Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Holiday "Damage Report," Why I Don't Like "Slow Cutting," and More...

Episode Date: January 15, 2015

In this podcast I give a quick report on the effects of my holiday hedonism, explain why I like to be aggressive with my fat loss instead of "slow cutting," (11:51) and share my thoughts on how the people you associate with affect your success (35:28). ARTICLES RELATED TO THIS PODCAST: Why Rapid Weight Loss Is Superior to “Slow Cutting” (And How to Do It Right): http://www.muscleforlife.com/rapid-weight-loss/ How Much Muscle Can You Build Naturally? http://www.muscleforlife.com/how-much-muscle-can-you-build-naturally/ Fat-free mass index (FFMI): http://www.muscleforlife.com/do-actors-use-steroids-for-movies/ Study on track and field athletes: http://www.muscleforlife.com/rapid-weight-loss/ The Best Way to Gain Muscle Without Getting Fat: http://www.muscleforlife.com/the-best-way-to-gain-muscle-not-fat/ The Definitive Guide to Why Low-Carb Dieting Sucks: http://www.muscleforlife.com/low-carb-diet/ How Much Cardio You Should Do (and How Much Is Too Much): http://www.muscleforlife.com/how-much-cardio/ Why High-Intensity Interval Training is Best For Weight Loss: http://www.muscleforlife.com/high-intensity-interval-training-and-weight-loss/ How Much Protein is Needed to Build Muscle: http://www.muscleforlife.com/how-much-protein-build-muscle/ Which Weight Loss Pills Actually Work? http://www.muscleforlife.com/which-weight-loss-pills-actually-work/ Want to get my best advice on how to gain muscle and strength and lose fat faster? Sign up for my free newsletter! Click here: https://www.muscleforlife.com/signup/

Hey, it's Mike, and 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

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to the show. Hey, hey, Mike Matthews here, muscleforlife.com. Welcome back to the Muscle for Life all the random balls I'm kind of juggling right now between book launch stuff and some MFL projects and workout app and Legion and blah, blah, blah. So podcast got neglected for a few weeks, but here we go. So first I just want to say happy new year. Hopefully you had a great holiday, friends and family, ate a bunch of food, didn't gain too much weight. I made it out pretty good actually. I think I gained like one pound or something, you know, which I just dieted for a week and that's that. Um, mainly like I just, I kind of just practice what I preach. What I was doing is just saving most of my calories for those, you know, those random dinners that I had to go to or whatever. Um, so I would just kind of eat

protein throughout the day and then here comes dinner and some of them, you know, a couple of the dinners were a bit absurd. Actually, I'm very surprised that I didn't gain more weight. Uh, even after, I mean, like it started with Thanksgiving, Thanksgiving, I ate until I was in pain. I was, I couldn't even move. I was just lying on the couch trying not to move because it was painful. I mean, I was just in pain just sitting there, but if I moved, it was even, you know, it made it even worse, uh, absurd amount of food. And, uh, and then there was some other, there was like a party at my parents' house. And I think I ate

eight plates of dessert. That was it. I ate protein throughout the day and eight plates of dessert, uh, which I didn't, well, to the point of pain, but it was, I, my stomach was thoroughly full. But even with those massive overfeedings, which, I mean, I had to have eaten at least seven, 8,000 calories in those two individual meals alone. And there were a couple other dinners where I didn't go crazy. I just ate a good amount, but didn't go crazy. Over the next, the course of the next few days after those crazy meals, I didn't really see a difference in my body. I was a bit surprised. I was expecting worse.

I mean, yeah, they were very, very high-carb meals, so that helps, but there was a fair amount of fat. I guess they just weren't fatty enough. But, I mean, I got to say, though, no, there must have been at least 200, 300 grams of fat in each of those meals. And 200 grams of fat, That's a pound of fat. I mean, if you were to eat 200 grams of dietary fat and it would be stored a hundred percent as body fat, which it doesn't get stored a hundred percent, but a large percentage just kind of gets stored as body fat. Uh, that's a pound of fat. So, um, I guess I got lucky to some, I don't know. I was, I was a bit surprised. Um, also one point, actually, I'm going to look into this. Uh, it's

kind of just a random, I don't know if it really fits into an article anywhere, actually I'm going to look into this it's kind of just a random I don't know if it really fits into an article anywhere but I'm just curious how long it takes for your body to synthesize fat you know it takes time to build muscle for instance you it's same thing with body fat like okay so I ate 8,000 calories and my body probably you know let's say it processed all of that in or I probably couldn't even process a fair amount of that just made it went right through the small intestines unprocessed for sure. But let's say a processed like 5,000 calories in over the course of eight to 10 hours. How, what's the, at what point can I say that fat synthesis is done where I know that I've gained the fat I'm going to gain? There's no more.

I'm actually, I feel like I've seen this in overfeeding studies, but the number's not coming to me. Uh, if I take a guess, I would say like, I don't remember 18 hours. So I don't know. I'm going to look into that cause I'm kind of curious. It's just almost like a point of mental, you know, where you go, you go all in and then you're going, all right, well at least there's a point where, you know, you're not going to get any fatter from that meal. You've gained the fat you're going, all right, well, at least there's a point where you know you're not going to get any fatter from that meal. You've gained the fat you're going to gain, and now you're done. Anyways, that was my holiday. I hope you had a great holiday too.

Ate a bunch of food. I mean, that's what you – I say enjoy yourself in the holidays. I mean, I did that a couple times. It's not like I was doing that every day or multiple times a week even. It was a couple, and I didn't feel bad about it. I loved it. I mean, that was what my plan was to go. I didn't care if that meant I had to diet for a week or two after I was just going to enjoy myself and, you know, eat a bunch of food I don't normally eat basically. Uh, and that's what I, whenever people write me about, you know, a little bit anxious about the holidays and gaining weight,

that's what I recommend is that, um, use the, use the calorie saving kind of method I was talking about and just don't, where it becomes a problem is when you start eating big breakfasts, lunches, and dinners multiple days a week, when you start off with a 3000 calorie breakfast and then do a 3000 calorie lunch and then a 7,000 calorie dinner, and you do that multiple times a week, that becomes a problem. You can gain quite a bit of fat quite quickly doing that, especially if you're not exercising. If you take a couple weeks off the gym and then just eat absurd amounts of food, you can gain a good, you know, in two weeks, you could easily, easily gain a good probably six, seven pounds of fat if you really tried. So I minimize that damage by just, you know,

doing a few all in type meals, saving my calories. And, and also usually like on the days after, like after I ate all that food on those, on those really high calorie days or those high calorie meals, the following days I ate, I think like after Thanksgiving, I maybe ate a thousand calories the next day. I think I just ate my protein and a little bit of fat or a little bit of carb. I don't remember. But you know, it was, it was essentially I ate like 200 grams of protein basically, and a little bit of carb and fat that kind of goes with what I was eating and felt, I actually was like semi full all day. I woke up full. That doesn't happen usually. And then, so I just kind of was

like, you know, it was almost like a protein sparing modified fast, if you've ever heard of that. It's kind of more of a medical type of dietary routine where you're really just eating protein. I think they do it usually with very obese people. So I did that. And so you can do that where, okay, so you, you know, ridiculously overeat for a day and then you under eat for, for a day. I mean, there are types of diets, there's diets out there. There's like an intermittent, intermittent fasting. It's not really even intermittent fasting. It's like a, I think it's called five, two diet, right? Where it's like five days a week, you're eating food two days. You're not, not a very good diet.

If you're physically active, you're going to the gym because those two days a a week you're not eating food, you're not going to want to train in those days because you're going to just have no energy and not feel good. But even if you save those two days, let's say you're training Monday through Friday and you're eating and then you don't eat on the weekends, your Monday and Tuesday workouts are going to suck. Maybe they'll be okay if you're working out later in the day and you have a good amount of food in you come Monday. By the afternoon, you've eaten maybe a couple thousand calories, something like that, by the time you train. But still, I wouldn't recommend necessarily the 5-2 diet. But my point is you can do that.

You can not eat food for 24 hours. If you just sort of probably had about the 12-hour – well, I'd say probably about the 14 to 16-hour fasting, you'd want some BCAAs or leucine to just elevate protein synthesis rates. And then you could probably do that every couple hours and not eat for 24 hours and be totally fine. You're not going to lose any muscle. You're not going to run into any real problems. So you can do that as well. It's not really a matter of starving yourself. I don't look at it like that.

When I was going, okay, well, I ate so much food yesterday. I'm just going to eat a very small amount of food the next day. It wasn't like, oh, I'm going to starve myself. In fact, like I said, I was pretty much full all day. I wasn't even hungry. It was more just to try to balance out my weekly intake, at least get it somewhere closer to where I'd like it to be, where my weekly maintenance calories are probably about 20,000, I would say, give or take, given my body weight, my body composition, and my activity level. So I like to kind of have my weekly calories come out to be about 20,000. Some weeks it's a little bit over, some weeks a little bit under.

And so if I'm eating 8,000 calories in a day, or even a little bit more, then I'm going to go low, low, low calorie the next day probably. And then I went about 2,000 calories or a little bit less the following day. Just so over the course of those three days where normally my intake maybe let's say would be like 10,000 calories over those three days, maybe it's 12,000 calories. And a lot of those extra calories are from carbs, which are burned off and used in other ways. And so the net effect is my body composition, like in the mirror, I didn't see any difference. I still have the same vascularity, same body that I didn't, it didn't look any, I didn't look any different despite, you know, eating so much food that, and I can eat a lot. I'm actually confused

that because my eating my body, I don't, I I cannot eat for, I can fast for long periods of time and not get hungry and feel totally fine. I can even, you know, go out and play, I'd say moderate activity. I haven't played intense sports. But go out like, you know, I've gotten into golf recently, so go out in the driving range, hit a bunch of balls after fasting for a bit. And I just don't get hungry. It just doesn't bother me. But then at the same time, I can eat a ton of food in a sitting and be moderately full. Like, you know, I can eat, let's say, 2,500 calories in a meal and be like, okay, I guess I've eaten enough. I'm full. I could eat more. I could fit more.

So how exactly that works, I don't know. But, uh, so with that type of, uh, it's not even really an appetite. It's just capacity for eating food. You know, I was eating until at least a couple of those meals until I simply just couldn't fit any more food in me. Um, so I can, if you can push it that hard and then just kind of make up for it over the next couple of days and look the exact same. And my weight is the exact same, away about 190. It goes up and down, 189, 190, 191, depending on water retention and whatever. But by the end of, you know, when all the holiday stuff was done, the New Year's dinner, all that stuff, within a week, I was back to my normal weight. That's pretty cool. And you can do the same thing.

You just, it does take a little bit of moderation. It sounds like I'm, you know, I have controlled bouts of immoderation. I'm not just like all over the place for three weeks. Then that's when, you know, you can, even then though, you don't have to, if, if it happens, it happens. And so what you diet for a month to get rid of the fat. Now you're back to normal. Does it really matter? No, it doesn't really matter. Um, all right. So all the holiday stuff behind us, let's get into the meat of the podcast. And in this podcast, I want to talk about two things. One is the concept of slow cutting, which is, I mean, it's not really, I guess that's

just kind of a colloquial term for it. But basically I get asked fairly often if you should, if I think it's better to slowly taper your calories down when you're wanting to lose fat or just jump into a moderate deficit and, uh, go from there. And then, you know, maybe at some point, depending on metabolic adaptation, maybe you have to reduce calories further, maybe not kind of depends on your body, but really the point is, is it better to slowly taper calories down or just jump into a decent deficit and get the ball rolling like that? And the other thing that I want to talk about is actually it's a question that I got asked

by a guy named John. And I've been asked this before and usually just kind of shoot off personal response, but I've been getting it enough where I thought it'd be maybe a worthy podcast topic. And that's the topic of surrounding yourself with the right people or that concept of surrounding yourself with the right people and how the people around you, how does it affect your mood, your motivation, your goals, your willingness to work, and I guess kind of just your overall happiness and chances for success. And just give some of my experiences on it and some of my thoughts.

Okay, so let's start with this subject of slow cutting, quote unquote. Is it better to tape your calories down and lose fat slowly or is it better to just jump into a larger deficit and lose fat faster? And my standard like go-to strategy for fat loss is I want to lose fat as quickly as possible, basically. And without causing negative, you know, without losing muscle, without losing a bunch of strength, without feeling miserable and all the things that come with starvation dieting. So I don't want to obviously starve myself. And that's the, yeah, you want to lose fat the fastest, eat 500 calories a day. There you go. You're going to lose fat fast. You're also going to lose muscle and you're going to feel like shit, but you you want to lose fat the fastest, eat 500 calories a day. There you go. You're going to lose fat fast.

You're also going to lose muscle and you're going to feel like shit, but you're going to lose fat really quickly. So what I do is I am using a moderate deficit, 20, 25%. Personally, I actually always just kind of keep it at 25%, but this is something you have to, you have to, part of the, just this whole fitness game is learning your body. There are fundamental principles that guide you and that keep you from making stupid mistakes. But then there are quite a few variables that are just individual that you have to experience for yourself. I know guys that do great with a 25% deficit like me.

My body is totally fine on it. And I've just dieted so many times. And I stay pretty lean. I kind of maintain 7% to 8%. I'd say lean. You know, I kind of maintain seven to 8%. I'd say probably closer to 8% is kind of my maintenance. Just kind of hanging out around here, eating about 27, 2,800 calories a day, um, with a couple of days over, maybe a couple of days under, depends on what I feel like doing. And, um, and I've dieted down to six, five.

Well, maybe I've never made it to five, but I've, I've made it to the 6% range several times for photo shoots and such. So I have enough experience with my body to know that 25% deficit is totally fine. But some people, guys and girls that I speak with, they don't do so well on it. They just need a smaller deficit because, you know, maybe something 15, 20%, because if they go higher, they really start to run into hunger issues, craving issues, energy issues, mood issues. And that's something you have to learn. But I recommend that if you're not sure what works best, start with a 25% deficit or a 20% deficit and see how your body responds. And you can adjust things.

I wouldn't go higher than 25% because then you start getting pretty close to BMR. go higher than 25% because then you start getting pretty close to BMR. And most people are going to find if you just dropped your intake to BMR, that's not going to do, most people are going to run into problems. You're going to be hungry. You're going to be angry. You're going to be, your workouts are going to suck. You're going to lose strength. And so that's on the deficit point. That's what I like to do. And the reason why I want to lose fat as quickly as possible is, well, there are a few reasons. One is that the longer you're in a deficit, the more your metabolism slows down, which means the more you have to then, if you're, let's say you start with a, with a 10% deficit and you see what you can get in fat loss for there, and then you reduce it a little bit, you know, maybe to reduce it by 5% and 5% and 5%. Yes. Your metabolism slows down, but you're not ruining your metabolism. You're not damaging it. You're just, um, you're making the process take longer and you're not going to gain that much. Like

I've done this before. I've tried it. I don't see that much of a difference in my training between a 10% deficit and a 20 or 25% deficit. Yes, there is a slight difference. I'm going to probably lose a rep or two on the 20, 25% deficit versus the 10%. But my energy levels are still high. My workouts are still good. I feel good throughout the day.

If there were a big difference, if I felt way better on a 10% deficit, you know, than a 2025, I probably would slow cut. I probably would start, you know, very with a very mild deficit. Some people even start as low as like a 5% deficit, which can be tricky to make sure that you don't accidentally, cause you have a small margin for error there. If you're running on a 5% deficit and you overeat by a hundred calories, calories, I mean, that could be your 5% deficit. If you're a girl or if you're a guy, that could be half of your deficit right there. So it also can be a little bit tricky in terms of tracking because if you're running a small deficit, the scale, you're going to have to weigh yourself every day and then take average, which is not a bad idea in general, actually, but take an average weight every seven to 10 days and really keep an eye on things because you can accidentally overeat or under, you know, exercise a little bit, not burn as much calories as you were anticipating

when you were planning your meal, planning your, your diet. And, uh, and, and you can not really lose any fat for a couple of weeks and not quite know because, you know because you're not expecting dramatic changes. So the metabolic adaptation point is not a big problem, but it is something that you're going to have to deal with. And when you're slowly reducing, you're trying to – you're just kind of like – you're slowly – I mean weight loss is just you're depriving your body of food. That's all you're doing when you're losing fat. And when you're just depriving it just enough to get fat loss a little bit going, and then you're trying to reduce it a little bit more and a little bit more, it's just trickier.

And really the point is it's just kind of unnecessary because you can jump into a larger deficit, and you're still going to have metabolic slowdown to some degree. It'll probably happen a little bit faster. But you're going to to in that time period, like if you just jump right into 25% deficit and you're exercising and you're eating enough protein and you're not doing too much cardio, you're doing all the things that you should be doing. Um, you probably will get a good, I would say six weeks of fat loss out of that before you even have to reduce before you have to change anything before you have to exercise more or eat

less. And some people, um, they don't even have to that. They just start on that deficit. Some people I've just seen in research that some people's metabolisms are more resilient than others, meaning that they just can, uh, they, they're, they're not as prone to the slowdown as others. And some people's metabolisms just slow down faster. So that's also a point you're just going to, you're going to experience with your body, what you can get away with. But I've run into quite a few, usually it's with guys. It's not so much with girls and that's probably hormonal and, and it's just muscle guys that have more muscle are going to be able to, are going to do better. Um, but they'll, they'll go into that 25% deficit and they'll stay there and they'll get as lean as they want.

And then they'll just reverse diet out of it. And that's it. It can be that simple. So another point why I want to just lose fat as quickly as possible is the more time that you're in a deficit, even if it's a slight deficit, it means the more time you're not building muscle and you're not going to see much in the way of strength gains either. And well, this, this applies to most people, people that are new to weightlifting or new to And, well, this applies to most people. People that are new to weightlifting or new to heavy weightlifting, like if you've been doing some sort of high rep kind of isolation magazine type workout for a while and you switch to a more heavy barbell type routine like starting strength or 5x5 or my Bigger Leaner Stronger program or something like that,

you definitely can build muscle while losing fat. And if you're new to working out, you can as well. But if you're an experienced weightlifter and you've put in a good amount of time on the barbells and you're pretty strong and you lift heavy weights, you're not going to be building any muscle to speak of while you're in a deficit. And when you're slow cutting, if you slow cut for, let's say five months to lose, let's say you're 15% and you want to go to 7% and it takes you five months to get. In those five months, you're really not going to build any muscle to speak of. And your strength is going to be pretty stagnant through that time.

You might be able to make some strength. And maybe you'll build a little bit of muscle, but not nearly as much as if you were aggressive with your fat loss. And let's say you went from 15% to 7% in three months by being more aggressive, and then you can reverse diet out of it. And over the next two or three months, you've reverse dieted in your now, let's say in a maintenance or even in a surplus, depending on what you want to do. But once you start that reverse diet process, you'll see that your body responds very quickly.

Your strength starts coming up again. You can build muscle more effectively again. start to, you can build muscle more effectively again. And so, you know, depending on if you are in my position where really, I mean, I've kind of maxed out my genetic potential in terms of natural muscle growth. If I really cared, it's possible I could gain about 10 more pounds. My FFMI is, which I'll link an article down below if you're not familiar with that, but it's about 23, 24. It was about 23 a year ago, and I've gained a little bit of size then.

It's probably about 24 right now. And really, when you start getting 24, 25, that's all you can expect in terms of natural muscle growth unless you have outstanding genetics for it. And even then, you're not going to see much higher than 25. When you start seeing 26, 27, 28 and higher is really steroids is what you're looking at. So if you're in my position and I'm not going to really gain much more muscle and I'm not really looking to gain much. I don't really want to. I'll take some more calves because genetically my calves are the worst ever. And they're decent now, but I'll take some more calves and take some more shoulders because natty shoulders are always too small.

It's just standard. And, uh, I think that's really it. I don't want bigger arms. I don't want a bigger chest. Uh, I think my back's pretty good. My, my upper legs are good. I'm already having trouble. Like certain brands of jeans.

Forget it. I can't wear them. Um, if anything is like a skinnier or even a straight cut, skinny, forget. I'm not that I even really want to wear it anyway. Straight cut is usually a problem. Usually I can't. They just get stuck in my thighs or they look like leggings. It looks ridiculous.

So I don't really want more upper legs as well because it starts to become just impractical, you know, where your legs are always rubbing together everywhere you go and you can't wear the clothes you want to wear and whatever, right? So in my case, slow cutting could make sense. If I had a problem with a larger deficit, I could just run a smaller deficit over time because I'm not really going to build much muscle anyway. And I can preserve as much muscle and strength as possible. Okay. I could see that. Personally, I still would rather just be aggressive about it and then get my calories back up to a maintenance type level because I like my training best when I'm at

maintenance. I'm able to, I just feel strong in the gym. I'm able to progress in my strength. And so, but that's not, that's probably, you're probably not in that position. You probably are still looking to improve your physique, add some size, gain a fair amount of strength. And if that's the case, slow cutting is just not the way to go. And this actually, this is just one of the big problems that I see or one of the big mistakes that I see people make. And my brother's a good example. He's made this mistake for quite a while now and I tell him about it, but he doesn't listen. And that is that his bulks are too short because he just gets way out of hand with his calories.

And maybe he's drinking as well. I don't know. But he just gains fat way too quickly when he bulks. So maybe he's in a surplus for two months. And so for two months, he's able to gain strength and build a little bit of muscle and get things rolling. But then he just gets too fat and then he has to cut. And then his cuts take too long because he's not strict on his diet

and he skips workouts here and there and whatever. So he'll now cut for, let's say four or five months and to lose, um, let's say 15 pounds. So he'll go a little bit too high on his bulks too. He'll like started about 20%. Then he'll get down to like 14%, let's say 13% on his cut and then stop there and then go back to the bulk and then go back to 20% within a couple of months. So basically when you look at his year, his year is like maybe three or four, let's say four months of being in a surplus and eight months of being in a slight deficit. That sucks for building muscle and for building a physique. You want that the other way around. You want to be in a surplus for eight months where you're building muscle, you're building strength. Because when you're bulking, you also – I haven't really seen this in any research, but I definitely have experienced it myself and just seen it anecdotally.

When you're in a surplus, you get into a rhythm. There's a momentum that builds. Especially for me, I would notice that after about six to seven weeks of being in a surplus, a steady, slight surplus, After about six to seven weeks of being in a surplus, a steady, slight surplus, I really start to build up momentum in my training where I'm adding reps every week and I'm feeling strong and have a lot of energy. And maybe even a little bit of a shorter period, which it could be related to glycogen stores have really topped out and they're really just maxed out all the time. But I would suspect that there's something with the nervous system as well, where recovery is going to be at your highest when you're in a surplus. Um, so, you know, I, I don't know exactly what the factors are, but I've seen that. And when you, but it takes a little bit to get going. That's also why I don't recommend that people bolt for a week and cut for a week. Cause you never really get into a rhythm with your bulking where you are

making steady progress and you're not gaining very much body fat. You know, you're gaining a little bit, a little bit, a little bit, but you're, you're gaining just as much muscle and you're seeing a lot of strength gains in the gym. Um, but it takes a little bit to get there. So if you're only bulking for two months, yeah, you're going to experience it. Maybe if you're, maybe you'll have a month of that where you're really starting to get into a groove, but then you're too fat and then you're running into problems where you can't build muscle as effectively when you're fat. And well, I say fat, but you know, once you start getting about, let's say 15, 16%, you can start running into some issues that, that get in the way of muscle growth. It's not that you can't build muscle, but it's, uh, ideally for building

muscle, you'd stay probably in the 10 to 15% or 10 to 16, 17% range. And I'll link an article down below where I explain why. So my brother, he makes that mistake of where he starts getting into a groove, but then he has to cut and then it's cut to take way too long. He doesn't gain really anything in the way of muscle and strength now at this point, because he's been lifting about a year and a half and see, he could get away with this in the beginning. And that's also what kind of messes with people in the beginning. If you're doing some things, right. If you're training, right. If you're eating decently, you can make these mistakes. And he did make these mistakes in the beginning, but it didn't matter because he was building muscle and strength while he was in a

deficit. So he thought like, Hey, whatever, I can just go absurd and enjoy, you know, eat all this food, get fat, and then go into a deficit, feel fine, train hard, get stronger, build muscle, who cares? But now he's in the intermediate stage where you can't do that anymore. You have to be a lot more on point with your diet and you have to make sure that you are not sitting in a slight deficit for long periods of time, or you're going to just get stuck. And the last reason why I enjoy rapid weight loss over a rapid fat loss, or why I recommend rapid fat loss over slow cutting, is the longer you're in a deficit, the more likely you are to just kind of fall off the wagon. And I can use my brother's example again, where it's just not that he doesn't run into any major issues of hunger or cravings,

but it's just a fatigue point where he gets sick of eating the same. He's not, you know, he's not, he's not a person to cook for himself or be creative with his meals or anything. So I think he was eating like Chipotle every day for three months when he was cutting or something. So, um, you just get sick of it. You just start, you want to eat different foods and you know, you start to feel the effects, a little bit of the energy effects and your training, you're getting sick of your training, just kind of being stagnant. And, um, you're more likely to just give up and start eating a bunch again, which is what he does. He cuts for a bit and then he's just like, Oh, whatever I can't do that. I can't take this anymore. So then he starts his reverse diet, which quickly just flies out of control and becomes full on bulk. And, uh, and then it's back into bulk mode and gain fat too fast mode. And then,

you know, be like, well, shit, I guess I got to cut again. So I find that if you're aggressive and you're, and it's, it's easier to really keep your, your discipline in and stay strict in on your numbers and make sure you're doing everything right for shorter periods of time. Like I would prefer to go a hundred percent all in for, you know, two months or three months, then like 30% for, for five, six months for sure. Because the more time you enter into the process, the more chances there are to mess it up basically. So that's more of a psychological point. And some people don't have a problem with that. Some people are, you know, they'll especially a more experienced weightlifters and experienced

dieters that, that are just really grooved in on tracking and planning food intake, and it's just not a big deal. They can, you know, they could be in a slight deficit for a year because they track and plan all their macros anyway, and what's the difference to them if they're eating, you know, it's just numbers. And that's, you know, I guess I'm kind of in that boat, but most people are not so much like that, and that's why I recommend just being more aggressive with it and getting it over with in a sense. And in case you're wondering if being

in a larger deficit, like a 25% deficit is too much and going to cause too much muscle loss and strength loss, I can tell you anecdotally, it's not just with my body, but I've worked with thousands of people at this point and never, never run into that problem once actually. Um, but it's also backed up by, by a bit of research. Um, there's one study in particular, which I'll link down below, which was conducted with, um, it was with sprinters or athletes. I mean, look, yeah, it was, uh, national, international level track and field jumpers and sprinters that, uh, with low levels of body fat around at or around 10%. So they were lean already. And, uh, you had two groups, a 300 calorie deficit and a 700 calorie

deficit on a daily with a high protein diet. And the 750 calorie deficit group obviously lost quite a bit more fat than 300 calorie deficit. This is after four weeks, they're on this diet for four weeks, um, with, uh, very little muscle loss. So you can run a larger deficit. And especially if you are training correctly, you know, you're still hitting heavy weights. You're still pushing to make, make gains. You still try to get stronger, whether you can or can't, you don't just like resign yourself to cutting. So then you get lazy in the gym, train hard, um, high protein diet. You don't go, uh, I don't recommend low carb and I'll, I'll, I'll link an article down below that explains why. So you have a higher carb, higher protein, moderate, lower fat diet.

And you don't kill yourself with cardio, which I'll link an article down below where I talk about how much cardio is too much. And if you do all that, then you can lose quite a bit of fat quite quickly with a larger deficit and, and do totally fine. Not even, you know, no, no negative consequences in terms of body composition or, or, you know, in mild, mild, uh, consequences in terms of performance, you might lose a few reps. You might lose a few pounds on a couple of lifts, but nothing major. And that kind of brings me to a last couple points, um, on how I go about losing fat as quickly as possible. And so I mentioned high protein, high carbohydrate diet, uh, because I'm fairly lean. And when I'm looking, when I'm cutting, I'm wanting to get really lean. I'm eating about 1.1 to 1.2 grams of protein per pound of body weight. And I'll link an article down below to explain why. And my carbs are around one gram per pound and my fats are around 0.2,

0.25, never higher than 0.3 grams per pound. And there's that combination of macros helps preserve muscle, preserve strength, and gives you enough dietary fat for your body to do everything it needs to do and prevent any sort of major hormonal disruptions. I also use different supplements that have been proven to help with fat loss like caffeine, synephrine, yohimbine, green tea extract, and I'll link an article down below where I talk about fat burners and what works and what doesn't and what I've found really actually does make a difference. And when you supplement properly, it actually does make a difference. I would say based on just my experience with my body and how many times I've gained fat and lost fat,

I would say that it's probably about 20% faster when I have my little supplement stack that I run, which is worth it to me. I mean, if that means that instead of eight weeks, I'm going six weeks, hey, that's worth it to me. And none of the supplements are that expensive. So if I'm spending 80 bucks to do that, then that's worth it to me. Also, I lift heavy weights when I'm cutting. I don't go high rep to really bring out definition. All that's all bullshit.

Keep the heavy weight lifting in. Emphasize your heavy compound lifts because you want to be, you want to still be telling your muscles, overloading them. You still want to be, you know, stimulating them. Tell me your body like, Hey, we need these muscles. Don't like, uh, you know, push them. And, and also heavy weightlifting burns, uh, quite a bit of calories, especially in the, the afterburn effect as I kind of hate that phrase because it's so, uh, just overused in, in just bullshit marketing and stuff. But there is, there is a, um, a significant amount of calories that your body's burning

after a heavy weightlifting workout that helps support your weight loss efforts. And last but not least is I do high intensity interval cardio only. I don't do any steady state because sure, steady state burns energy and it can help you lose fat in that way, but high intensity interval cardio burns more fat, period. There's just no question. I'll link an article down below, but it's just been proven beyond a shadow of a doubt in multiple, multiple studies that high intensity interval cardio burns more fat in less time than steady state. And I know people are going to say that, oh, but high intensity, it's so hard on your nervous system and it's going to cause overtraining. No. Again, I've worked with thousands of people and I don't know if I've ever

once had anybody come back to me with my recommended, how I lay it out where I don't know if I've ever once had anybody come back to me with my recommended, how I lay it out where I don't do much cardio. I do maybe an hour and a half a week, never more than two hours a week, but maybe an hour and a half a week of high intensity interval cardio. And that's all I recommend. It boils down to three to four sessions of about 30 minutes or so. And that's it. And then I, I lift weights four to five times a week when I'm cutting as well. And that that's my exercise routine. And my, my weightlifting sessions aren't that long either. It's 45 minutes, never long, never longer than an hour. So I'm not killing myself with exercise. I'm pushing myself, but it's not, you know, it's not the type of routines that you'll see with

fitness competitors where they're talking about doing two hours of cardio a day, plus two hours of weightlifting, plus a large deficit, that's a recipe for disaster. That's muscle loss. That's hormones are going to go out of control. You're going to feel terrible. Like, yeah, you're going to get lean, but you're going to, it's going to be miserable. I'm not into that. And another point that's probably worth, you know, just mentioning with the high, high intensity interval cardio and overtraining and stress in the body is, from what I've seen, the studies that have been used to support those statements, that high intensity is so hard on the body and so hard

in the central nervous system. If you look at the people in those studies, uh, the ones that I've seen were like elite level endurance, uh, elite endurance athletes that are really pushing themselves as hard as they can go. I mean, that's not us. That's not me. I've been doing cardio, high intensity hit cardio regularly for like over a year now. And my cardio is very good. Um, I have very low resting heart rate in the forties and I never really see my heart rate go above one 40 or so. Maybe it makes it to one 50 toward the end of my workouts. Um, and you know, that's, that's me pushing myself but that's not me pushing myself like an elite cyclist you know on an upright bicycle doing 60 second or 45 second just all out sprints like that

guy would crush me so we have to also remember that our version like what we're doing for high intensity interval cardio is not necessary it's not the same as what you'll see in, in, in some studies. There are some studies out there that again, support it, uh, uh, you know, in terms of, of being more effective for fat loss, but the studies that are conducted with just more average type people, um, the routines are not as intense. They're just not pushing themselves as hard as the, as the high level athletes because they can't. So that's it for the rapid weight loss versus slow cutting. I highly recommend that you try being more aggressive with it if you've been a bit wary of larger deficits or if you've kind of, you know, always just thought slow cutting was the way to go.

Try the more aggressive approach and I think you're going to be happy with the results and you're going to find it just an overall more enjoyable experience. So let's get to this next topic here. And that is the subject of the people you have around you and how it affects you. So let me check out John's email here. See if there's anything else I don't want to miss. So he's asking if I have anything to contribute in regards to maintaining my habits based on, because I write about habits, I talk about habits. I'm a very routine kind of habit-based person. I try to ritualize a lot of the things in my life so I don't have to think about, including food. I don't want to be thinking every meal what I'm going to eat. I have too many things to do. And I don't want to be thinking, I want to take out as much random motion out of my life as possible. So that means that every day

I have an alarm that I wake up at a certain time, 6.15. And then I do some blog reading in the morning when I'm like, if I'm in the bathroom or just getting ready and I'm at the gym by a certain time, I'm at a gym by a certain time. And sure it fluctuates 10 or 15 minutes, but I'm here at the office a certain time. I leave at a certain time. I have dinner in certain, certain time. I do my cardio a certain time. Everything I try to keep as regimented as possible because it actually takes my attention off things. And I know, and I've been doing it enough now where I know that I'm going to, there's no like, Oh, I hope I wake up on time to get to the gym. No, like I can't remember. Maybe the last time I actually missed the gym because of something like that

was when my son was younger and I slept like two hours and I just thought like, this is my workout is going to be terrible. What's the point? I might as well sleep more and then work out later kind of thing. But if it's not like act of God kind of thing, I'm up and there's just no question. I'm going to be at the gym by that time and I'm going to do my thing and I'm going to be at the office by this time and I'm going to do my thing and I'm going to be at the office by this time. And I don't get into like bargaining with myself and, you know, whatever kind of if you have the voices or whatever that try to say, hey, maybe you should do this or maybe, you know, you need a bit more sleep or start making excuses for you and start justifying your whatever.

I guess I've I've beaten them into submission. They just don't even try because they know that there's just no way. They're not going to take me off my routine. So I'm big on habits and big on routines. So John's asking if maintaining my habits, if surrounding myself with the right people is a part of that. And then what do I do if I feel that there are no people around me who embody these kinds of qualities? Uh, do I, if I feel like the, or if I feel like kind of like the, my,

my environment matches that and that kind of supports me. Um, or if I just kind of feel alone and I have to just do it all myself and you know, I have no one else to no external support. myself and, you know, I have no one else to, no external support. And, uh, you know, this is a good point. Um, good, good, good questions because honestly, I, I don't hold myself up on a pedestal. Um, and I am very much, um, I, I try to, it's not just a point of, of, I guess it's maybe a point of modesty, but it's more a point of, um, I think of, I think of, uh, meditations from, from Marcus Aurelius where it's more a point of, I don't, I'm not so presumptuous to think that, uh, what I'm doing, like that I'm so special and that every, that people should look up to me. And, you know, in however many years I'm going

to be dead and gone and everything that I've done, maybe it will live on, maybe not. But at some point, people that are going to praise me or denounce me, they're gone too and everything. It's all – so I'm not – I wouldn't say – my only gripe with Stoic kind of philosophy is it can be a bit apathetic and a bit pessimistic, but there are a lot of elements of it that I like in just not being too – staying grounded. And so with that said, I basically – I would love to be – I would love to have a network of people that I felt were like me. And I do know some people, successful business people mainly, that live in a very similar way. They're very similar. They don't sleep that much. They wake up early.

They do exercise. They're always working. They're always thinking about their business. Or if it's not business, it could be, you know, their work. It could be acting, uh, you know, a couple of actors like that or, um, sports players or whatever. And, but I don't, I guess it's, uh, it's something that I wouldn't say that like, I feel bad about it, but I wish that I had more of a network of people like that because I don't, I don't feel like I have a have the support of a peer group.

I have myself essentially and I do my thing. And my wife supports me a lot in that she handles a lot of stuff, home stuff and kid stuff so I can work. And I do take time, family time obviously, but she's very good in handling our son Lennox and just giving me the time and space that I need to do my thing. And so that's very cool. But I don't have much in the way of like, you know, I have a small circle of friends that I don't see that often. I mean, mainly my friends are the guys that work with me. And, you know, like John says in email, he says here that he kind of feels like the answer is just suck it up and become who you want. And yeah, I mean, he's saying that, you know, he can't find enough media pertaining to the type of person he wants to be. He can read books, he can watch video logs and read more books and look up articles and, you know,

be on forums and stuff. But he says that he just feels like it's not the same as being surrounded by people who think the same way or, or, uh, being in a group that kind of buzzes with the energy motivation. Yeah. I, you know, I, I, in a, in one way it'd be cool if I had that. Uh, but I don't, so I don't, you know, I don't look to, I don't really look to external factors for motivation either. I guess, uh, I've internalized a lot of that by now where I just have an ambition or I have a drive to do stuff. And it's not, it's not just to make money. If I, if I were just driven by money, I would probably work three hours a day. And, you know, not that I'm like, Oh, rich or something like that. But if I, I, I make more money than I need to live the lifestyle that I have right now, for sure. And, you know, I could significantly upgrade that lifestyle if I wanted to and, and still just be fine. So, um, you know, I could significantly upgrade that lifestyle if I wanted to and,

and still just be fine. So, um, you know, it's not a money thing for me. It's that I just like to do stuff. I like to be engaged in actions that have purpose. I can't just sit around and watch TV every night. It's just, I get bored. I just sit there and I'm like, what am I doing? I'm just, I can't even enjoy this. Um, I do, you know, I, I do enjoy like good movies and good TV shows, but it's just in moderation. I watch that stuff when I'm doing my cardio, like my recommendations on my cool stuff. I watch all that stuff. It's just over time. And you know, I do my little 25 minute cardio sessions a few days a week. So it essentially what it boils down to is I'm watching like an hour, hour and a half a week, and maybe I'll watch a movie with my wife on the weekend kind of thing. And so in those small amounts, it's great. Um, but you

know, that's just the way I am. And I'm just driven. I like to, you know, I enjoy my work and I like to, to, to get things done and create things and get them out there. And just for a sake of, I don't know, personal, I don't even care to brag to people about it or get praise from people. I just like to do it. So that's what I do. It's not, it's just my life. It's not like, oh, I have my work and then I have my other stuff. It's just kind of like it all just kind of blends together basically. And, you know, I guess it's also probably worth saying that another thing that I don't do is I don't look to other people for, uh, I don't look to other people for inspiration

much, really. I mean, I do read a lot of books and I do find, um, a lot of that stuff, uh, enlightening and insightful, but I'm not looking to other people for, for motivation to get going or do things. And I'm definitely not looking to other people for excuses or justifiers for failures or for, you know, like, again, not to sound arrogant or whatever, but I definitely do not want to live like the average person. I don't want their type of life. I don't, you know, from just happiness, from drive, from purpose, from money, uh, the overall experience, not interested in that. So when I'm looking to how normal people are living, like, yes, it's, it's normal to work 40 hours a week or, or really, I mean, let's face it. Most people actually work probably 20 hours a week and the rest of the time is digging around the internet

and whatever. And, and then it's normal to do that. It's normal to watch a bunch of TV. It's normal to, you know, want to spend a bunch of time with friends and all that stuff. Okay. But normal also, when you take a look at the overall life, a normal kind of life would be depressing to me. So, you know, my actions are, are, and how I live is, is not normal. And that's just the way it is. So, um, I, I say that is because I know people that feel like they should be like they have the potential maybe to be more than normal and they should be doing more than normal. But they get too caught up in their head and then just being normal and in feeling comfortable in, you know, being a part of the herd in a sense, like, uh, where they, to themselves, they can justify their actions because everyone else is doing it. And that's just normal. And that dude, you know, Mike, oh, he's, he's, you know, just, uh, who knows? He's not even human. He just, uh, you know, robotically goes through his life and that's all

he does is work. And so, um, that I just don't, you know, I don't look to other people to really like judge my doing things correct or doing things incorrectly. I look to what I want to do and what is that going to take? I don't care what other people are doing. I just want to know what's my goal. What am I going for? And realistically, what's that going to take? How much effort is that going to take? How much time is that going to take? What is it going to take? And I look at it more like that. And I always try to overshoot it and think that it's going to be harder than I think. It's going to take more work than I think. So I better be ready for that. And I better plan for that. Because that can become demotivating itself. If you, if you're a habitual underestimator of effort and time, then it can be

quite demotivating when you think, Oh, that should be banged out. That shouldn't take me more than, you know, a hundred hours. And then you're 300 hours in and you're like, what the hell? I mean, I had that experience recently, uh, learning, trying to learn German. Uh, my wife's German. I wanted to learn a language. I thought that three, 400 hours would be enough to achieve the level of fluency that I wanted. I did that. I did, you know, all of Pimsleur's courses and one or two others as well. And yeah, I was obviously, I learned a lot, but my vocabulary was crap. I wasn't at the point of fluency that I wanted to be at at all. And I was pretty annoyed about it because I was putting a lot of time into it. And that's time that I could be spending on reading books or doing other activities that have value as well.

So I try not to make those mistakes. I try to assume that things are always going to be harder and take longer. And just myself, except that, that I'm going to have to work really hard. There's no way around that. There's no trying to slide by or bullshit my way through it or, you know, half-assed things, cut corners, make excuses. Why, you know, Oh, well that, you know, that part of it, I don't really have to do that. I'll just do these little parts. I try to really just be honest with myself and just go look at it and go, what's that going to take? Uh, am I willing to do that? Or really like, what's that going to take? Okay. How much more should I add to that to really make it realistic? Okay. Am I ready for that? Am I, is that what I'm ready to

do? All right, good. And then do it. So basically, I mean, just to just kind of close on John's question is I think it's great if you can be surrounded by the right people. I think it's harder. I think it's quite hard to find that. But then again, I'm not much of a networker. You know, it's probably something I need to get better at or put more attention on really, because it would help. But I've always just kind of been a person to just beyond consider that I have. Yeah, I'm going to get help along the way. I'm going to get support along the way. But ultimately, it's just going to be me pushing hard, working hard. And that's what it's going to boil down to. And, uh, you know, I, as a, I wouldn't say like as a boss or whatever, I'm also, I just, I'm, I'm not really into trying to motivate people. And I don't think that you can even really do much in the way of motivating

people or if somebody needs to be continually motivated, that's just a person that's just not going to do very well. I mean, the one for one, the most successful people I know were all strongly motivated internally. They didn't require external motivation. They didn't require pep talks and, you know, yeah, sure, some things here and there and they run into problems and they just get through it though. They're just tough individuals. They're tough, driven individuals that are – when they fail, they don't get all hard on themselves and they just see it as a step along the way and they push through it and they show up every day and they work just as hard.

Whether they feel like working or not, that doesn't dictate anything. They don't allow their emotions to then change their routines or change what they need to, what they know needs to get done. They just do it. And I guess I've kind of always been that way and things that I, that I want to do. And maybe I'm just fortunate in that way, but I think it can be cultivated though as well, because it is just a, it's a mentality. And I think that people can definitely, you can, the probably the most powerful thing you can do is change your mind about things. And I think that people can definitely, probably the most powerful thing you can do is change your mind about things. And I think that this is something that can be learned. So hopefully that my rambling is of any help.

I hope you enjoyed that. And I'm going to wrap up the podcast here so it doesn't get too long. And I will see you next week. 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. 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.