Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - How Jake Used Bigger Leaner Stronger to Lose 10 Pounds & Add 275 Pounds to His Lifts

Episode Date: July 31, 2019

In this interview, I talk with Jake, who used my Bigger Leaner Stronger program to transform his physique and, in many ways, his life. When he first found Bigger Leaner Stronger, he was about 16% body fat with middling strength, and now, he’s about 9% body fat and about 275 pounds stronger on all of his major lifts. Furthermore, and more importantly, really, other areas of his life have been impacted in tremendously positive ways as well, including his mood, energy levels, self-esteem, productivity, and more. In other words, Jake used my work to go from “fit” to “superfit” with quite a few cherries on top, and in this interview, he shares his story—he talks about how he was training and eating before finding me and my work, and how things started to change after implementing what he was learning in my books and articles. Two major parts of Jake’s journey were dispelling common misconceptions about diet and training he had bought into over the years and overcoming various hurdles ranging from focusing too much on the scale, scheduling workouts and meals, breaking through plateaus, program hopping, and more. So, if you like hearing motivational stories about how people have changed their bodies and lives, and if you want to pick up a few tips that may help you in your journey, this episode is for you. 5:09 - How was your diet and training before and after you found Muscle for Life? 7:11 - How long did you feel stuck for? 10:36 - How much did you weigh and what were your lifts like before Muscle for Life? 11:30 - How did you cut? 16:10 - How do you keep dieting and training interesting when you’re getting close to a threshold? 22:14 - How do you look after following my program? 25:23 - What’s your Instagram, website, and podcast? 33:58 - What are your future plans? 40:33 - What are your favorite books? 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, Mike here. And if you like what I'm doing on the podcast and elsewhere, and if you want to help me help more people get into the best shape of their lives, please do consider picking up one of my bestselling health and fitness books, including Bigger, Leaner, Stronger for Men, Thinner, Leaner, Stronger for Women, my flexible dieting cookbook, The Shredded Chef, and my 100% practical and hands-on blueprint for personal transformation inside and outside of the gym, The Little Black Book of Workout Motivation. Now, these books have sold well over 1 million copies and have helped thousands of people build their best bodies ever. And you can find them on all major online retailers like Audible, Amazon, iTunes, Kobo, and Google Play, as well as in select Barnes & Noble stores. Again, that's Bigger Leaner Stronger for Men, Thinner Leaner Stronger for Women, The Shredded Chef, and The Little Black Book of Workout Motivation. Oh, and I should also mention that you can get any of the audiobooks 100% free when you sign up for an Audible account, which is the perfect way to make those pockets of downtime,

like commuting, meal prepping, and cleaning, more interesting, entertaining, and productive. meal prepping, and cleaning more interesting, entertaining, and productive. So if you want to take Audible up on that offer, and if you want to get one of my audio books for free, go to www.legionathletics.com slash Audible. That's L-E-G-I-O-N athletics slash A-U-D-I-B-L-E, and sign up for your account. Welcome, welcome, welcome to another episode of Muscle for Life. I am Mike Matthews. And this time around, I talk with a man named Jake. And Jake used my Bigger, Leaner, Stronger program to completely transform his physique and in many ways his life. You see, when Jake first found Bigger Leaner

Stronger, he was about 16% body fat with middling lifts in terms of numbers. And now he's about 9% body fat and has added a ton of strength to his key lifts. And furthermore, and more importantly, really, other areas of his life have been impacted in tremendously positive ways as well, including his mood and his energy levels, self-esteem, productivity, and more. So in other words, Jake used my work to go from fit to super fit with quite a few cherries on top. And in this interview, he shares his story. He talks about how he was training and eating before finding me in my work and then how things started to change after he began implementing what he was learning in my books and articles and podcasts. Now, as usual, two major parts of Jake's journey were dispelling common misconceptions he had about diet and training and overcoming various hurdles,

ranging from focusing too much on the scale to scheduling workouts and meals, breaking through plateaus, program hopping, and more. So if you like hearing motivational stories about how people have changed their bodies and lives, and if you want to pick up a few tips along the way that might help you in your journey, this episode's for you. Jake, thanks for taking the time to come on and share your story. Yeah, Mike, thanks for having me on. I appreciate it. Yeah, absolutely. These episodes are a nice break for me, something different than either

monologuing about something related to health and fitness or getting diving into the details with me with a guest, just emails that I get or DMs that I get where people are just sharing their stories and saying, hey, I read your book. Sometimes somebody will reach out after six months or even longer. They'll be like, I read your book a year ago and here's where I'm at now. Here's how it's made a difference in my life. Those little moments are now, I'd say, probably more satisfying for me than anything else that any other like just individual moments. They're more satisfying than Legion making a bunch of money in a sale or something like that's cool. But I also just personally appreciate hearing people's stories and hearing about how it's not just about my work,

but just how getting into better shape and getting healthier has impacted people's lives. Because it's a nice reminder to me of like, that's what this is really about. Yeah. Like your legacy is greater than currency, right? Yeah, I agree. I haven't heard that before, but I agree. So with that being said, why don't we start with a snapshot? You're kind of before and after, before you found me and my stuff and then after maybe some sort of timeframe as well. And then let's rewind and let's go back to the before. And let's just start with what you were doing at that time. So what is the before and after look like? So yeah, first found Muscle for Life, which I know is now all Legion Athletics about a year and a half ago, I'd say.

It was funny because I think I originally kind of saw it as another one of those gimmicky sort of things because your ads always point out you don't need supplements, you don't need these multiple meals in a day and blah, blah, blah. And these were all these things that I had kind of seen as gospel for all these years that I'd been training. And so, when I saw that, I was like, no way, you know, and I kind of started to read some of your stuff. And it resonated with me. The part that resonated with me the most is that you had those pictures and the stories about how you used to do the same sort of things I did the bro training sort of things where, you know, you'd hit chest and biceps really hard. And you try to eat all this protein, not really having any knowledge of macronutrients. And like I said, that resonates with me because I'd been doing that sort of stuff ever since I was like 16.

When I first got into weightlifting, I looked up to a lot of bodybuilders and it was something that I inspired to get better at. But I just had these ineffective training methods for so long that I thought were right. And I think I kind of blamed it on other circumstances, like my genetics was a common excuse. And I never really knew of blamed it on other circumstances, like my genetics was a common excuse. And I never really knew what it took until I started reading your blogs, which led me to reading Bigger, Leaner, Stronger. Yep. I mean, it's funny how many, it's particularly with guys who come on the show to do these types of interviews, how our stories are almost identical, like 80% of the time. Now, of course, me sharing my story, you could say, yeah, obviously

I'm self-selecting for people who are then are struggling with the same thing. So like, oh, that really resonates, but it really is just so common. There's so many guys out there who that's exactly where they're at right now. They've been doing what they've been reading in magazines. And now with the rise of social media in particular, maybe they're also seeing on Instagram or maybe seeing on YouTube and they got, they made a bit of progress and then they just stopped. How long did you feel stuck for where you were just kind of like going to the gym, doing your things? I remember myself where I was, I was spinning my wheels. It didn't really bother me because I didn't have an idea that I could really get better. I didn't care. It wasn't that important to me, but it was years where I didn't gain any muscle to speak of or any strength to speak of. Of course, I enjoyed the health benefits

of exercising and I still enjoyed working out, but I didn't have much to show for it in terms of body composition. Yeah. And well, and the thing is like you can get in decent shape with a poorly constructed training program, but you just is like you can get in decent shape with a poorly constructed training program, but you just can't get into the really good shape that a lot of guys aspire to be in like you talk about. And honestly, it was so long that I was stuck in that. I probably first started weightlifting when I was like 14, 15 ish, really did it a lot in high school. And it was one of those things where my story is a little bit different than a lot of guys who I know that work out now is just kind of like a continuance of that athletic sort of training they did in high school. Whereas I never really did athletics, I kind of

did bodybuilding because I wasn't a very good athlete. And so I was like, well, I might as well have something to put my effort towards. And so I was trying to do bodybuilding. And up until I was about, I think when I discovered your stuff, I was about 21. And so like five years of that, any typical bro training routine, you know, I tried burnouts. And, you know, I always had to have my perfect meals lined up. And I was scared that one of the biggest things that I'm glad I realized was that there's no such thing as the anabolic window is the myth and having to eat protein every so often because it would just be like always on my mind. I was like, oh, I don't want to lose this muscle I have to eat. And I don't know. It's just all those bro science type things I practiced for way too long. Yep. Yep. I remember those days. I thought that I really looked into it, but I had heard from, you know, other people in the gym, how important it was and that you could literally lose muscle. Like if you hadn't eaten protein in six hours, you could start losing muscle.

And then, so then that just plays on your psychology and you swear you can feel yourself shrinking. If it's like, you know, it's you're at hour five and you haven't had protein. Although, you know, ironically coming kind of full circle, I wrote about this maybe a year or so ago. I think I might've recently updated the article, although it didn't really need much in the way of updates because the research still just stands and the conclusion still stands, but that eating protein every few hours is almost certainly better for muscle gain. If we're talking about the long-term, if you look at like eating protein twice a day versus maybe five times a day, five times a day, spaced out five smaller portions spaced out by a few hours is almost certainly better for muscle gain over time. Now, of course, we're talking about marginally

better. It's not like night and day, but we have to also consider though, as natural weightlifters, we care about the marginal improvements because that's all we get. Yeah, exactly. You know what I mean? At a certain point, you know, once you start practicing the scientifically proven ways to be effective, you get to this point and you're like, all right, now I've gotten very good at the basics and I've got a very good body, but what am I going to do to improve at this point? And that's where that sort of stuff comes in. Yeah, totally. So we weren't entirely wrong in wanting to eat protein for a few hours, but it was for the wrong reason. It was just the cart before the horse. Yeah. It was thinking that, oh, if we don't, we're going to lose muscle. And that's certainly

not the case. How did things look then in terms of like, how much did you weigh before you found your weight, I guess, first to muscle for life? What was your body fat percentage? What were your lifts like? Yeah. So I kind of fell into the thinking of like, so I did have a cut and bulk cycle. But it was pretty typical of someone in my situation where I was gaining way too much fat when I was bulking, and I wasn't able to lose enough when I was cutting. And so I was also of the mindset of like, just weight on the scale was everything. And so when I was bulking, I would sometimes get up to like 200 pounds. And I thought that that was good.

You know, I was gaining muscle, obviously not knowing that it was more so fat. And that's at like six foot tall. So that's a decent amount of fat at that point. And then I would cut down to maybe like 185 or so. Always had the goal of like cutting down to, you know, get shredded, get abs or whatever, but was never able to accomplish that just because of not ever tracking calories or anything like that and just being of the clean eating mindset how did you cut you just try to avoid carbs and other bad food exactly exactly it was like it was basically like try not to eat carbs essentially and the

funny thing is i could have easily been eating more calories, because when you're not eating carbs, you're eating more high fat foods, which I now realized the macronutrient balance of carbs and proteins having four calories per gram, as opposed to fats having nine, all that information was just not even on my radar back then. So it was like, okay, I think carbs are bad, I'm going to eat less carbs to cut. And, you know, when I was bulking, it was just like eat a lot of food, clean if possible, but also just a lot if clean isn't available. Right. And cardio, of course, when you're cutting.

Yeah. Just like the hours of steady state, stuff like that. And then also doing the typical low reps when cutting and then high like 10 to 15 or sorry, low reps when bulking and high like 10 to 15 when cutting, which I also found later to be very counterintuitive. It's interesting. Actually, if you're cutting, you can take a very minimalist approach. Like I think of Lyle McDonald. I mean, years ago, I came across him talking about cutting and how really our goal is just to maintain muscle when we're cutting. Unless you're new, then sure, you can gain some muscle while

you're cutting. But if you have at least a year of decent weightlifting under your belt, you're not going to gain anything to speak of while you're cutting. And so you might as well just do like a push-pull leg three days a week and lift some heavy weights, rep range. What does it really matter? Because you're not going to gain any muscle anyway, but sure. Like anywhere from, I don't know, if you feel like doing some heavier stuff, sure. Do some four to six or five to seven, and, or if you want to give your joints a break for maybe do some eight to 10 or 10 to 12, but again, very loosey goosey about it, which is not the wrong attitude. It really, if you were looking at it in terms of bottom line results, because again, if you've already

gained a fair amount of muscle and you just want to strip away fat, it doesn't take much training volume. It doesn't take much stimulus to maintain the muscle you have. Now, if you just enjoy pushing yourself and doing really hard grueling workouts, and if you want to burn a bit more energy that way, then I guess you can try to push it when you're cutting, but your recovery is impaired. So you're going to be limited anyway. I would say when cutting, this kind of makes me think of this new second edition of Beyond Bigger, Leaner, Stronger that I'm working on. So by the time this podcast goes live, I'll have officially released the new third edition of Bigger, Leaner, Stronger. And now my new project is the second edition of Beyond Bigger, Leaner, Stronger. And the program that's there now, I'm going to change a bit,

but there's going to be a cutting program and a lean bulking program. And the cutting program is probably honestly going to look a lot like bigger, leaner, stronger, because even for an intermediate weightlifter, even somebody who is maybe phasing into the advanced level, again, you can't train as hard. If you're training the same way when you're cutting is when you're lean bulking, you're not training hard enough when you're lean bulking, period. Or you're training too hard when you're cutting, it's one or the other. And so again, that's probably not a horrible mistake to just kind of, okay, you're training heavier when you cut and you're training lighter when you're lean bulking. Ideally, you probably would have switched those at least to give your joints a break, right? Because that's part of

recovery, but again, not a terrible mistake in the scheme of things. But then the other thing you mentioned there, like the other trap I fell into, you said push-pull legs, which is something I do a lot now. And even if I'm more restricted on time or not getting as many workouts in full body or upper body and lower body, I definitely used to be in the mindset of like, you have to hit chest on Monday, chest triceps on Monday, you know, back biceps on Tuesday. And if you don't get in every single lift, not going to be optimal. And the whole thing about I wasn't getting progressive overload, because I was switching workouts, because I wanted to, quote, unquote, shock the muscle. And all that kind of stuff was, I think it just is all encompassed in I was had a lot of things

backward in training and nutrition. Yep. I remember. And, you know, look, even looking at your body, it's funny. It seems like we have similar genetics and that you have a high responding chest. So you still were able to, you know, make gain what I would guess from where you started because it looks very similar actually to me. So probably, I don't know, 25, maybe 30 pounds of muscle over the course of the first many years. For me, that's what it was. It was probably 25 pounds, give or take a few, whatever, in the first six or seven years, which is pretty atrociously bad. And then I've probably gained, I don't know, 15 cents and maybe a little bit more. And I'm pretty much tapped out as far as

genetic potential goes. According to different models, I think if we averaged them, it's probably as would say, maybe I have five pounds of muscle gain left to me. And you're probably in a similar boat. I'm just curious at that point, how do you keep training and dieting interesting if you know you're getting close to that threshold? Because like for me over the past year and a half, I've been very engaged with my training and diet because I've been able to see those rapid changes. Not so rapid anymore, but at least when I first started doing more effective and science based things.

What do you do to stay motivated, I guess? Yeah, it's a good question. I mean, first I'll say, again, looking at your after picture, I mean, I can only see your upper body, so I may be wrong in that you actually may have a bit more muscle gain that's available to you. And it really also depends on the size of your bones. I have small bones, like my wrists and ankles are small. I was not meant to be a big dude, period, genetically speaking. So if you wanted to get a better idea, check out, if you

go to Legion, if you search for natural muscle gain or naturally, you should find an article I wrote on how much muscle you can gain naturally. And there are some calculators in there. So you can go check that out for yourself. You may still actually have a bit more left, even maybe a bit more left than I do, depending on your genetics. But to answer your question, for me, I like routine. I'm just a routine person. So I go to the gym every morning, and I like the other benefits that I get from exercise. I enjoy working out just as an activity. It's not a thrilling activity, but I do enjoy working out. Some workouts are better than others, but on the whole, I enjoy the time I spend in the gym. I like

how I feel while I'm training. I like how I feel after it's a good way to start the day. It puts me in a good mood. I know the long-term benefits in terms of health and that really matters to me as well. I don't want to be broken by the time I'm like 60. I want to be around for as long as I can while also maintaining a good quality of living. And I know that exercise is the number one thing you can do for that. If you want to be healthy and if you want to just maximize your wellbeing, exercise is number one. There are of course other things you can do, but exercise is number one. Yeah. So that's really it. As far as my physique goes, there are some slight improvements that can be made in areas. Like if I wanted to gain a bit more size in my upper legs, I could, I honestly don't. I'm already at a point where

jeans are kind of hard to buy and you know what I mean? So, and I don't quite by bodybuilding standards, my legs are too small and I understand that, but I don't like that look. I'm not a competitive bodybuilder. So I think while if you look at someone like Eric Helms and the condition he's in right now, super impressive and his legs actually look pretty cool, but I don't feel motivated to want to do that, honestly. I'm not going to try to compete in bodybuilding, so why bother basically when I also wouldn't personally want legs that big simply because it would be very inconvenient for just daily living. When you talk about well-being, it just like you've said before, it's such a huge benefit when you're doing regular exercise to your cognitive performance. And I'm sure you appreciate that aspect always.

That's my life, right? It's all my work is trying to think of anything I'm doing that doesn't require brain activity and says everything. I mean, some of it is low activity, like answering emails, but a lot of it is, it requires focus and it requires sustained focus and it requires alertness and cognition. Like I have to be actively thinking in not just like going through motions, listening to a podcast or something, you know what I mean? So yeah, it also greatly benefits me there. And also there's energy levels too. I mean, in some sense, I could say I demand a fair amount from my body. It varies between, it's not just physical demands. I'm not in the gym four hours a day, but between the physical

demands of the training that I do and then the mental demands of working and generally working a lot. I don't work as much now that I have two kids as I did a few years ago. Maybe average is 55 hours a week or so. And that's actual work though. It's not like 55 hours in the office, but half of it is dirtling on the internet. It's really actually working. And so that requires a surplus of energy. And then I like to be active on the weekends. I'm back into golfing. So I see exercise as a way to also support my body and what I'm asking from it, basically. So I'm not just kind of burning the candle at both ends and eventually going to burn out. not just kind of burning the candle at both ends and eventually going to burn out. And fortunately, I haven't experienced that yet. And I think if I just keep with my routine, that's one of the reasons why I eat the way that I do. I mean, it's nothing special. It's what everybody should be doing, but it's still, there are very, very many people out there who do not eat a vegetable. Like it's just not in their diets. And so, yeah, I mean, I guess that's

probably my best answer as to why. Secondary to all that is it's part of my job at this point, right? So, I have to keep training. I have to maintain a certain level of fitness to be credible as an authority, as an expert. And then there's vanity as well. I guess we can't forget that. I still want to look a certain way and I still want to see in the mirror and I like it and I would not be happy if I saw something that didn't look good to me at all. Yeah, I think it's funny how some people see that negatively. It's like, it just feels good to look good to a certain point. It's not good to obsess over it, but to a certain point, you just have a higher self-esteem and a higher self-worth. Of course, it's natural. Anybody that would try to talk against that simply doesn't

like how they look and either they've been in shape and now they're not, or they've never been in shape, or they're just butthurt about the fact that they are out of shape and other people are in shape. Hey, quickly, before we carry on, if you are liking my podcast, would you please help spread the word about it? Because no amount of marketing or advertising gimmicks can match the power of word of mouth. So if you are enjoying this episode and you think of someone else who might enjoy it as well, please do tell them about it. It really helps me. And if you are going to post about it on social media, definitely tag me so I can say thank you. You can find me on Instagram at MuscleForLifeFitness, Twitter at MuscleForLife, and Facebook at MuscleForLifeFitness.

So where are you at now? What is your after like in terms of, so we fast forward, you find my stuff, you use what you've learned. And then what happened next? Well, that's what I really wanted to talk about. Because I think the most interesting change, like I've talked about before, is I just feel so much more confident now. And I think that seeing the changes that I can make in my body really made me realize that I can make changes in other areas of my life too. And so I was at a point before I found your stuff where I was getting close to graduating college and was studying business. And not that I didn't like it, but I didn't feel like it was truly my passion. And I'd always been really passionate about

fitness. And so being able to really change my body and really start to get fit kind of gave me the confidence to, I'm now trying to enter into the personal training world and do that. But in addition to that, I've really kind of had a new lust for learning based on the things that you've written and talked about. And I just feel like my all around behaviors, just my mindset has totally changed from seeing my body change. That was kind of the catalyst for it. Yeah, it's pretty cool. And it's pretty cool that it's just such an easier, more effective way to change the inside, to change the subjective

is to just improve the outside, improve the objective is way easier. So whatever issues you were struggling with internally, right? Beliefs, attitudes, whatever, before you got into good shape, what you did is far easier than you could have done what you did, which is just like learn the fundamentals of energy balance, macronutrient balance, progressive overload, compound exercises, volume frequency, go in the gym, do it. As far as an activity goes, it is horribly simple. Technically speaking, weightlifting is anything you can be good at in two or three months is not very hard, period. Right? So you learn to squat, you learn to deadlift, you learn to bench press. These are extremely simple in the scheme of things, in the scheme of athletic movements, very simple. All

right. If you want to become a great Olympic lifter, there's more, it's a bit more difficult, but if you just want to like know how to squat well, so you can have good legs, it's a very simple thing to learn. And it just requires some grit determination. You just show up, do the work. It's just so simple. And then that naturally, then all these other things improve along the way. So that's one way to do it. Another way could have been not do what you did with your body and maybe go spend a thousand hours with a therapist or something and probably still be struggling with all the same shit. Yeah, exactly. And I think that's another reason why your story resonated so much with me, because I don't want to speak for you, but I'm sure that you would agree that a big part of starting your business was the confidence in seeing how effectively you could change your body,

and just realizing that you could apply simple techniques to grow in a business as well. I've heard you say something along those lines. And so so I started posting a lot online. I have an Instagram account now that I it's fitness based, but based on my journey, I try to include a lot of mental and emotional well being sort of things as well. And I really enjoy writing and doing my own podcast as well. And those are two things that I really don't think I would ever had the confidence for before starting along this whole journey that I'm on. That's interesting. If you want to just share with everybody your Instagram, your website, your podcast. Yeah. So the Instagram, I post my blog and podcasts onto there whenever I post a new one. And it's at jparkerfitlife. And I think the reason that it's called Fit Life is just because

like we've talked about, it's a lifestyle. It's not just going to the gym. It's making sure that you're reading and learning new things. And I talk about that all the time because I think that it's really all-encompassing into, if you want to just say one general word, well-being. My podcast is called What's Your Story? And something I've found that I really enjoy is just getting to talk to people about what they're doing in their lives, what makes them passionate. to talk to people about what they're doing in their lives, what makes them passionate.

I'm always very open to new and diverse guests because something that I found is it just inspires me to be a better version of myself when I hear about anyone that's just doing something they love, doing something that they're successful at. I just love getting to talk to people. Yeah, no, I understand. It's one of the things that I enjoy about doing this is the interviews. The monologues are, I don't mind doing them and I think they're useful, but it's the interviews are usually when I'm done with a monologue, it's like, okay, good. Phew. Like that's done. I can move on to the next thing. Whereas an interview can be stimulating and energizing and I can end an interview excited. I rarely am ending a monologue excited, especially

if it's a long one, I'm ending it like relieved, like, okay, that's finally done. And I can go on to the next thing. And it's cool, because you never know exactly where you're going to get out of an interview. Like one thing that changed a lot from my first episode of my podcast, and now I'm on like, 26 or 27 or so is like the first couple I did, I had all these questions written out and knew exactly what I want to talk about. And now when I do a podcast, I just have like one or two questions to kind of guide it. But I find that it's so easy if you really just are interested and show that it's so easy to just talk and have a fun conversation with somebody. Yeah, I totally agree. And you know, what's interesting about your story is it's not like

you were completely out of shape before. I mean, if people could see your picture, I would say you were fit by normal standards. You know what I mean? It's not like you were extremely obese or extremely underweight. It's interesting to me that going from that to very fit, let's just say by normal standards, you went from like fit to super fit, that that had big of an impact on your psychology. Yeah. I think that the reason it did is because I don't think I really emphasized at first like how I just want to emphasize like how big of a part of my life that bodybuilding was to me. I wouldn't say it was all I thought about, but it was like a huge part of my life. I was always thinking about ways to do it better. And when I say better, it's also kind of paradoxical because it was from all these

inefficient sources and stuff like that. But it was, I was hitting the weights as hard as I could and I was trying to learn more. And then it's like I said, what I found out from you, how these things are really simple. I said, you know what? It can also be simple to have a better outlook on life and change my attitude and all those sort of things. And it was just a really nice law effect, I suppose. That makes sense. That level of importance to you personally, then of course, then what comes with that is a certain level of frustration that equals the

importance, right? So for me, when I was in the same boat, it wasn't as important to me. That's why I wasn't as frustrated about it. And that's not even a, I'm not saying that's good, bad endeavor, whatever. It's just for me at that time, I was okay with how things were, but it was more a curiosity of, all right, if I'm going to put the time into this, how good could they be? Like I might as well, like I'm already here. I'm already doing the work. I might as well actually educate myself and see what I can do just for the hell of it. You know what I mean? Yeah. Like it was always a thing, like in high school, I know it would always frustrate my family and friends because I was of the mindset of like, you know what I mean? Yeah. Like it was always a thing, like in high school, I know it would always frustrate my family and friends because I was of the mindset of like, you know, we'd go on vacation. Oh, I don't want to eat ice cream. Like that's going to kill my gains and yada, yada,

yada. Like I was just caught in a very bad paradigm, I would say. Yeah. And now you fast forward today and you're in much better shape. And I'm sure if you want to have ice cream, you have the ice cream. And that's the other thing is like, I think that another reason for this change is I opened up a lot of cognitive room in my brain that wasn't focused on like, all right, it's three hours. I need to eat protein. I need to go hit all these muscle groups in my workout. It's like, I go, I work out as best as I can, as frequently as I can. I eat as well as I can, but it's not like consuming my thoughts. Yep. And there are no more mysteries. Like, you know how things work,

you know what you're doing. You also know that if you are not getting in as many workouts as you need to, or should by whatever plan you're trying to follow, or if your meal planning, if that side of things is a little bit wonky for whatever reason, you also know that like, okay, so for the next few weeks, things are gonna be just because of life circumstances are going to be a bit random. And so you're also not going to be upset that you don't make any progress maybe in the next few weeks, you know what I mean? Because you just know, you're like, cool, I'm going to get in my workouts. I'm not going to lose anything. I'll probably maintain my strength. I'm just going to be a little bit stuck until I can get back to my normal routine. That and like you've talked about before, it would be the end of the

world for me previously if I gained a few pounds of fat. But now, just like you've said, that's two, but I've had holidays in the past. I've had vacations in the past where I would intentionally just eat as much food as I could until I was just disgusted with myself. And in terms of numbers, yeah, I would come back maybe two pounds heavier, maybe three, but I would enjoy myself along the way. I guess also the thing for me in Italy was while the food was good, there wasn't enough variety to make me want to just go all out. Like I can only eat so much pasta and I'm not gonna eat breakfast. I'm not a very big breakfast person anyway.

But as far as lunches and dinners, like I can only eat so much pasta and fish and pizza. But there have been times like when I've been in europe previously traveling around or i find that there's more variety of delicious foods in germany france and so it is nice to be able to just consciously be like yeah i'm going to overeat for the next seven days and it's going to be fun and i'm going to gain a little bit of fat and i actually don't care at all and then when i come back i'm just going to drop my calories for a little bit, which is actually welcome when you've been kind of gorging for, or I guess when I say gorging, if I eat anywhere over 3000 calories in a day, it feels like I'm gorging myself just because I've always had an, I would say normal appetite, not high, not low. But my point with all that is,

yes, you get a peace of mind, right? When, again, when you understand how things work and you understand that there's no amount of damage you can cause in a week, let's say that you can't reverse in another week. Just like you talked about like that protein feeding, it literally sometimes felt like, oh, I can feel my muscles withering away and get me some food. Yeah, exactly. Where I think I said, actually, all right, fine. Maybe you can gain if you really went at it, you can gain in a week more fat, you can lose in a week, but let's say a couple of weeks. You'd have to work hard to gain so much fat that it would take a couple of weeks to lose it. You can do it. But again, having worked now with and spoken to so many people over the years, we're talking about vacations and just kind of letting loose and having some drinks and eating food. Usually that's very common where people will say, yeah, I went to Mexico for two weeks or I went here for two weeks or whatever.

I enjoyed myself and I didn't force feed myself, but I didn't restrict myself. And like you said, I came back a pound and a half heavier and I dropped my calories for a week and now I'm right back to my normal weight. And that was fun. I'm looking forward to the next one, you know? Yeah. That's what I was just going to say too, is like, I enjoy myself so much more at a family gathering or on a vacation or whatever, because I am not just thinking, just beating myself up about what I'm eating. Totally social events. And that's, again, something that gets brought up often when I'm usually when I'm talking to people who are newer, obviously, in this whole journey,

like they're in the beginning phase of they have a lot of false ideas and they've been taught a lot of wrong things. And so social events are a common, almost anxiety for people who are concerned about, it's usually has to do with eating specific foods. Like they think that, you know, if they eat sugar, they just get fatter period. Or if they eat the white carbs, they just get fatter period. Or if they eat any food that raises insulin levels. And so I understand then it just reduces, again, their quality of living just goes down a bit because of that. So it's very liberating to know that so long as you're getting the most important things, mostly right, most of the time, you're good to go. Just consistency. Yep, absolutely. So where

do you go from here? What are your future plans? in a healthy body. I just want to be consistent with it. I have a schedule where I try to post every week because I know that I'm the type of person where I have to be held accountable by some sort of deadline. So those are two things I really love to do. I'm also studying right now to become a personal trainer here in Omaha. And so those are the things on the agenda right now as far as my personal goals and then career goals. Cool. But I also love to read and I love to I always am trying to learn new things. And I think that that's part of the all encompassing wellbeing, just getting to learn new things. And from that point, I think that my life goals are always changing. Well, I think I'm on the right path where I just, I have a lot of ideas and things that I want to do. And I guess I'm just excited to kind of have a new lust for life after this journey is getting past its beginning stages, at least. Yeah, it's awesome. I think that there's a correlation between having ideas, having dreams, having goals, having an active imagination, and that feeling of just satisfaction in life, happiness,

excitement. I think when the former goes, so does the latter. And yeah, another thing that I did for the first time for the new year was something that I heard you talk a lot about, which was just set some goals. I put the goals in my journal and look at them every day. One was actually to start a podcast, which is awesome. I got that completed. And then other personal and professional goals, like becoming a personal trainer, I'm hoping to still achieve in 2019. A couple other more personal things that were along the lines of becoming more outgoing because that's always been sort of a struggle

for me. But hopefully you can tell from this podcast, I've become a lot better at it and I've had to push myself. And I think that goal setting is another really important aspect of just mental well-being. And like you said, just being happy. Absolutely. I think it's that feeling of forward progress that probably gives us a lot of the happiness that's available to us. I think you also mentioned that you are really into learning new things and having curiosity, I think is very important as well.

Being a curious person. I think that if someone has lost their curiosity in life, if they're not interested in much of anything, and usually this goes hand in hand with consumption, media consumption. So I think the more people watch TV, watch Netflix, watch porn, just consume images and audio and the less interested they are in creating anything period, and the less interested they are in the world around them and the less curious they are about the world around them. So cultivating curiosity and maintaining that,

I think is also a very important, it's just like one of those, if you want to call it a skill, I'd say meta skill that just improves every aspect of your life because it's something that you can apply to any endeavor, whether it is goal oriented or whether it's purely just play and fun oriented, which I guess you could say all the goals to play and have fun. But you know what I'm saying? That's a bit different than having a hard goal saying, I want to do this. And then you got to work at it. And sometimes it's not so fun. Sometimes it is as opposed to something where it's like, all right, this activity is purely because I enjoy it. And I find it revitalizing. What's your next thing to learn? Because I don't know if this

was like a famous person or it's just something I've heard from a number of people is like, learn one new thing per year and not like one new little factoid, but you're going to get into something. I think of, so I'm a member of a business organization called YPO, right? And there are a lot of successful, very successful, more successful than me, a lot of business people in this group. And there's one dude I'm thinking of that's, that's his thing. I've definitely heard from him. I've heard this elsewhere. Like he has one thing per year that he don't, he devotes his, he has time that he basically allots to it. Right. So he's a busy dude, uh, runs a big company, but he has time that he allots to his one thing per year. But he has time that he allots to his one thing per year. And so last year it was golf. And so he played a lot of golf, at least the amount of, I think he had whatever his time was, right? So he put it all into golf and then now it's triathlons. And then next year it's going to really immerse yourself in something and make progress. If you just try to dabble in too many things, you don't make any progress. I personally don't find that very fun. But what things are you trying to learn right now? Yeah. It's funny that you say that just going back to your last comment is I think that one

of the things I never realized is that successful people, they're not any different from the rest of us. But I always felt like these people that you would see online or that had achieved a certain level of success or fame or whatever you want to call it, were just built differently. But you were one of the people that helped me realize, you know, it's just simple steps. It's not anything. It's not that people have this special gift. It's just doing these simple things. And one of the things, like I've heard you say that you're trying to learn german right now and so yeah like you said i do try to emphasize learning new things all the time one thing that i joined

this year when i talked about my goal of becoming more outgoing is have you heard of toastmasters yeah sure yeah so i'm going through toastmasters right now that's great because you're going to improve your ability to communicate that's also a meta skill that just improves every aspect of your life yeah it helps a lot with my podcast. And then I would say besides that, I'm doing really well with my goal of reading two books every month. And so, actually, I'm on one that I'd seen you recommend before, which is Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman, however you say his last name. I really enjoyed The War of Art I read recently. I know that's another one that I've seen you talk about before. Have you read The One Thing?

No. Is that another Steven Pressfield? No, no. That's... Oh, that's... I know what you're talking about now. I've read a fair amount in the self-development space to the point where I don't read much in it anymore because a lot of it is just rehashed stuff. And so, I am also not one to recommend too many books in that space because I'm kind of a cynical jaded reader. And that one in particular, the package looks like it's going to suck. It looks like it's just going to be a rehashed book that doesn't say anything new and is utterly uninspiring, but it's actually quite good. It's one that I recommend often because it's simple but powerful.

And some of the key concepts that the book revolves around are applicable to many different things, not just work. So yeah, that's one I'd recommend. Okay. What are a few of your other favorites? If you just had to pick your personal favorites. I read in several different genres, so that's where it depends. So if we're talking self-development, yeah, the one thing is great. The war of art is great. I recommend that often. I think the war of art was a cool one because I kind of looked at it in like the fitness aspect of he talks about the resistance. And I think a lot of people fight that in the fitness realm as well. Of course, we literally are struggling against resistance. It's life in that sense is a

metaphor for what we're doing in the gym, right? In some ways, yeah, get in the gym and fight against the resistance of the weight and of gravity, really, you might find it easier to go grind against the other forms of resistance that we run up against, right? And even people that are in the fitness industry, like I guess I consider myself and like you are, is a lot of times I don't want to go to the gym intrinsically, but I just know the benefits and I know how I'm going to feel afterwards. And you kind of fight that resistance to get there. But once you're like halfway through or once you're done, you just feel so much better. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So, as far as other self-development books that I recommend,

The Obstacle is the Way by Holliday was good. Oh, yeah. Yeah. I read that. That was a good one. I think funnily, I think he writes better articles than books, but I do think he did a good job with that. Resilience by Eric Greitens, regardless of his scandal. He went to an Ivy League school on a scholarship. He's a smart dude. You read his book and I enjoyed reading it because he's a cut above as far as like his ability to write and communicate. So, and I liked a lot of what he had to say again, regardless of the weird, like what a weird scandal to get taken. It's just so stupid. If people don't know, it was like he tied up some woman and took pictures of her and then

told her that like naked pictures. And I told her I might be getting this a little bit wrong, but this is the gist and told her that if she told anybody he would like release the pictures or something. And then he got into politics and that came out and ruined his career and now he's yeah he can't get into politics with skeletons in your closet how do you find yourself in that situation it's so bizarre so let's see the seven habits highly effective people whatever that book for sure yeah that was one of the first books i ever picked up actually when i decided to try to pick up the habit again very wordyy and verbose. Should have been half the size, but still worth reading. I liked Principles by Ray Dalio. Deep Work by Cal Newport. I'm just kind of thinking that

these are ones I kind of read semi recently, at least in the last couple of years. I got the Little Black Book of Workout Motivation on my Kindle. That's going to be coming up in the next month or so once I finish a couple. You got to let me know what you think. All right. I definitely will. Yeah, I like that one. People should read that one.

You don't know if you're listening. That's my book. And yeah, as far as self-development goes, those are the ones that immediately come to mind. If I were to look over all my highlights that I've pulled out of books, I probably would find some others. But again, I don't read very much in that space anymore because I don't find it a very productive use of time for me. You use Readwise as well, don't you? Yeah, I like Readwise. Yeah. I mean, it's kind of gimmicky, but I like it because I find that that kind of stuff is nice to have more bits of interesting information and anecdotes and stuff top of mind ish for writing in particular. I mean, I do have a system that I use. I use Evernote for that,

where I save a lot of interesting stuff that I come across and anecdotes and I tag it with different tags. And so when I'm writing, if I want, okay, I want an anecdote that is about courage. So I can go into Evernote, look at my courage tag, and I'll have a bunch of stuff to choose from. And, but this is a good way for me way for me, when stuff pops up, I've usually already put it in Evernote because I've already went through the book and taken out all my highlights, but sometimes I haven't and I can put it in there. So if I didn't have that whole system and that wasn't relevant to me, I'm not sure I would use Readwise. I don't know, it wouldn't serve. Maybe I would just hope that some of this stuff would be useful

to have committed to long-term memory. It's not enough repetition to do that. You have to get lucky for one reminder or maybe two over six months is generally not going to be enough to move it out of working memory into long-term, but it is a neat app. Going back to what you were originally talking about a little bit ago is just, I think that there's such a big difference in people that, and I made this change myself in like over consumption of media, Netflix, social media, stuff like that. And trying to convert a large portion of that time into reading because reading not only helps you come up with new concepts, but I was talking to a friend about this recently.

I think that reading is very helpful because focus is so much of a commodity in today's society. That's another meta skill. It's like one of these higher order skills that you need to have. TV or like social media, you can consume all that stuff passively, but reading, you really have to buckle down and focus or else you're not going to, it's not going to stick with you. You're going to have to reread and stuff like that. I agree. All right, man. Well, this has been a great discussion. We've gone all over the place, but I found it interesting. Hopefully people listening are still with us and have enjoyed it. Why don't you just share again where people can find you one more time and check out what you're

doing in the fitness space? Yeah. So my podcast is on Apple and Spotify. It's called What's Your Story? So if you just type that, what's your story? Question mark. And on Instagram, it's at Jay Parker Fitlife. I'm on there just about every day. Try to post every day. And my blog is jayparkerfitlife.blog. Just a WordPress where I try to post every week as well. Just trying to get after that consistency and start to hopefully impact some people's lives so they can make the sort of changes that I've made.

Awesome, man. Well, again, thanks for taking the time. And oh, two more books for people listening. Flow by Michele Csikszentmihalyi. I think I'm saying that right. I really liked that book and really agreed with a lot of his conclusions and recommendations. And then Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. I know it's cliched and everybody says it, but I stand by that recommendation. I do think it's a book that everybody can benefit from. Yeah. To see it inside the mind of someone that long ago deals with the same struggles we deal with. Yeah. I just had an interesting way of looking at things too.

So there we go. We can wrap up with that. All right. Well, thanks again. Absolutely. Hey, Mike here. And if you like what I'm doing on the podcast and elsewhere, and if you want to help me help more people get into the best shape of their lives, please do consider picking up one of my bestselling health and fitness books, including Bigger, Leaner, Stronger for Men, Thinner, Leaner, Stronger for Women, my flexible dieting cookbook, The Shredded Chef, and my 100% practical and hands-on blueprint for personal transformation inside and outside of the gym, The Little Black Book of Workout Motivation. Now, these books have sold well over 1 million copies and have helped thousands of people build their best bodies ever. And you can find them on all major online retailers like Audible, Amazon,

iTunes, Kobo, and Google Play, as well as in select Barnes and Noble stores. Again, that's Bigger Leaner Stronger for Men, Thinner Leaner Stronger for Women, The Shredded Chef, and The Little Black Book of Workout Motivation. Oh, and I should also mention that you can get any of the audio books 100% free when you sign up for an Audible account, which is the perfect way to make those pockets of downtime, like commuting, meal prepping, and cleaning more interesting, entertaining, and productive. So if you want to take Audible up on that offer, and if you want to get one of my audiobooks for free, go to www.legionathletics.com slash Audible. That's L-E-G-I-O-N athletics slash A-U-D-I-B-L-E and sign up for your account.