Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - How Fernando Lost 55 Pounds and Fixed His Relationship With Food

Episode Date: January 4, 2023

In this podcast, I interview Fernando, who read my book Bigger Leaner Stronger and joined my one-on-one coaching program to take his health into his own hands, lose over 55 pounds, and get leaner and stronger than ever before. The improvements to his physique are obvious, but more importantly, Fernando built a more resilient body that made him capable of not only playing with his kids, but taking up mountain biking and avoiding injury. And what he learned about nutrition not only fixed his relationship with food, but allows him to adjust his diet to his needs and get results on command. This is his story. Before finding my work, Fernando was over 230 pounds, sedentary, and so out of shape that he couldn’t play with his kids. That was the trigger that motivated him to finally make a change. He read my book Bigger Leaner Stronger and joined my coaching program, and over the next year, made dramatic improvements to his physique, health, and mindset. In this interview, Fernando and I chat about . . . - How he fixed his relationship with food - How he strategized cheat meals to not derail his progress - became in control of his health - How he used his fitness not only to avoid previous everyday pains, but avoid future injuries - How he used fitness to take up a new, active hobby, not just to look good - Trusting the process, enjoying the journey, and learning to be good enough (not perfect) - And more . . . So if you’re looking for a jolt of inspiration and like motivational stories, definitely listen to this episode. Timestamps: 0:00 - Legion VIP One-on-One Coaching: https://www.muscleforlife.show/vip 12:29 - When did you decide to make a change? 14:29 - What were your numbers after following Bigger Leaner Stronger and joining our coaching program? 20:11 - What’s your weekly workout routine? 22:46 - How did my program change your relationship with food? 32:20 - How did you avoid hunger when you were cutting? 39:13 - Did you have any cheat meals? 42:22 - Did anything surprise you with your transformation? 51:42 - Is there anything else you’d like to add? Mentioned on the show: Legion VIP One-on-One Coaching: https://www.muscleforlife.show/vip

Hello, hello, and welcome to another episode of Muscle for Life. I am your host, Mike Matthews. Thank you for joining me today for another installment in my success story series of episodes where I talk to people who have used my work. Sometimes they have read a book. Sometimes they have signed up for my one-on-one coaching. Sometimes they've just read articles and listened to podcasts and used a book or an article podcast coaching to drastically improve their fitness and their health. And in many cases, many aspects of their life, as anyone who has gone through a transformation of their own knows that once you start improving your fitness, improving your health, once you start improving your

body composition, you start exercising regularly, eating well, you can't help but also improve your mental health and your ambition and your relationships and your work and so on and so on. And so in this episode, I talk with Fernando, who read my book, Bigger, Leaner, Stronger, in this episode, I talk with Fernando, who read my book, Bigger, Leaner, Stronger, and then signed up for my one-on-one coaching program. And he lost over 55 pounds and he fixed his relationship with food, which is a huge achievement for not just improving your body composition and improving your health, but maintaining it. Because of course the goal is not to just achieve a certain body composition or a certain level of health.

It is then to maintain that or something like that indefinitely. And developing a healthy relationship with food is really an underrated form of self-mastery, I think. But maybe that's a fodder for another episode. And anyway, coming back to Fernando, he made a lot of very obvious improvements to his physique, but he also was then able to enjoy playing with his kids more. He took up mountain biking, something that he always wanted to do or wanted to do for some time, but just wasn't fit enough

to do it. So he started doing that and he has avoided injury. He has taken some falls in his mountain biking that he did not get hurt because of his fitness, because he's strong. If he did not do his strength training, he is certain that he would have had some pretty bad injuries and the strength training has prevented that. And he has also, again, found a way to eat the foods that he likes on a schedule that he likes that allows him to maintain the body composition and the health that he likes. And before Fernando found my work, he was over 230 pounds. He was sedentary. He couldn't even play with his kids. And so it's a pretty cool story. At least I find it fulfilling because this is the work that I do that matters the most. It's even why I started Legion. I started Legion not just to sell supplements and to make money, but actually to create high quality supplements that do work exactly as they are promoted. So that's creating good formulations, you know, science-backed

ingredients, science-backed doses, natural ingredients, no artificial ingredients that might impair health, especially if you eat them every day forever. Also, though, to create good educational material and to get people who are initially only interested in supplements to get interested in learning, reading articles, listening to podcasts, reading books, because what they do in the kitchen, in in learning, reading articles, listening to podcasts, reading books, because what they do in the kitchen, in the gym, of course, is far more important than what pills, powders, or potions they swallow, no matter how effective those pills, powders, and potions are, because natural supplements are just supplementary by nature. You don't need any to achieve your health and fitness goals, although

some can help. And if you have the budget and the inclination, I think it's worth considering at least taking some like a protein powder, a good multivitamin, a fish oil, and so on. But again, you don't have to. And so I started Legion primarily to just find a way to get more people into my educational work. Some people are out there looking for books and articles and podcasts. Okay, I have stuff that they can find and they can read my books and articles and listen to my podcast. But there are many people out there who are not looking for educational material. They're just looking for quick fixes. Sometimes they're just looking for a supplement, something they can take that they hope will help them lose fat

faster. For example, okay, I have a couple of products that can help you lose fat at least a little bit faster. But of course, what is most important is that you understand energy balance and macronutrient balance. Well, how do you get that person who just wants the supplement to care about energy balance and macronutrient balance? You have to get them into your orbit and then you have to educate them. You have to show them and you have to get them to understand that supplements are supplementary. And so anyway, I'm kind of just rambling here, but I like these episodes. I like hearing the impact that my work is having and I like sharing them with you, the listener, because I hear from many people who find they get inspiration from these episodes because they often see a little

bit of themselves in this case, Fernando. And they think, hey, Fernando sounds kind of like me. I'm out of shape. And, you know, I resonate with this guy. He seems to think like me. And if he can do it, why can't I do it? So anyway, I hope you like this episode. And thanks again for listening. But first, how would you like to know a little secret that will help you get into the best shape of your life? Here it is. The business model for my VIP coaching service sucks. Boom, mic drop. And what in the fiddly frack am I talking about? Well, while most coaching businesses try to keep their clients around for as long as possible, I take a different approach.

You see, my team and I, we don't just help you build your best body ever. I mean, we do that. We figure out your calories and macros, and we create custom diet and training plans based on your goals and your circumstances. And we make adjustments depending on how your body responds. And we help you ingrain the right eating and exercise habits so you can develop a healthy and a sustainable relationship with food and training and more.

But then there's the kicker. Because once you are thrilled with your results, we ask you to fire us. Seriously, you've heard the phrase, give a man a fish and you feed him for a day, teach him to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. Well, that summarizes how my one-on-one coaching service works. And that's why it doesn't make nearly as much coin as it could. But I'm okay with that because my mission is not to just help you gain muscle and lose fat. It's to give you the tools and to give you the know-how that you need to forge ahead in your fitness without me.

So dig this. When you sign up for my coaching, we don't just take you by the hand and walk you through the entire process of building a body you can be proud of. We also teach you the all important whys behind the hows, the key principles, and the key techniques you need to understand to become your own coach. And the best part, it only takes 90 days. So instead of going it alone this year, why not try something different? Head over to muscleforlife.show slash VIP. That is muscleforlife.show slash VIP and schedule your free consultation call now. And let's see if my one-on-one coaching service is right for you. Hello, Fernando. Nice to meet you. Great to be here. Thank you for having me.

Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for taking the time to come and share your story. A good follow-up. Enrique, your buddy, is the last one of these episodes that I recorded. So here we are, Small World. Yeah, it's awesome. Enrique is an amazing friend of mine. I'm grateful to him for having introduced me to your book and to your stuff. And he's been a great partner in this journey. We live in different countries, so we kind of had our own journeys, different stories. But in the end, your book and your method really is at the bottom of it. So grateful to you and to him. is at the bottom of it. So grateful to you and to him. Yeah, absolutely. And for, for people listening who like me and my work, sometimes people will ask, Hey, what can I do to, is there

anything I can do to thank you or, you know, support you? And, and just, just this word of mouth. That's what I always say. Like that helps the most, just telling somebody about how my work has helped or if somebody you know with fitness a lot of times people in our orbits they see the changes happening and and they want to know what are you doing and it's also easy to say i'm basically just doing this if you just read this book like this will give you everything that you need. So I appreciate any and all word of mouth. It really is the most valuable type of promotion that any sort of product and service can get. Yeah, of course. And I recommended your stuff to a lot of people. Some people have taken it to heart and have it be helpful as it was to me and others know, you know, so I think at the bottom of it, it's,

it's kind of like where you are mentally and your, your, your attitude and your motivation, your, your kind of, uh, willingness to make, uh, to make changes in your life and, and different people are in different stages in their lives. So to me, this really came at the right time and, and, and the right advice And it was just transformational. Yeah. And that's a great point on the timing. It can be discouraging to try to help people and then see them just ignore your advice and then fall flat on their face and then change nothing. It can be hard to understand, especially if you've already done what they say they want to do or are trying to do. And yet they won't just follow your instructions. So I get it. I get the

frustration, but to just your comment, a lot of the times it is just timing. They're just not ready for what you have to offer and not ready for your advice yet. And so it can, especially if this is somebody who's close to you, it can be hard to stay patient when again, the problem seems so simple to you because you've already solved it. And you're like, why don't you just press this button and then press this button and then this one, and the problem goes away. I don't get it. Do you want the problem or do you not want the problem? And I've seen this now, I've been doing this for 10 years now. 10 years ago is when I wrote the first edition of Bigger, Leaner, Stronger. And my email inbox is over, I think, 200,000

emails sent and received. And I guess some of that's probably spam, but a lot of those are actual conversations. And so I've seen though, with people, if they even stayed kind of loosely connected, or if at least they got some good advice, maybe they didn't really follow it. Then there's a time and sometimes it is because of something bad happens in their life. But there's a point where then they really decide, it's just not acceptable to have this problem anymore. It's not acceptable to not achieve this goal anymore. And then maybe it was like two years ago, somebody recommended one of my books or something. And then they decide, I remember Fernando, he did really well. And he said, I should read this book. I never really did, or I did. And I didn't really do anything with it. Now I'm going to take it

seriously. And so that stuff happens, even though we might not be aware of it. So, you know, that's something at least that I remind myself. two years old, two, three years old, I had gotten to the point where I was really fat. I was, I was about 240 pounds, probably upwards of 30% body fat. By the end, you know, my best numbers, I was able to get down to 170 at around nine, 10% body fat. So when I wasn't really able to keep up with my kids and play with my kids. And then I knew there was an issue because in my family, a lot of my family members battle with being overweight and with a really toxic relationship with food. I realized that I needed to make a change. And also, back in my college make, to make a change. And I also, I was, you know,

back in my college days, I was an athlete. I, I played a college sports. I played high school sports competitively. I was a squash player. You know, I knew that eventually I had to get my act together. And so I really had to hit bottom certain catalysts, obviously with the kids, pictures that I saw of myself, you know, but, you know, I also have to mention, you know, my cousin who went through a similar transformation, he first started talking to me about, this was before I read your book. So when I read your book, it really made a click, It started talking to me about macros and energy balance, the virtue also of strength training and building muscle, the whole idea of body recomp rather than

just fat loss. And so when Enrique gave me your book, it just immediately made sense, and it struck a chord. And I was in the right moment of my life to really make a change. And so I did the program just from the book by myself for about a year. I didn't really keep track of numbers, but visually I had a lot of progress, probably lost 20, 30 pounds doing that and brought my strength numbers up from pretty much zero to being able to do some decent squat numbers, some decent bed lifts and bench press. And then when the pandemic came around, I started kind of losing my discipline again. And we got locked up and I started gaining of losing my discipline again, and we got locked up, and I started gaining weight again. And that's when I decided, you know, after two months of, you know, going in the wrong direction, I said, you know, this is the right moment to pull the trigger on the coaching program. So I signed up. I went online and I bought my first piece of home gym equipment, which was pretty much a bench.

And one of these like department store benches with a small barbell and up to, I think it's, I still have it, about 105 pounds of plates. And that's what I started with. And that was enough to get me to a place. And then eventually I started buying more. I got a real barbell. I got a better squat rack with, with some bigger plates and some dumbbells. And that's pretty much my, my go-to so that I could go back to enjoying playing sports. And, you know, I knew that lifting weights and strength training was not my end game. It was getting in shape so that I could, you know, enjoy just obviously the health benefits and being healthier and looking better, but also getting back onto squash specifically. And so I started enjoying that again. I wouldn't do the high intensity part of the program. I would play squash instead. And that really helped me sort of catalyze the weight loss and the fat loss. And, you know, fast forward to today, I, you know, interestingly enough, I went on a vacation maybe a year and a half ago to Colorado and I picked up a mountain bike and I fell in love with mountain biking.

And now everything that I did with Legion and, you know, these last three years, three, four years just gave me an amazing base. And I'm really, really enjoying mountain biking. And my training has kind of shifted towards a more cycling-focused training, but I wouldn't be enjoying it as much as I am now if I didn't have the base and the fitness that I gained through your program. And the understanding of how these things work to how body composition works and how muscle growth works and how strength gain works. And it's fun to hear people that started with just pure strength training and then were able to kind of parlay that into other activities that are more fun. And I understand like even, even myself,

strength training is something that, you know, I enjoy training, but I don't enjoy it as much as some of the people in the gym. I wish like they love it. It is every workout. I see them there, you know, I have four days a week. I see them there all the time and they are really, for the most part, having fun in their training. And for me, I don't get the same level of enjoyment out of strength training. It's something that I will always do for my own personal health and well-being. And it's also part of my job. But I understand, let's say it weren't part of my job. And I could definitely, although I suppose, actually, if I think about it, if there was

another activity, say there was another activity, say it was mountain biking, something physical that I wanted to get into that is going to put a lot of demand on my body, I would have no problem bringing my strength training down to one or two workouts per week. And for people listening, you should know that you can maintain all of your muscle and a lot of your strength, certainly with two workouts per week. It could be two full body workouts. It could be an upper, lower, probably be one of those. It doesn't really matter, I guess, just be personal preference. Even possibly one full body workout per week, it might be a 60 or 70 minute, probably no more than an 80 or 90 minute, but it might be a little bit of a longer workout, but just one strength training workout per week is enough to change your physique markedly if you're new or to maintain

a really good physique, maintain a very above average amount of muscle and strength, just one workout per week. And now you have a lot more time and you could say like recovery capacity to give to squash or to give to mountain biking. And then maybe there's a point in the future where you're like, you know, maybe you're not mountain biking as much anymore for whatever reason. And then you're like, all right, I want to go from my one or two strength training workouts. I want to go back up to four or five, just cause or three or whatever. And, you know, so I think that that personal process of learning for you, what is the optimal approach is, is important and don't get sucked into just what you see on

Instagram, people training seven days per week and, you know, two hour workouts and thinking that if you're not doing that, you're not really trying or you're barely trying if you're not training six days per week. That mentality is ridiculous. So that's where that's kind of where I'm at right now that, you know, what you said, I'm doing two, I try to get in two good weight workouts. And then I'm doing three, four, sometimes even five, you know, rides, or cycling workouts in the week because I'm, three, four, sometimes even five, you know, rides or cycling workouts in the week. Because I'm, you know, with a couple of friends, we sign up to these like marathon. We just did one in Guatemala. That's a three day, a three day stage race. Like these, these challenges that I

never, you know, visualize myself being able to do like endurance challenges and obviously changing kind of the priority of the fitness side of things one of my priorities is i don't want to lose kind of the physique that i that i gained through um the work that i did you don't you don't want to probably look like a cyclist at least what most people when they think of cyclists yeah that's exactly right i don't want to look like a psych i don't care you know because i'm not doing this professionally i do this for fun so i don't want to look like a cyclist i like how i looked before so i i'm doing those two workouts a week and and and really i'm keeping my uh i've dropped a little bit in numbers which is to be expected i mean there's's the reduction in training volume,

but then there also is the addition of all of the mountain biking and there's a lot of recovery and there's a specificity to training that's important. Like if you are now putting a lot of endurance demands on your muscles, it's gonna drive adaptations more in that direction as opposed to the power, the strength and power

that maybe you were used to previously. Exactly. And also on the nutrition side, I think what you teach in your book and in your content, I really think it should, because for me, it was really like nutrition 101. I really think with my kids, I'm trying to teach them about macros

and about energy balance in the house because obviously they're not being taught that in school, but I think it should be of school curriculums. And I've had this discussion with friends and it's really, we dedicate so much time in learning different things throughout our lives. And something so important as nutrition is what we put in our body, the energy, you know, that our body needs and how it works and the science behind it. Like, it should be, I think, a reprioritization of that in the way the school systems work. Number one, I think it changed my

relationship with food, you know, because I know and measuring, I think, measuring your food for a certain period of time. I tell people when they either they've asked me or they've seen me, you know, like, they're like, what are you doing? Like, that's ridiculous. And, you know, first of all i don't do this all the time it goes in phases and in periods there's an expression in business that i translate to this it's like you don't manage what you don't measure and just taking the time the tediousness of you know measuring your food and going back to your original question, like what was I eating? Most of the time I was cutting, right? I was pretty much using your method to kind of hack my hunger because, and I heard you talk with Enrique in your podcast, and I've heard you say this before, and I am the

opposite as you. My relationship with food was like, I joke around with my wife and friends, with food was like, I joke around with my wife and friends, I'll always be a fat soul. Like, I love to eat and I have, you know, I'm always hungry. And so just knowing what the different foods that you put on your plate or that you get served at a restaurant or that come in a bag and you can read a nutritional label and know what it's telling you it really made me change and for the better my relationship with food like i can now enjoy food guilt-free and i can have a nice meal and i know i'm going to have and i can you know organize myself around it or even on a vacation i can just kind of let loose and i know exactly what I need to do to kind of go back in the right path. So and, you know, for me, I didn't have like a set meal plan, especially when I was in the coaching program and doing a cut.

I was, you know, managing 15, 20 percent deficit with some macro targets. It also kind of taught me how to cook. I use your book, your Shredded Chef book, which has some really cool ideas in there. People who like to cook, I would see my plate and sometimes I have a little coffee scale because I like to drink pour over coffee. My method was I would sit at the lunch table or dinner table with my wife and my kids with my scale and I would just take things and weigh it. Obviously, whomever cooked it, I asked not to cook with fats, with like butter or too

much olive oil if they did to let me know. That's actually one of the most important things that I try to explain to people. And it's still mind-boggling to me like how much misinformation there is around olive oil and fats in general. Like just the idea of like, you know, one gram of fat having nine calories and one gram of carb versus protein having between three and four calories and understanding which foods had fat and which not. That to me, when I really understood that, that really helped me hack nutrition because I was never hungry. I was cutting, and because of this reshifting of the priorities in your plate to higher protein, lower fat, and good amount of carbs, I was able to prolong my caloric deficit the workouts and everything. It's just, you know, learning nutrition and being able to really understand it and have that, you know, help me transform my relationship with food. And some people might be surprised to hear that, that you're talking

about weighing food. And there's some people will, I'm thinking of some interactions I've had on Twitter, right? Where I've even made jokes like, okay, people will say if you're baking and you're weighing all the ingredients in the recipe, like, yeah, of course that's, that's smart baking. Otherwise you don't get the result you want. But if you're cutting and you're weighing your foods to get the result you want, oh no, no, that's, that's disordered eating. No, just because some people with eating disorders are very neurotic about their calories and weighing everything, and they have weird rituals that they go through every day, that doesn't mean that weighing your food equals eating disorder, or even that weighing your food is going to

give you an eating disorder. Now, commenting on kids, it's not something I would recommend that you have your kids do. I even wrote a little essay on this recently. Research shows that that's not a good idea to encourage kids to get into weighing food for obvious reasons. Also, with kids' calories and mac's, it's fine to understand these things, but it's better to, to just encourage kids to eat a lot of nutritious foods and to eat to the point of satisfaction. Cause especially with teenagers, I'll get teenagers reaching out to me, usually girls, but sometimes guys who like teenage boys who want abs and they think maybe they can look like a 20 year old at 15. They don't realize that it doesn't work like that. But, you know, I don't recommend teenagers get into counting calories.

And again, focus on to your point, focus on creating a healthy relationship with food when you're young. And then hopefully you don't run into a lot of the problems that people run into. Yeah. And just to be clear, I don't encourage my kids to to weigh their food. And I explained to them, this is a phase that I'm going through. I'm on this challenge because I did the 90 days. So I told them I'm on this 90 day challenge. And what I do teach them is, you know, the composition of the nutrients. So about, you know, I asked them, what are the three macronutrients in food? What are the three macronutrients in food? No, and that's, I mean, to your point, that's just basic education stuff they should be learning in school. Because as we know, I mean, I remember back when I first learned about energy balance

and I had a hard time believing it initially because I had read so many things in bodybuilding magazines and heard so many things about what drives fat loss, what does not drive fat loss, what you have to do to lose fat. And once I understood a true axiom here, we have energy balance, and then saw it actually in action. I mean, you remember, it's like an epiphany. You realize that, oh, it really actually is this simple. That's all there is to it. And the same thing with macronutrients. When you understand that, oh, okay, not all calories are equal. These calories

from protein do different things in the body than carbs and fat. These principles form the bedrock of nutrition. And so when you don't understand that, or worse, is when you have been taught incorrect principles. And so now your assumptions about how your metabolism works and how body composition works are all wrong. It makes it very difficult, if not impossible, to achieve the results you want and maintain them. Because the goal is not just to reach a body composition one time. It's to reach it and then maintain your optimal, whatever that is, but maintain your desired body composition for the rest of your life. And that's exactly why I'm so grateful for the work that you do because it really teaches you to fish in a way. It makes it sustainable. Like I know now that I can easily take a month off, even if I go on a long trip. And I know exactly what to do to get back on a

healthy. Because the way I see it is just like, you want to be in a tendency and an ascending tendency towards better habits. And you might have some bumps in the road, some ups and downs. That's, that's what I'm after. And I think, you know, what you sell on like, you know, people, and I stuck to the program longer than the three months, just because also like Enrique, I like the accountability side of things with the coach, but it's not because I had to. And now I don't know, I'm not in the program and I know exactly what to do to, uh, if, like you said, if I stop, if I stop cycling, if I want to, you know, I just know how to, how to build my,

my plan, my, my plan around nutrition and nutrition on cycling is completely different. And the basis you gave me, this is a parentheses is like really helped me understand why it's different. Also, it's, you know, you're burning a lot more calories and because your body's constantly on. And so my rate goes up substantially, but yeah, it's sustainable and it gives you control over your lifestyle. Hey there, if you are hearing this, you are still listening, which is awesome. Thank you. And if you are enjoying this podcast or if you just like my podcast in general and you are getting at least something out of it, would you mind sharing it with a friend or a loved one or a not so loved one even who might want to learn something new? Word of mouth helps really bigly in growing the show.

So if you think of someone who might like this episode or another one, please do tell them about it. You mentioned when you were cutting that you were able to work it out so you weren't hungry. I wanted to come back to that and get specifically what you were eating, when you were eating, when you were eating your larger meals versus smaller meals. Just because, honestly, that's probably like 80% of succeeding in cutting is just not being hungry. Because the more hunger somebody experiences, the less successful they are. Even people who are gritty and who are disciplined, hunger is a primal urge that we can only say no to so many times before we just have to start saying yes. And so I'm curious what you did. So for me, it was really easy to not have breakfast. I really enjoy my coffee in the

morning and I have a coffee routine where I make my pour over Salvadorian, some specialty Salvadorian beans. And it's not hard not to eat in the morning. I don't get hungry in the morning, so I can just kind of go all the way to lunch. So lunch is really my biggest meal of the day. So my 20% cut was at around 1,800, 1,900 calories, at around 1,800, 1,900 calories, and so I would leave those for lunch and dinner. So my, call it 40, 50 grams of fat that were in that meal plan

were super sacred to me because I know fat is kind of what makes food so savory. So whether it's from a protein source or elsewhere, you know, I would make sure I was, I was really hitting those, hitting those numbers and also work throws, you know, challenges in the meal plan. I also knew when I was out of the house, cause when I'm in the house, it's much easier because I can meal plan. I have my scale and I can really be very disciplined around that. But also having your kind of go-tos when you're out of the house, when I had to have lunch outside, a nice rotisserie chicken meal, that was a go-to meal that really made me feel like I was having a nice full meal. I would clock it in at 900 calories, 1,000 calories with some side of veggies, like half a chicken, like a half a rotisserie chicken. really full. And then like Subway, for example, I knew exactly what sub I could, you know, I could eat in the size. I could even eat the big one, right? As long as I constructed it properly. And that would fit in my meal plan. So understanding the concepts and also knowing

the ingredients made me be able to be flexible, right? And deal with life. But yeah, in general, I skip breakfast and just my entire budget would be lunch and dinner. And I would leave a little bit of a space for a snack, like a late night snack. I would budget my chocolate at night, right? Like a, like, like a couple of, a couple of, uh, of, of bites out of, uh, out of a chocolate bar, right. Or, or, or a little ball of, uh, of ice cream just to kind of get that craving, craving out. So that's really what, what I was doing In January, probably going to do a two-month cut. I want to get back down to 10%, get my power-to-weight ratio for cycling up.

It's tough when you're cycling because you don't want to, you know, when you're on the bike, you don't want to be on a diet because you also need to be fueled for the rides and for the training. So that's going to be an interesting challenge. Yeah. And then the wild fluctuations, the energy expenditure make it a little bit trickier too, as you know, where you're burning thousands of calories on one day and then thousands of calories less the next day because you're not biking on that day. As you know, you just have to get a little bit more detailed with your meal plan. You have to know, okay, on your cycling days, where are you going to get those extra couple thousand calories? Because you don't want to end the day in a 2000 calorie deficit. You're not going to be feeling good if you're doing that too

often. Yeah, exactly. The timing of it, the timing of it is, is, is important. And also, you know, considering when, when you do those two, three hour rides, I have to be taking in carbs while on the ride, right. Um, doing those rides, because if not, you'll just, you can just bonk and not have a good time. That'll be interesting. But yeah, I feel like all the work that I did with the coaches at Legion and the knowledge that I gained through your books is really a fantastic base, obviously for having a healthier lifestyle. But in my case, I view myself as an amateur athlete. So it also works for that. You'll have to play around with a couple of approaches and see what works best for you. But something that I know does work well for many people who are really into endurance training is on those really high calorie days, those are usually around maintenance calories. They're not really actually even trying to be in a deficit on those days.

And then on rest days is when they're in a deficit. And sometimes they'll even be a little bit aggressive on... So let's say they have two rest days in a row. On one of those rest days, they might eat only 1,000 calories, just basically protein on that rest day. And then a smaller deficit maybe on the next rest day. You'd have to see how your body responds. But generally, I will say, if you were to shoot for probably maintenance calories on your tough rides, especially if you're eating while you're on the

bike, and then you save the deficit for lower energy expenditure days. And then you also can use a smaller deficit, too. It requires a little bit more precision with your intake, but you're willing to weigh things and you know what that looks like. And so instead of trying to average a 20 or 25 percent deficit, you might find that a 10 percent deficit works better for you. And then when you're feeling really good, occasionally you throw in the large deficit day here and there just to get three days of fat loss in one day. You know what I mean? And what about cheat meals or as I like to call them, treat meals?

Was that a thing for you? That's a good point. That's a good point. Yeah. Those were so important for me. That one meal a week with my coach, he would tell me, plan it, plan ahead, you know, write it down and really think what you're going to have for that and enjoy it. And that really worked for me. It would work for me. It would really kind of free me up on the weekends. work for me. It would really kind of free me up on the weekends, you know, on the weekends here, we usually head out to the beach or somewhere outside of the city. It was fun to have that cheat meal. And it was important because it would just be one day to really enjoy the foods that I like. So I would plan around it. I would either, you know, have some, some really good barbecue or the, the burger and fries, or even, you know, the pizza nights or, or whatever.

So the cheat meal, the cheat meal, the once, once a week cheat meal was, uh, was important, but I also had to kind of not go overboard because when you have a, you know, a sustainable, but relatively small deficit, there was a couple of weeks where my, I wasn't hitting my numbers because I think I went overboard on, on the weekend and maybe it wasn't just a cheap meal, but it was a cheap weekend. Yeah. If it's two or three days of a lot of food and then you add in alcohol, unfortunately. Yeah. The alcohol is the killer. Yeah.

And not that the, as you know, I'm sure you've experienced, you can have alcohol and still lose weight and get healthy and stay healthy, but correct. Yeah. And, and you just have to understand that mixing alcohol with a very high calorie, high fat meal. mixing alcohol with a very high calorie, high fat meal. If you do that too often, what ends up happening is your body ends up storing maximum, there's maximum fat storage occurring basically. So like as an individual meal, that's about as fattening as you can get high fat and, and alcohol. And, and as you had commented earlier, it's not just high fat meals,

who drinks olive oil or just eats avocados. No, no, it's not just high fat meals, who drinks olive oil or just eats avocados. No, no. It's always a lot of fat and a lot of carbs and very little protein. You have that combination, you add in alcohol. And again, it's okay if you understand that you just can't end the day in like a 3,000 calorie surplus with a bunch of alcohol on top of it. Or if you do that, it needs to be every once in a while.

It can't be every Friday. Yeah, for sure. For sure. And honestly, Mike, you know, I did that a couple of times and I found myself trying to catch up, but it would just, it would just kind of derail the program. But in the end, like it wasn't even that big of a deal because in that moment, because you're kind of trying to hit targets and be disciplined, it's like, but in the long run, like the tendency was just again, in the right, in the right direction. So you don't have to be even close to perfect with any of this stuff. You just have to be good enough. Most of the time. Exactly. Looking, looking back on your transformation, does anything stand out as like particularly surprising to you? Exactly. what we discussed in the beginning, like just the willingness to, to change and to be ready mentally. But once you're over that, like, and, and sort of the cloud of all the noise around health and

weight loss, kind of, you lift it up through all this knowledge, you know, it's just, it's really simple, you know, it's, it's incredibly to me liberating because like I said, it's just, it's really simple. You know, it's incredibly, to me, liberating. Because like I said, in my family, you know, I'm extremely grateful for my family. But in the eating respect and in the food relationship side, like definitely, definitely needed some outside help with that. And, and once, once I got the hang of it and once I understood it and I started seeing results, you know, realize that it's empowering, right? It's empowering and it's liberating and it's not that, that complicated because like you said, you know, you don't have to be perfect. You don't have to be perfect all the time. And it's also flexible and there's tricks and things that you can use to enjoy food,

to enjoy working out. And yeah, it was surprising after a while how easy it got, right? That's fantastic because at any time in your life, you can just be sort of in control of your health, things you can control in your health, right? There's obviously a lot of things that we can't control in our health, genetic things, environmental things, and pandemics or whatever but the things that you can control it's really it's really liberating and and it's not that complicated if if you dedicate some time effort

and discipline to to understanding these things that you know are part of our humanity yeah yeah so true and there are also a permanent improvements to that we're making to our body strength training, it likely produces permanent enhancements, just even at a muscular level. And there's probably a lot that that scientists don't understand about what else might be either improved for a long period of time, or, permanently. So for example, muscle memory, people have heard of that. That's the thing. If you've built muscle at one point and then you stop training, you're completely detrained, you have lost everything that you gained, you're going to regain that muscle a lot faster it took to gain it the first time around. And again, scientists think that is probably because there are permanent changes that are occurring at a cellular level. And so even if you fall out of it, let's just say with a physique, right? Even if you fall out of it and you lose it completely,

you can get it back a lot faster. You not only have the knowledge, you already have the confidence, you already did it once, you know exactly what it takes. And then you also now have a physiological advantage. And the same thing goes with dieting and fat loss. The fact that you know how it works, and you've already done it, it just makes that once you decide to do it again, in your mind, it's almost a fate. It's almost done. it's almost done. Like, cause you know, yep, I'm committing to this. I already know how this works. I know exactly where my calories need to be. I know exactly the foods that I need to eat. I know exactly how I like to eat them. And two months later, you mentioned, okay, I want to do a two month cut 10%.

In your mind, there's nothing intimidating about that. You're just like, yeah, I think I'm going to do that. This is why, okay, this is how I'll do it. And now it's just a matter of going through the motions until you're there. That's powerful. Yeah, 100%. And to add to that, another benefit for me, and this is purely anecdotal, and I'm sure there's science around this, but for me being an amateur athlete and with squash and with cycling, having muscle, just from an injury prevention standpoint, I feel that my body is a lot more durable. You know, I've taken falls and I've had situations. If it were my old me on the bike or on the court, I would have gotten totally injured. I would have gotten dislocation.

It really just strengthens your skeleton, right? Yeah. I mean, your bones actually get stronger as well. Your bones get stronger, but then around your bones, there's more structure. And so that's one of the perks for me. Yeah, it's nice to look good and everything. But for me, it was also always about using that fitness for something. And so there's so many benefits to strength training.

And I think that's one that shouldn't be overlooked for sure. I haven't gotten injured the last three, four years, seriously injured. I used to suffer also from just like lower back aches or like I would have a stiff neck for three days because I slept in the wrong position because there was no muscle around my frame. And I haven't suffered any of that in the last three, four years. Yeah. I mean, it's a little bit counterintuitive because I've heard from many people over the years

who have had these issues and the idea of going in the gym and straining their body even more, the idea that that's going to make aches and pains go away seems a little bit counterintuitive. Like think of lower back issues. Is it intuitive to think that deadlifting can improve like your lower back situation? I understand why many people are like, no, I bet my lower back already bothers me enough

and I'm not gonna deadlift. But we know that that is an example of an exercise that is great for for not just strengthening well really every your entire body but but also for helping resolve back issues particularly lower back issues some of that is a little bit of the mystery of pain. There's a lot about pain that scientists still don't understand. And so I know that one prevailing theory is that by doing regular strength training workouts, we're raising our physical pain threshold. So we might still have pains, but we're actually just not aware of them anymore because of our regular training. And so that could also help explain why you might've experienced this. I've experienced this where if we stop training for a week, two weeks, for whatever reason, we might notice some odd aches and pains that we don't

normally have. I've experienced that before. And then we get back in the gym, back into our routine up and it's gone and it doesn't come back. And so again, counterintuitively strength training can help keep aches and pains away, even though it does sometimes produce aches and pains. No, a hundred percent can, can relate to that. Well, yeah, I mean just, and then on the durability point, of course, that makes perfect sense, right? Having stronger muscles and having stronger tendons and having stronger bones, yeah, all of that means less injury or fewer injuries, less severe injuries. And so for all those reasons, strength training, there's probably not a sport

out there that strength training couldn't benefit. Even, I don't know, even people who are like, I think, what do they call it? Curling, you know, where they're like run along and they're like sweeping the little disc, like even curlers probably are doing strength training and ping pong, you know, whatever pros are probably doing strength training. So no matter what sport, what athletic activity you might want to do, strength training can help. I've been into in and out of golf over the last number of years, and it's starting to become more of a thing in golf. But for a long time, strength training was not a thing in golf. And finally, some younger players got the idea

that maybe I should get strong. Maybe that's going to help me. And it helped them a lot. It helped them with their performance and their durability. Aches and pains started to go away and they were able to then practice and play more and not have to take as much time off or not run into because golf's a weird asymmetrical puts you know weird strains on the body um so so anyway you know it's all all great information and i'm excited to for you to to get into your to your cut to improve your weight to power ratio i think you said and before we wrap up here, is there anything else that, uh, you know, I haven't asked that, that I should have asked or anything else kind of

bouncing around in your head that you want to say? I think it's been a great, a great conversation, Mike. And, and I appreciate you guys, uh, reaching out and everything you do. And, and, uh, honestly, I was, I was a little hesitant. I'm very private with my life. And, you know, I realized that if my story can help somebody really transform and be healthier and motivate or whatever it is that gets them going, you know, I'm grateful for, for the opportunity to do that. And so, you know, it's, it's, it's been quite a journey. Actually, that's one thing that, that I think we haven't talked about that you, that you always talk about. It's the process, right? Like enjoying, enjoying the process, you know, focusing on progressively getting better and enjoying that, the process, whether it's on the

nutrition, whether you're on a cutting or a bulking phase or in strength training, in whatever phase you are in your health journey. I think it's really, really one of the things that I learned through the program was to see it as a process. Yes, we want to see results. In the end, if you trust the process, the results are going to come. Yeah. Yeah. You can't be too results focused or you get impatient and you can get demotivated. But if you focus on specifically what that process looks like, so you focus on hitting your calories for the day, hitting your macros for the day, close enough, good enough, getting your workouts done, and just focus on, you know, I think of the Jerry Seinfeld approach. I think it came from him of

like every day that you do what you need to do, you make an X on the calendar. And so you get this string of Xs going, and then you don't want to break your string. And you just focus on those things that are right in front of you and just executing on few key tasks that you have. And then you understand that the results come always. They always come so long as you just focus on putting the next X on that calendar. That's, that's of course a lesson that applies to, to, to any activity that takes time and takes effort. And that requires just that consistency, right? Being great at being consistent. I mean, I think that's what a lot of people who are great at things consistently great. No, nobody's consistently great by their standards. Like people who are really good at things, we might look, even think of athletes, we might look at a professional athlete, we might watch

them every day practicing and playing, and we think, oh, wow, that's nonstop greatness. No, it's not actually. Not at their level. And they could explain to you, if they had footage, they'd be like, all right, this day was garbage. I was actually, I was so bad on this day. Let me show you. Now, you might not know it until they show you and you're like, I don't know. It still looks pretty good to me. But objectively speaking at their level, it's not consistent greatness. It's just great at being consistent.

They show up, they do what they need to do. And they understand that some days are better than others. what they need to do. And they understand that some days are better than others, but so long as they are following a plan that is well-designed and that is based on workable principles, eventually they will get to where they want to be. And so, you know, fitness is a, it's, it's a good exercise in that it's a good lesson to experience because it's something you can take to other areas of your life. Oh, a hundred percent. A hundred percent. I love what you just said. I wrote it down. I like that. Great at being consistent. Who did I steal that from? That might've been from peak performance, a good book by Magnus and Stolberg. Somebody else said that and it's

stuck in my mind. And so now I say it sometimes, but you know, and to be fair, I guess they probably, somebody else probably, who knows who originally said it, but it's a good, it's a good concept. It's a great concept. It's a great concept. But, but Hey, this was a great, great conversation. Great story. Again, I really appreciate you taking the time and, you know, I always hear from people who listen to these episodes and get that inspiration to start or to restart. I was one of them. You know, I, I, I listened, you know, I listened to a lot of your podcasts. I hadn't listened to it for a

while, to be honest, because, you know, I went on this, on this, uh, cycling tangent, but I did, I've listened to so many of your, you know, probably 2018, 19, that, that phase. And yeah, so, so I'm super happy that, that we got to do this and grateful for, for everything you do. Keep doing what you're doing, Mike. And thank you so much for having me. Yeah. Thank you. Lots more to come from, from my end. Well, I hope you liked this episode. I hope you found it helpful. And if you did, subscribe to the show because it makes sure that you don't miss new episodes. And it also helps me because it increases the rankings of the show a little bit, which, of course, then makes it a little bit more easily found by other people who may like it just as much as you.

And if you didn't like something about this episode or about the show in general, or if you have ideas or suggestions or just feedback to share, shoot me an email, mike at muscleforlife.com, muscleforlife.com, and let me know what I could do better or just what your thoughts are about maybe what you'd like to see me do in the future. I read everything myself. I'm always looking for new ideas and constructive feedback. So thanks again for listening to this episode and I hope to hear from you soon.