Yes, exactly. So, yeah, but as you approach your body fat set point, so as you get leaner, it's going to be harder to maintain that muscle. So I would say slowing down as they get near that point might be a good idea. Yeah.

And then, although to be honest, that's kind of self-regulating, their body is probably going to slow them down as they get towards that point anyway. And then one of the things I – kind of the easiest way I tell people is diet on as many calories as you can. If you can lose the appropriate – like if you can lose your goal amount of body fat on 2,500 calories a day, by God, do that. Don't do 1,500. fat on 2,500 calories a day, by God, do that. Don't do 1,500. Plus, I mean, you want that cushion because you are going to stall at various points in your fat loss journey. And so if you have to start out at 1,500 calories per day, when you stall, what are you going to go down to? And you only can exercise so much. If you start pushing that too far, then you start running into overtraining symptoms. You just don't feel good good absolutely actually there was a study and you know people

say oh it's done to rats it doesn't matter but you know what rats are actually really good models of human physiology in terms of exercise and and protein metabolism and fat loss so um the there was a study done where they they built this anorexic model of mice, and they had them either calorie-restrict or calorie-restrict plus exercise, plus kind of treadmill walking essentially. It was wheel walking. But actually, the mice doing the wheel walking lost less body fat over a long term. And this is the exact same calorie intake. I mean, so this is kind of counterintuitive to everything we know, right? Like, so I might argue about, you know, cardio, you know, fat, you know, steady state cardio not being optimal, this sort of thing.

Right. But, you know, I would, you know, in my mind, I would still say, well, you know, you're still burning more calories. But in my mind, I would still say, well, you're still burning more calories. And what I think science needs to come to grips with is that the body is not a closed system and that, yes, it is calories in versus calories out. Don't let anybody tell you it's not. But the equation that makes up the output side of calories out is extremely complex. It's ever-changing. It is adaptive, and it's a moving target. It is not something static. Yeah, that's a good way of putting it. Yeah. And so I think the point to this study was that too much cardio can be a bad thing. Too much

exercise can be a bad thing. So if you're going to increase your volume on anything, increase your weightlifting volume. That is much more powerful than calorie burn in terms of long term. I can tell you I can go in and do four sets of squats, of heavy squats, and like right now I'm not doing any cardio. I'm eating more than I ever have in my off season and I'm leaner and I'm not doing any cardio. And that's with me just increasing my training volume over time on the big lifts. Yeah, it makes sense. You know, they cause so much more muscle adaptation and muscle damage and muscle turnover. It just makes a huge difference on your long-term calorie output.

Yeah, I mean, those are all metabolically expensive processes. Absolutely. Whereas walking on a treadmill, yeah, you burn a little bit, but there's no adaptation that needs to occur when you walk on a treadmill for 20 minutes. Well, the only adaptation that occurs is your body gets way more efficient at it. And so there's actually research that shows that as you add cardio in, especially steady state cardio, you only get really a calorie burn effect for the first couple weeks, and then your body completely adapts to it, and now that's your new baseline. Oh, wow.

I didn't realize you see that. Yeah, and so I'm not going to say you don't get any calorie burn out of it. Yeah, it makes sense. It's not as effective as it was in the beginning. Right, and people say, well, the treadmill says I burn 900 calories. I'm only eating 1,200 today. I don't understand how I'm not losing weight.

Yes, I understand. Well, it's because you're not. Yeah, exactly. That's my answer. Just ignore that thing. Who knows what – You're not burning 900 calories. Yeah.

Yeah, I've run into that as well. And then, of course, the common thing then is people go, well, I just need to do more. So then now they're trying to do an hour or two hours of cardio a day. You know what I mean? And then now they can't – their lifting is terrible and they're losing muscle and they're feeling terrible. It just goes – it's a dwindling spiral. Exactly. And this is one of the things I always tell people, especially bodybuilders who they – him and Ha over training and training more than an hour.

But they'll get on a treadmill for two or three hours. and ha over overtraining and training more than an hour, but they'll get on a treadmill for two or three hours. And I'm like, you realize the research, you know, extensively shows that that's more likely to overtrain you than just doing more weightlifting. Yeah. And if you're a bodybuilder, think about this for a second, just how nonsensical is this? If you're a bodybuilder, you spend more time doing cardio than you actually do lifting weights. That doesn't make any sense. I'm doing cardio than you actually do lifting weights. That doesn't make any sense. Yeah, no, it's just a simple point. If you're a soccer player, then it makes sense. Yeah. Well, it'd be like being a soccer player and playing basketball for two hours and only playing soccer for one and then saying, well, I don't want to overtrain my soccer muscles.

You know what I mean? It's complete nonsense. Yeah. So then in terms of cardio, uh, what are your thoughts on doing shorter bouts of higher intensity cardio, uh, moderate being, and being moderate about it, um, to, to help get rid of, especially like when you start getting, when you have those last bits of stubborn fat that, you know, are just a pain in the ass. I think definitely, uh, high intensity cardio is, is, um is much, much, much more effective and efficient in terms of fat loss per unit time. Yeah. So I definitely recommend – I would recommend high-intensity cardio over moderate-intensity cardio five times out of five. Yeah.

five times out of five. Now, I'm not saying that there's no room whatsoever for low-intensity cardio, but it needs to be used sparingly, okay? But even then, I mean, I think that you could probably increase your training volume and get the same or better results. Now, that being said, not everybody has three, four hours to devote to the gym and lifting weights.

So maybe doing 15 minutes of high-intensity intervals is going to be a more time-effective way of losing fat. Yeah, I find that when I'm dieting down, I like – it seems to be about three or four 20-minute sessions. I like to go on the recumbent bike just because I bring my iPad and watch a show and just kind of do my thing. the recumbent bike just cause I bring my iPad and watch a show and just kind of, you know, do my thing. Um, I found, and it's just a, an experiment I've done with myself. So it doesn't really matter that much in the bigger scheme of things, but I've tried both ways doing steady state and doing higher intensity. And there's no question. I lost fat faster and my, my, my lifting was better doing the shorter bits of higher intensity, you know, just keeping it around an hour, an hour total, uh, cardio a week. That's all, that's all it ever took. And, you know, I haven't,

I haven't gotten into competition shape, but I've been down in the, you know, somewhere around the 6%. It's hard to know if they didn't get Dexa, but about as lean, I don't, I don't need to be any leaner. Like there's nothing I can grab anywhere really. So that's worked when that worked well for me. Yeah. I mean, absolutely absolutely and that's what the research shows is that high intensity you're actually more likely to maintain your your lifting um your output your your performance and all that sort of thing on on high intensity because it's more similar to what you do in the gym right in terms of specificity you're you're and especially like the what you're actually doing the recumbent bike, um, because you have hip flexion, that's more similar to say a squat and walking on a

treadmill where you don't have hip flexion. Okay. So because it's more similar, you're more likely to maintain that, um, that, that, that muscle and that strength. Yeah. Yeah. I'm familiar with that research. That's why I do that. Or I think a rowing machine was probably like the number two choice. I think it was because it also just mimics movements that you would do, uh, you know, in the gym. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. I definitely, uh, high intensity is, is, is what I use cardio wise. I have very, very few people. I would say that the number of people I have doing over an hour of total cardio per week, you can probably count on one hand. That's cool. Yeah. Cause that's the, that's what I've come across with myself. And then with working with a lot of people, it just,

uh, it doesn't seem like they need to do more. If you set your, your diet, right. And train hard. And a lot of the, the fat loss issues, and this is just really for the listeners realize that a lot of the, when people are having trouble losing weight, a lot of it is just diet. It's just related to dietary compliance. They're either accidentally eating more than they think they are or they just get too loose. That little piece of chocolate looked good, so they ate it. Then later, that little cookie, so they ate it. cookie, little cookie. So they ate it. And, you know, by the end of the day, they've eaten 400 calories more than they, than they wanted to eat. And they don't tell them, they tell themselves

something else and they wonder why they're not losing weight. Right. Yeah. That's, that's definitely, you know, compliance is a big deal. And then even, um, or you have people who have just been dieting for so long that their bodies have become so efficient that they have a really hard time losing body fat on a reasonable calorie deficit. Yeah. And then in that, actually, I want to get to that just to, cause then we can get into your reverse dieting book. But one last little piece regarding high intensity is cardio is people will often ask me, you know, cause this is out there that you shouldn't do high intensity cardio when you're in a calorie deficit because it puts too much stress in the body.

I've never seen, I've never seen any good research on that and I've never experienced it. Yeah, maybe if you sat there and did two hours in a go. That's the point. I'm going to take it right there. If you compared an hour of high intensity to an hour of low intensity, absolutely it puts more stress on the body. It's more difficult. But you don't have to do an hour of high intensity. You can literally do 10 minutes of high intensity and get better benefits than an hour of low intensity. You can literally do 10 minutes of high intensity and get better benefits than an hour of low intensity. That's been proven also, just for the listeners. There's a study that showed that, that in terms of fat loss, 10 minutes of high intensity was more effective than 60 minutes of inclined walking, I think it was.

Yep, at three miles an hour, which is pretty much the standard bro protocol. Yeah. Yeah. call. Yeah. Yeah. So I, and that's, so when you compare them that way, the high intensity still wins because it's more efficient per unit time. Yeah. Great. So I just want to, I want to make that clear because I know listeners might be worried like, well, but I don't want to overtrain. Like you're not, as long as you just don't do it, you know, a ton of cardio. You don't want to do anything stressful on the body. Don't diet and don't lift weights. Yeah. Don't move. Exactly. Okay, cool. So, um, now let's just talk about here. Cause you have a reverse diet book. That's, um, I've read it. It's great. And I've talked to our reverse dieting myself. It works. And so you had mentioned

that sometimes people are, they've been in a calorie deficit for so long. They've been dieting for so long that their body's just not responding in the way that it was several months ago. Um, let's tie that into reverse dieting and, and talk a little bit about the book and how it can help because there are a lot of people out there in that situation, I know, because I get emails. Yeah. So the first thing I want to say about reverse dieting is reverse dieting, the primary function of which is not to lose body fat. That's not the short-term goal of reverse dieting. Now, the long-term goal of reverse dieting. Yeah. Now the long-term goal of reverse dieting is to put you in a better metabolic situation.

So where you can lose more body fat long-term. Okay. But everybody just thinks about the diet. Nobody thinks about the diet after the diet. Okay. Because the research out there on fat loss is very grim. Um, it shows that of people who lose body fat, over 80% of them will regain all of it within one year. And a half or two thirds of them will actually put on more body fat than they had before. So that's a phenomenon we call body fat overshooting. A lot of people who have done a show or even gotten real lean can attest to the fact that they got real lean and then they just went back to doing whatever. They just went back to their calorie intake before they started dieting and they shot up

astronomically fast in terms of body fat gain. After a couple of weeks, it looked like they didn't even diet. know and that's your body adapting to low calories getting more efficient with their metabolism getting more thrifty about i could do three hours of talking about all the different physiological changes and psychological changes that happen from dieting to make you more efficient at holding on to body fat yeah and and reducing your calorie burn but obviously we don't we don't have that time. And it boils down to just the physiology of it from an evolutionary standpoint makes sense. Why the body? Yeah, all of that mechanisms are complicated, but I'm sure the listener, you can understand

why that would be. Absolutely. You're sitting there right now listening to this podcast because your ancestors were energy efficient. listening to this podcast because your ancestors were energy efficient they were economically thrifty because if you were wasteful with energy your ants you would have died out your ancestors would have died during times of famine so you're sitting there because you're efficient all right now and dieting makes that more efficient so the goal of reverse dieting is first and foremost to restore your metabolic rate. So there's two functions of metabolic – or two roles I can see for reverse dieting.

The first is somebody who's dieted, gotten real lean, and now what do you want to – we want people to be able to keep more of that fat loss, right? We want them to be able to stay leaner. fat loss, right? You want them to be able to stay leaner. And so, um, but you don't want to be eating 1200 calories or 1500 calories, or if you're a guy, 1800 calories or 2000 calories, the rest of your life, like that's no, I would argue that's not living, you know? So what we're going to, what, what reverse dieting is, is a method of slowly adding calories in to restore metabolic rate and minimize body fat regain. Okay? So now that reverse dieting, for people who have done it, if you're going, you know, and it all depends upon the person.

So I have some people say, hey, Lane, my goal is I want to regain the absolute minimum of body fat. Well, then the first few weeks of your reverse diet are going to suck quite a bit because it's still going to feel like you're dieting. Yeah. I've done that. I know what you mean. You get to eat one extra apple a day or something. You're like, okay, well, here we go. And we're pretty conservative. I'm not trying to... I can go into a whole two hours. I have a video on YouTube talking a little bit more in depth about it. And then obviously if you go to the website for the reverse dieting book, we have a free chapter there where you can kind of learn a little bit more if you're to the website for the reverse dieting book, we have a free chapter there where you can

kind of learn a little bit more if you're interested about it. But you're basically slowly adding in calories. Now, if somebody comes to me and they say, you know what, Lane, I'm okay with a little bit of body fat gain as long as I feel more normal a little bit faster. I'm okay with that too. You know what I mean? And I'll be a little bit more aggressive. So reverse dieting is not just one mechanism of more aggressive. So that, you know, reverse dieting is not just one mechanism of doing things. It's kind of just, it's basically just controlling how much body fat you're going to put on to a level that you're happy with and that you're comfortable with and while restoring your metabolic rate so that in the future, when you go to diet

down again, or you can effectively do it more effectively because think about like i always ask people this if we have two people let's assume they're genetically identical everything they're twins whatever but one is maintaining their body weight on 3100 calories a day and the other one's maintaining it on 2200 calories a day who's going to have an easier time losing body fat it's me the person on 3100,100 calories, right? So that's our goal is to get that calorie intake up higher for you to maintain your body weight on a higher calorie intake. And so when you go to diet down, it's more effective. Yeah. And that's just to comment for listeners. I've not only done this myself many times, I've done with many people and that is how it works. I know

it almost sounds too good to be true because it's like you get to eat more and more. And in my experience, I'm sure you've had the same experience, Lane, is that many people when they come out of – so they're done with their deficit and now they start adding calories in, that they end up either losing a little bit more weight. Not that that's even the goal, but two weeks or three weeks into it, they look even better. And maybe it's just them filling up more. The visual effect, they're very happy that now they're eating quite a bit more food, but they're looking even better. Yeah. And that's basically just controlling it, not having that post-contest binge blowout or

post-diet blowout. But yeah but yeah i mean i've definitely observed that uh i think it's important to note everybody responds to reverse dieting a little bit differently and some people you know they they they actually get leaner and leaner uh up to a certain point obviously yeah obviously you're you've gotten up and you've added you know a thousand calories to your diet you're not going to continue to get leaner on that no but i had a guy who uh his name is erasmus and he's over in denmark and he ended his diet on like not too bad like 175 grams of carbs 55 grams of fat per day on his low days yeah and he went all the way up he got leaner for about the first eight weeks each week he got leaner and then he kind of maintained from there

but he was up he was two kilos two or three kilos under his stage weight and he was up to 400 grams of carbs a day and like 90 grams of fat so it's pretty cool actually this happened to me this past year each time i've reversed dieted it's gotten a little bit better and this past year i was dieting down to make the 205 weight class for the usapl uh for the USAPL for Raw Nationals. And so they changed the weight classes. I'll be real brief here. But it was either 231 or 205.

Well, I sit about 218 comfortably on all my other powerlifting needs. And so I'm like right in between. I'm like, crap. So I dieted down, got down to like 212. And I was like – I started like 221, got down to like 212 and i was like i started like 221 got down to 212 and i'm like well i was about six months out i was like well i'll reverse diet and if i start to put on weight well i'll be stronger for the 231 and if i don't put on weight i'll be in a better metabolic position to diet back down right and um what happened was pretty cool. I went from like 200 grams of carbs a day intake to 400 and my body weight went down to 207.

But I did this over – I did this over like six months. And then all I had to do was basically a week and a half before Raw Nationals, just kind of – actually, I did everything I talk about not doing. I cut my sodium. Because I'm just looking to make a weight. I'm not looking to look a certain way. And I can also tell you it doesn't work because I look like crap when I weighed in. But, um, but I mean, it, it definitely, so it made it very easy for me to get in shape. I had a diet for a week essentially, you know, because the reverse diet went so well. So it can go very, very well. And then for some people, like, especially if they've been restricted for a long period of time, you know, they may be a little bit sluggish in responding so well. So it can go very, very well. And then for some people, like especially if they've been restricted

for a long period of time, you know, they may be a little bit sluggish in responding to it. So that's an important thing to note. But I always tell people, I've gotten a little bit of criticism on reverse dieting. And maybe people don't want to,

you know, they, I think it's still that old school calories in, calories out thinking. And people say, you know, people like Elaine's claiming that you can defy the laws of thermodynamics. No, that's not what I'm saying at all. What I'm saying is again,

calories in versus calories out is a far more complex equation than we could have ever hoped to understand. And our, our knowledge of that is still evolving. And so, yeah, I mean, and also the,

the looking better effect could, could be related to water attention too, right? As cortisol levels come down, as you come out of a deficit, that could play a role in it, couldn't it? Absolutely. Yeah, there could do lifting or trying things. And I really don't get into arguments with people like that. But there are certain cases where, as you say, things are much more complex than – you can't just read. In the bad cases, they just read abstracts and try to argue with abstracts. But certain things, they work. And maybe in 10 years, we might understand why.

And I'm actually trying to do research right now, collaboration with different labs to get research on this because it is something I've observed with clients. And so I don't look at it as unscientific because science is just observation. And I've observed this enough with enough clients to be relatively convinced that it has some benefit. And I always say from a practical standpoint, what's your other alternative? Okay. So if you finish a diet or whatever, and you just go back to eating how you did before, you're going to regain the weight. The data says you're going to regain the weight. It's all there. All the data is there on metabolic adaptation. Or you can continue to eat the calorie level you're at right there until the end of time and not enjoy your life.

So I don't really think either one of those are options. So from a practical standpoint, I see reverse dieting as being very practical. Yeah, absolutely. I've done both of those things. I'm sure you've tried too, keeping your calorie intake lower, shooting it up, and neither one of them are enjoyable. Exactly. Exactly. Great. So where can people find the book, the Reverse Diet book?

ReverseDietingBook.com. Okay, cool. ReverseDietingBook.com. And then you – great. So that's where everybody – if you're listening, you can go. There's a nice sales letter so you can go check it all out with before and afters and free chapter and all that stuff. Exactly. You get a free chapter. There's not to be too much of a sales plug, but when you buy it, you get access to a private Facebook page where Sohi and I, Sohi's the other author on the book,

or Sohi and I answer questions or anything you may have. We put up videos, like a little extra, it's kind of continuing education, continuing support. Um, you also get her book on how to count macros, um, which is a really good book. And then you get, uh, uh, you get, uh, like she has a, like, I think, uh, some sample workouts as well as, uh, conditioning workouts. So it's kind of a bundle you're getting. It's, uh, it's pretty good. Yeah, totally. Yeah. I checked it all out. I like it a workouts. So it's kind of a bundle you're getting. It's pretty good. Yeah, totally. Yeah. I checked it all out. I like it a lot. So I've plugged it before. So one other thing that you mentioned that you're working on is a clothing line. Yeah. Tell me about that.

So this is in conjunction with Outwork Apparel. And basically people have been asking for a long time, like, oh, they'll see me wearing team Norton shirts or that sort of thing. And people will want to know, you know, where, where can they get those at? And like the, some of the shirts, I'm like, those are just for my clients. So I finally figured out I needed to come up with something, um, that, you know, people that wanted to show support go in and buy. And so right now we've got, we've just got two t-shirts, but we're going to be coming out with hats. We're going to come out with women's shirts. We're going to be coming out with hoodies, like all kinds of stuff. If you go to outworkapparel.com and you go to the team shop and click on the Lane Norton series, we have two shirts.

We have the fear mediocrity shirt, which is the most popular one so far. And then we have the dominate shirt and they're really high quality. They've got the bio lane logo on the front and the slogan on the back shirt and they're really high quality they've got the biolane logo on the front and the slogan on the back and uh they're really nice really that really soft cotton you know that's um they're not the american apparel but they're kind of similar to that so really soft cotton very nice to wear when you're working out and um people really seem to love them i mean we sold out uh the first day We sold out the first batch in like two hours.

Nice, nice. And we can't seem to keep the Fear Mediocrity t-shirt in stock. Let me see if we've actually got that. Oh, it is fully stocked right now. So I'll have to make a post about that. And then it will be gone. Yeah, exactly. So both of them right now are fully stocked except for the Dominate, which is sold out in XXXL.

So go get them. If you're interested in it, go get it now because I don't think they'll be there very long. Cool. Awesome. Yeah. I'm gonna check it out myself. Okay, great. Well, uh, thanks a lot again for, for taking the timeline. I think this is great. I know it, uh, these are all the type of things I had asked about. So I know the listeners are going to appreciate your insights on it. Oh, I appreciate it, man. I think it was a great conversation. You asked great questions. Thanks, thanks. And so we'll get it up

and I'll let you know when it's live. Sounds great, my friend. Cool. Hey, thanks for listening to the interview. I hope you like it. We've got a lot more cool stuff coming over the next couple of months. And definitely go check out Lane's stuff.

As you can tell, he knows what he's doing. He really walks the walk. He doesn't just talk the talk. And also, just as a quick little update, Legion, my supplement line, is fully back in stock over at legionsupplements.com, L-E-G-I-O-N supplements.com. Sorry that I ran out of stock. What happened is basically my manufacturer, uh, is five weeks behind on a pretty big order, a reorder of products, um, which is not usual for them. Um, they're actually, I mean, it's a very big company. They're based out of Tennessee. They have like every certification you could want. They, they 700,000 square feet of production space. So you wouldn't think a company like this

would have what that happened. But what, what did happen is they merged with a, with a, uh, an even bigger company actually. And the merger just went, it just exploded them the first three weeks in January, they were completely shut down. It wasn't just me, all customers, no raws got no orders for raws got placed. Nothing happened for three weeks in January, which is ridiculous for a company of that size. And that's just outrageous. Um, anyway, so we're back in stock. Uh, it's been, you know, we're like having a run on, on our stuff. So, you know, we. So we're getting everything smoothed out. We actually may run out of stock of one or two products again before our big, big order kind of finally comes through. So if you've been waiting to stock up, now is the time.

I know that sounds marketing. It sounds salesy, but it's true at the moment. And hopefully going forward, we've put some things in place. Obviously, I'm reaching out to other manufacturers to make sure I have backups. So if my current doesn't get their shit together, I can just move on. But I'm hoping my current manufacturer can. And we've put some things in place that should prevent this from happening again. So we'll see.

Anyways, hope you're having a great week. And I will see you next week.