Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - How to Beat Food Cravings and Stick to Your Diet

Episode Date: July 1, 2020

Why do food cravings strike when you least want them? You know…you’re at work and locked in the conference room when you remember the cake down the hall. Minutes turn to hours as you fixate on that chocolatey goodness. Or you’ve just crawled into bed, only to find yourself overwhelmed by a hankering for the cold pizza languishing in the fridge (it would be so much happier in your belly!). Or your meal plan’s archenemy: the midday slump, where your brain refuses to work for anything but carbs and sugar. Sigh. If only we craved chicken breasts and vegetables…hitting our macros would be so easy… Well, that may be wishful thinking, but that doesn’t mean you have to be a slave to your food cravings and abandon your quest for the ideal body. The reality is cravings aren’t nearly as vexing when you know why they occur and how to manage them, which is what this podcast is going to be all about. Let’s begin. --- Timestamps: 3:32 - What is a food craving? 5:50 - How does alcohol cause food cravings? 8:16 - How does restrictive eating cause food cravings? 11:00 - How do emotional triggers cause food cravings? 12:52- How does stress cause food cravings? 12:47 - How do hormones cause food cravings? 15:27 - What do people crave and why? 19:45 - How do you beat food cravings? 27:16 - How can you adjust your mindset to eliminate food cravings? --- Mentioned on The Show: July 4th Sale (Save up to 30%) - https://legionathletics.com/products/supplements/ --- 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.legionathletics.com/signup/

Hey, hey, hey, I'm Mike Matthews. This is the Most Full Life Podcast. Welcome to an episode and thank you for joining me today to talk about food cravings, which are a pain in the ass, right? They always strike when you least want them. You know, for example, when you're cutting and you're at home working, and then you remember you have that delicious cake in the fridge, and then the minutes congeal. They turn into hours as you fixate on the chocolatey goodness. Or maybe you've just crawled into bed and then you find yourself overwhelmed by a hankering for the cold pizza, languishing, calling your name in the fridge. I mean, the pizza

would be so much happier in your belly, right? And then of course, there is pretty much everybody's arch enemy, at least as far as meal planning goes. And that is the midday slump, you know, 3, 4 p.m. when your brain just refuses to work for anything but carbs and sugar. Wouldn't it be nice if we just craved chicken breasts and vegetables and, you know, hitting our calories and hitting our macros every day. Fitness would be so easy, wouldn't it? Well, that may be wishful thinking, but it doesn't mean that you have to be a slave to your food cravings and abandon your quest for your best body ever. The reality is cravings aren't nearly as vexing when you know why they occur and how to manage them properly, which is what this podcast is going to be all about. Also, if you like what I am doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, definitely check out my sports nutrition company, Legion, which, thanks to the support of many people like you, is the leading brand of all natural sports

supplements in the world. And we're on top because every ingredient and dose in every product is backed by peer-reviewed scientific research. Every formulation is 100% transparent. There are no proprietary blends, for example. And everything is naturally sweetened and flavored. So that means no artificial sweeteners, no artificial food dyes, which may not be as dangerous as some people would have you believe, but there is good evidence to suggest that having many servings of artificial sweeteners in particular every day for long periods of time may not be the best for your health. So while you don't need pills, powders, and potions to get into great shape, and frankly, most of them are virtually useless, there are

natural ingredients that can help you lose fat, build muscle, and get healthy faster, and you will find the best of them in Legion's products. To check out everything we have to offer, including protein powders and protein bars, pre-workout, post-workout supplements, fat burners, multivitamins, joint support, and more, head over to www.buylegion.com, B-U-Y legion.com. And just to show how much I appreciate my podcast peeps, use the coupon code MFL at at checkout and you will save 20% on your entire first order. So again, if you appreciate my work and if you want to see more of it, and if you also want all natural evidence-based supplements that work, please do consider

supporting Legion so I can keep doing what I love, like producing more podcasts like this. All right, so let's start this discussion like we start most podcasts with a definition of terms. So what is a food craving? Well, according to the good people over at Merriam-Webster, a craving is a very strong desire for something, but that doesn't quite capture the real flavor of the food craving, does it? I think this is a little bit more accurate. It's an intense, urgent, and often abnormal desire or longing. And urgent and abnormal are actually the keys to understanding the difference between a craving and just hunger. Because while hunger is a very great need for food, really of any kind, a craving is the desire for a specific food. It's a classic case of needs versus wants. Fortunately, you don't beat food cravings by ignoring hunger and just starving

yourself. And in fact, I have good news for you. You'll want to go in the other direction, which we'll be talking about in this podcast. So just to quickly recap here, if you're wondering whether last night's cheesecake binge was the result of hunger or a craving, here's what you need to consider. Specificity. When you're hungry, you just want food because your body needs calories to keep soldiering on. And so you don't really care what you eat or a lot of things sound appetizing because you need food. When you have a craving though, it's usually for one specific food or a type of food, or maybe a taste like for example, carbs or sweet food or salty, or maybe even crunchy. There's also a point of intensity that is relevant here. So if the urge to eat comes on fast and furious, it's likely a craving. But if it builds gradually, it may just be hunger. And then there is externality because food cravings are often a form of external eating, which means they're often triggered by external cues like seeing something tasty or smelling some delicious goodies baking in the oven.

Internal eating, on the other hand, is a response to your body's natural feelings of hunger. So it's something that cues you internally to eat as opposed to something in your environment. Now let's talk about what causes food cravings. And this is tricky because cravings are complex and they are intertwined with a number of internal and external cues. Fortunately though, a high-level overview of some of the more common causes can help us overcome our desire to eat away all of our gains. So let's quickly review the most major ones, the ones that give most people the most trouble. So let's talk about alcohol and how that relates to food cravings. And you know what this is like firsthand.

If you've ever come back from the bar and then polished off a bag or two or three of Doritos, there's a link here, right? Alcohol and food cravings. This relationship, though, it goes a bit deeper than many people realize because research shows that people who tend to experience strong food cravings also have an increased risk of alcohol abuse. And as drinking is known to increase the likelihood of overeating, and it also enhances fat storage, a slippery slope starts to come into view here. So you have food cravings that lead to overeating and drinking, which then leads to more overeating and drinking,

which then leads to rapid fat gain. We also know that people with a family history of alcohol dependence show a preference for sweeter foods, suggesting a genetic basis for the connection between alcohol abuse and food cravings. So the bottom line here is if you tend to overdo it on alcohol, you're likely prone to cravings and overeating as well and vice versa. So keep that in the back of your mind the next time you're out for drinks. And if you want to learn about a strategy that can help you gain minimal fat while drinking, head over to legionathletics.com and search for alcohol consumption. And you'll find an article I wrote called, Does Alcohol Consumption Affect Weight Loss and Muscle Growth? And while you're there, you may want to check out another article up on

the blog over at Legion on alcohol called How Bad Is Alcohol For You? Really, that has a lot of good tips for minimizing the negative health consequences of drinking too much alcohol. And it also busts myths on both sides of the coin here. There are some myths regarding the supposed health benefits of drinking as well as the supposed downsides of drinking moderately. And in the article, you'll learn what moderate drinking really is. All right, let's get back to food cravings and let's move on to restrictive eating and how that can cause food cravings. Now, have you ever followed a diet based on some guru's lists of foods that you can and can't eat and then realized that you become fixated on a food that is on the forbidden list. The food is labeled bad and then

you really want it. Or maybe you wake up on the first day of a new diet and you just suddenly have to scarf down some donuts for breakfast. Well, us quirky humans love to obsess over whatever is not allowed, whatever is banned. And this is probably why restrictive eating is a known cause of food cravings. There's nothing like the temptation of a taboo food to trigger an obsession with it. And this is why, one of the reasons why, one of the bigger reasons why many mainstream diets, even ones that maybe don't involve calorie counting per se, but do try to restrict calories and do try to create a calorie deficit by restricting the foods that you're allowed to eat. This is a major reason why those diets often just lead to flame out binging. The diets focus far too much on what you should and shouldn't eat and far too little on the

scientific underpinnings of what makes dieting work, energy balance and macronutrient balance primarily. And this is one of the reasons why flexible dieting works so well for so many people. It allows you to eat the stuff you like to eat, including the quote unquote bad foods. Of course, you can't eat too many of them because they often contain a lot of calories, but you can fit in something delicious and satisfying every day, fit into your meal plan, so long as it doesn't comprise more than 20% of your daily calories. So if you get 80% of your daily calories from relatively unprocessed nutritious foods, you can take the remaining 20% and quote unquote spend them on whatever you want.

And I should also probably add to that, you also want to make sure you're eating enough protein. Those are the most important things. There's more to flexible dieting and quote-unquote healthy dieting, but those are the pillars. You have to eat your calories right, and you have to get enough protein in, and you have to get most of your calories from nutritious foods. And if you want to learn more about that, just head over to legionathletics.com and search for flexible dieting. And you'll find an article that I wrote on it. I've probably recorded a podcast as well. So you'll have to search for it, search the RSS feed or the podcast feed and whatever app you're using or YouTube channel if you're on YouTube. And I do think something will come up. Okay, moving on. Let's talk about emotional triggers and how they relate to food cravings.

So quick question. What does popular culture say women love to do when they feel down? Eat, right? Maybe it is putting down a pint of ice cream or a chocolate bar or two or whatever other comfort food they have around. And that stereotype is a bit overplayed and many men do the same thing, but it does highlight a legitimate cause of food cravings. And that is emotions. Emotions can make you want to eat and negative ones in particular, a lot more so than positive ones. For example, studies have shown that anger, sadness, and boredom are all reliable triggers for food cravings. And scientists think that maybe it is a way to kind of self-medicate, right? To increase brain serotonin levels and make us feel better. That doesn't mean we have

to eat our feelings away though. There are other good ways to deal with negative feelings. One go-to for me is exercise. And research shows that that is always a good solution because you're not going to be thinking about cookies if you're trying to hit a PR. And even something as simple as a stimulating game or a walk outside has been shown to unfix people's attention from food and allow them to, you could say, ride the wave of the craving without giving into it, without crashing and allowing it to subside so they can move on with their day without having to wrestle with this strong desire to eat bad things. All right, the next reliable trigger is stress. And this is one all of us have experienced, I'm sure, many times and probably quite a bit over the last couple of

months. So of course, this is no surprise. It is satisfying to turn to sweet succulent foods to take the edge off of a rough day. And while acute stress can actually suppress the appetite because it puts the body into its fight or flight mode, the chronic type of stress, the lower volume but regular ever-present variety has been linked to food cravings. And the reason for that is during times of stress, our body copes in various ways. One mechanism is the activation of the hypothalamic pituitary adrenal access, the HPA access, which is a complex set of interactions between three glands in the body of the hypothalamus. You have the pituitary gland and the adrenal glands. And when that system is activated, cortisol levels increase,

and then that can increase the desire to eat. And this is one of the many reasons that stress management is just essential for taming cravings and achieving a steady and predictable rate of weight loss or weight gain if you're lean bulking or just steady and predictable weight maintenance if you are trying to just maintain your body composition. And one stress management strategy that has worked really well for me is to have a bedtime routine that is relaxing, a routine that makes me sleepy by the time I'm ready to go to bed. And if you want to learn more about that, head over to legionathletics.com and search for relax. And you'll find an article I wrote on this topic and on several of the things

that I've tried and what has worked well for me. The article is called 10 proven ways to relax your muscles and mind. And I may have recorded a podcast on this as well. I'm not entirely sure. I don't think I have. So I think you have to just head over to the website and read the article. All right, moving on to the next and final trigger I want to discuss, and that is hormones, because cortisol isn't the only hormone that can trigger cravings. In women, for example, studies show that pregnancy and the menstrual cycle can stimulate cravings, as any woman can tell you, something we don't even need science to explain, but there's scientific evidence of it as well as plenty

of anecdotal evidence. And as a whole, young women do tend to experience the strongest food cravings, which suggests that cravings do decline with the effects of ovarian hormones. So now that you understand a bit more about what causes cravings, let's take a look at what people crave and why. So research shows that in general, the strongest cravings are for foods that aren't very filling, foods that are high in calories, but low in protein and fiber, and usually also high in fat and carbs where of course the calories come from and that combination of high fat and or high carb and low protein and low fiber

makes for foods that taste really good and provide a lot of calories and thus make it very easy to overeat and of course I'm talking about the typical types of junk food, mostly the stuff that we all know and we all love, at least some of it, right? So we have stuff like milk chocolate and salty snacks like chips and french fries, nachos, ice cream, baked things that are delicious like brownies, cookies, cakes, muffins, as well as just bread and pasta. And what is it, though, about this stuff that just revs up our salivary glands? Well, research suggests it relates to what scientists call the food reward, which can be defined as the momentary value of a food to the individual at the time of ingestion. In other words, these high-calorie,

rather unfilling and unnutritious foods evoke powerful positive feelings for a few reasons. One is the combination of fat and carbs, and that causes the greatest sensation of reward, and especially when you compare it to foods that just contain primarily one nutrient, one macronutrient. Another point here is that calorie-dense foods are frequently eaten at times of extreme hunger, which then creates an association in our mind between satisfaction of the feeling of hunger and the food. So then the next time that you're hungry, you are more likely to want to go back to that food without even realizing it. And lastly, low fiber foods are easily digested and lead to a faster spike in blood sugar and

energy. So basically what we're looking at here is these high calorie, higher carb, higher fat foods. They don't offer much in the way of nutrition, but they are just fantastic sources of instant gratification. And before we carry on, I want to quickly comment on one food in particular that so many people crave so often, and that is chocolate. Why? Why chocolate? Well, there's research on it, and chocolate is the most commonly craved food out there, and it certainly meets the criteria we just discussed. But what makes it so irresistible? Why do some people consider themselves chocoholics? Well, studies show that while there may or may not be such a thing as chocolate addiction, there is no doubt

that it can very positively influence mood. And that's about it, actually. There's really nothing else particularly special in play, despite what you may have heard. Chocolate is just a great way to get an energy and a mood boost, especially with people who are sensitive to caffeine, because it does have a little bit of caffeine. And if you eat enough of it, you could get up to 70 milligrams of caffeine or more in the case of dark chocolate. A bar of dark chocolate has about 70 milligrams of caffeine or more in the case of dark chocolate. A bar of dark chocolate has about 70 milligrams of caffeine, for example. And that's enough to make a difference in somebody who is sensitive to caffeine for sure, but also people who aren't all that sensitive to caffeine. That can be enough to just lift you up a little bit. And of course, then if you turn to chocolate to

accomplish that when you are feeling down or bad, then you create that association, which makes you more likely to go to chocolate or to want chocolate when you're feeling that way. And that reinforcing feedback loop can get to a point where you feel like you're addicted to chocolate or you have to have chocolate if you get even the slightest bit of bad news. you have to have chocolate if you get even the slightest bit of bad news. If you like what I'm doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, definitely check out my sports nutrition company, Legion, which thanks to the support of many people like you, is the leading brand of all natural sports supplements in the world. of all natural sports supplements in the world. Let's shift gears now and get to some practical tips for beating food cravings because research shows that food cravings are naturally associated

with weight gain, and that's of course no surprise. And then that can lead to a pattern of yo-yo dieting, which is itself a source of recurring stress and discomfort that then increases the desire to overeat. And that then can turn into a very vicious cycle that can be very hard to escape. And that's probably why food cravings are frequently cited as the most common reason that people stray from their diet. But research shows that it doesn't have to be that way. Restricting calories for weight loss can actually cause a reduction of food cravings if you go about it correctly. And if you're a regular around here, you've probably experienced that. I know I have, especially in the beginning of a cut and especially if I'm coming off of a lean bulk

where I'm already kind of sick of eating a lot of food. And for the first maybe month, even upward of two months, and I'm speaking personally here, but also for a lot of people I've interacted with over the years, that the desire to eat, again, these high calorie, relatively unnutritious foods actually goes down if you don't restrict your calories too heavily. So if you use an aggressive but not reckless calorie deficit, and if you eat enough protein and you make sure you're eating enough nutritious foods, which really comes down to fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, stuff that keeps you full and nourishes your body, and then you allow yourself to take, again, up to 20% of your daily calories and allot them to whatever you feel like eating.

And if you combine that with an effective exercise or training routine, better word, training versus exercise. But if you combine that with, for example, a lot of heavy compound weightlifting and a moderate amount of cardio, if you want to do cardio, but not taking it too far in terms of duration or intensity. So not doing hours and hours and hours of cardio every week and not doing way too much high intensity stuff. If you put all that together, you will likely find that you don't have much in the way of cravings when you're cutting, at least in the beginning. Now, if you are embarking on a long cut, especially one that is going to end with you very lean. So if we're talking about like a natural bodybuilding type of prep where

it's going to be five, six months, maybe even slightly longer, and you need to get absolutely shredded, there's no getting around the side effects that you're going to feel, especially later into that cut. But that's not most people listening. And if you approach your cutting intelligently and patiently, that game of hungry, hungry hippo going on in your brain does wind down after the first week or so. There is a transition usually first, I don't know, three to five, maybe seven days. But after that, it's pretty much smooth sailing for what most people want to achieve. That said, even when you do everything right, you may still experience food cravings. And so I want to share with you some simple and evidence-based strategies for beating food cravings. So let's talk about diet first,

some diet tips for beating food cravings. Generally speaking, the more rigid your diet is, the more you're going to struggle with food cravings. For speaking, the more rigid your diet is, the more you're going to struggle with food cravings. For example, research shows that strict dieting strategies, so ones that revolve around limiting the foods that you can eat, are associated with eating disorder symptoms and higher BMIs, higher body weights essentially, relative to height, whereas flexible dieting strategies are not. And so what that means is if you're the type of person who is prone to cravings, then one of the worst things you can do is to try to follow a diet that just makes certain foods completely off limits, that forbids things that you would

normally like to eat. I know I'm repeating myself here, but this is a very important one because flexible dieting doesn't work for everyone. I have heard from people over the years who actually do better just completely eliminating certain foods from their meal plans because they have trouble eating smaller amounts of them. So if they try to allot themselves, let's say 100 to 200 calories of chocolate per day, chances are that they're going to end up eating two or three times that. Whereas if they just leave chocolate out of their meal plan altogether and don't buy it and don't have it around so they don't see it when they're in the pantry, they don't struggle with it at all. And the same goes for cheap meals or free meals, right? Where you basically just eat kind of

whatever you want, usually once per week. And within reason, you're not going to go eat 7,000 calories, obviously, but you're going to go to a restaurant and you're going to order an appetizer that's good and an entree that's good. And maybe even a dessert as well. Maybe you're going to share it, maybe not. So for most people, it's probably one to 2000 calories when it's all said and done. And there are definitely ways to make that work. A very easy way to do that is to just do it and not be too concerned with the consequences. And that can work depending on where you're at with your body composition and what you're trying to do. Because obviously, if you end one day per week, let's say in a calorie surplus, even if it's a significant

calorie surplus, let's say it's a 500 calorie surplus and it's not a big deal. So if your diet is set up correctly, really what that means is instead of losing a pound a week, for example, you're losing almost a pound a week. If you just were to have a cheat meal every Friday or every Saturday, and it's going to put you 500 calories over your maintenance for that day. What a lot of people do though to prevent that because you can without any negative consequences is to create a buffer, to create room for that cheat meal. So what they'll do is, and this is something I'll do from time to time as well, is they will basically just eat their protein throughout the day, probably get in their fruits and their vegetables. So just get in their protein throughout the day, probably get in their fruits

and their vegetables. So just get in their protein needs and their basic nutritional needs, but save all of their, or as much of their carbohydrate and as much of their fat calories as they can for this cheat meal. So what can happen is you can come into that dinner. That's what it is for most people with a thousand, 1500, maybe,500, maybe even 2,000 plus, depending on how big and active you are, calories until you reach maintenance. So you can then just enjoy yourself and end the day slightly below maintenance, maybe slightly above, but right around maintenance. And then of course, you're not cutting into your progress as much as the surplus. You're just taking a day a week to

eat a little bit more food, and it's not going to result in any meaningful amount of fat gain. And not that eating 500 calories over your maintenance results in meaningful fat gain, but if you have a lot of fat to lose and you were to do that every week over the course of many months, it means that your cut will have to go a bit longer, not months longer, but several weeks, maybe a month or so longer. And if you want to learn more about losing weight and losing fat really as quickly and healthily and safely as possible, head over to legionathletics.com and there is an article called the complete guide to safely and healthily losing weight fast. So if you search for losing weight fast, it'll come up. And I also did record a podcast on the same topic.

So you can check either of those or both of them out if you want more information on that. All right, let's talk about now mindset related ways to beat cravings. Because if you can use your mind to get stronger and better at sports, which you can, that's been shown in research. It's kind of wild, actually. I wrote an article on it called How to Get Stronger Than Ever in Three Simple Steps. That's over at legionathletics.com and did record a podcast as well. But you can do that. You can use visualization to get stronger or gain strength faster and also to get better at really any physical activity whatsoever. And you can also use visualization, use your mind to blunt cravings. So let's talk about how to level up your mental game to better keep cravings under control. So first is mental imagery, because many food cravings

begin with some sort of sensory exposure to a particular food. So, you know, you might be driving along, just minding your business, and then suddenly your car smells like a giant French fry, and you see it, the golden arches and the poster of the gleaming deep fried goodies. And then the juices start to pool in your mouth as you imagine digging into an overflowing carton of little nibblies. And now you can't get the image out of your mind. And research shows that the more vivid that imagery is, the stronger the craving is likely to feel. And what that means then is you can turn that same mental machinery against cravings. You can get it to work for you instead of against you. And at least you can turn the cravings down a bit.

Maybe you can turn them off, maybe not, but minimally you can mitigate them. And the way to do that is actually very simple. So when a craving strikes, just find something else to visualize vividly in your mind instead of the food. Really experience whatever it is with your mind's eye, the colors, the smells, the sounds, the emotion, the tactile feedback. If you can hold that creation in your mind for up to maybe several minutes, you should find that the craving has become far less compelling. And something that has worked for me is to remember something that was pleasurable. So remember a vacation, for example, not the eating

part of the vacation, but an activity during a vacation that was very fun and to recreate that in my mind. Another simple option is just picking up your phone and playing some sort of visually stimulating game for a few minutes. And research shows that even Tetris can work for this. Yes, Tetris can block cravings. A lot of interesting studies out there. Okay, another point here in terms of the mental game is mindfulness. Now, what is mindfulness? Well, there are many definitions of it, but the one that I like most comes from Jon Kabat-Zinn, who pioneered the mindfulness movement really back in the 70s. He recruited chronically ill patients who were not responding well to traditional treatments to participate in an eight-week stress reduction program that is now called Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction,

MBSR. And since then, a lot of research has been done that shows how mindfulness-based interventions can improve mental and physical health and comparably to other psychological interventions. And so anyway, the definition given by Kabat-Zinn is awareness that arises through paying attention on purpose in the present moment, non-judgmentally. And research shows that if you can do that, you can improve your diet experience in several ways. You can lower your levels of food cravings. You can reduce the focus on good versus bad foods. You can improve satisfaction with your body and you can experience less emotional and external eating. And there are several ways to do this, to incorporate this type of mindfulness into your diet regimen. Some people find that meditation is very helpful

and I've tried it and didn't really notice much of a benefit one way or another. And that doesn't mean though that it can't work for you. And I do understand that many people get a lot from it. I just don't want to give the time to it because I haven't noticed any difference in me. But there are a lot of resources out there, plenty of websites and smartphone apps, for example, that can guide you with meditation, which really is just breathing exercises, right? A lot of this comes down to, can you sit there and just chill out and focus your attention for 10, 15, maybe 20 minutes?

And the more you do that, the better you get at it, right? There are some mindful eating techniques that can help too. Very simple. So for example, when you eat, if you slow down and just be more consciously aware of the sensations that you're experiencing and of your thoughts and your feelings, maybe about what you're eating or just food in general. Really, the idea here is just focus on the whole experience of eating. If you can do that, then you are more likely to find satisfaction in what you're eating, to finish a meal less hungry and less desirous of more food. It's also important that you discredit any bits of guilt or self-judgment that might pop up when you are trying to be more mindful as you eat.

And the key here is don't resist these negative feelings. Just be aware of them and acknowledge them and say, yes, this is what I'm thinking and this is what I'm feeling. And you really just keep calm and carry on, right? And eventually the feelings subside. It goes back to that riding the wave metaphor that I mentioned earlier regarding food cravings. You can ride the wave of any negative feeling, but if you start to resist it and you try to fight it and push it away, that does not work. That is only going to make it worse. And that's it for my inner game tips for beating food cravings. And for this episode, that's really everything I wanted to share with you. And so let's quickly recap what we have discussed here. Really what it comes down to,

if you're going to get the body you really want, and if you're going to keep the body that you really want for the rest of your life, you're going to have to get a handle on food cravings. And the best way to do that is to limit your alcohol intake, to ditch restrictive dieting and embrace flexible dieting instead, unless you know that doesn't work well for you. And you're one of the few people who actually does better when dieting, when cutting, just eliminating certain foods or food groups. You also are going to make sure that you want to eat plenty of high protein and high fiber foods. And really what that comes down to is the nutritious stuff, the stuff that our moms always told us to eat, you know, fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes, that kind of thing.

It's also important to develop positive strategies for coping with bad emotions. Again, exercising is a great one that many people I've spoken to over the years turn to. If they're not having a good day, they make sure to get in some exercise, even if they've already done their workout for the day. I probably should have said that earlier, but I'll mention that here. So let's say you lift weights in the morning. That's your one workout for the day. Some days maybe you do cardio as well, but one day that's not in the plan. You do your workout and you're not feeling so good later in the day. Just go for a walk. Just move your body. That's what I mean by exercise. And if you can go for a walk where there is some nature, some natural beauty, that will help even more. And that's also

just a good habit to get into is don't sit in a chair for hours and hours straight. And this is something I have to remember because if I don't pay attention, four or five, six hours can go by and I've just sat at my desk typing away doing work. And so what I try to do is every hour and a half, maybe two hours, make sure that I'm just getting up and moving around. If you do that, you can mitigate a lot of the downsides of sitting too much. Another important point here that we covered is to have a personal relaxation routine that helps you manage stress, that helps you avoid the chronic stressed out problem that many people face and that can negatively impact your health and your performance in many different ways. And again, for me, it's a combination of things.

There are a couple of supplements that help like magnesium and glycine and theanine, as well as lavender and valerian root. I've spoken about those, I think just in the last couple of episodes, like a couple of episodes back where I talked about how I'm currently eating and exercising and supplementing. I go over those supplements, but also I enjoy listening to calming music at night and I enjoy reading. I avoid TV. It's too stimulating. I avoid stimulating conversations. Conversation is fine, but like I'm not going to argue with my wife about anything at night, for example, because chances are it'll just wake me up and that can interfere with my sleep. Sex is great for relaxing and managing stress. And there are other things as well. Again,

over at legionathletics.com, if you search for ways to relax, you'll find an article I wrote on that. And lastly, there is this tip of using mental imagery and mindfulness as needed to beat cravings when they strike. And also remember that having food cravings doesn't reflect anything about you as a person. We all have to deal with cravings to one degree or another, so there's nothing to be guilty or ashamed about. Just be effective in dealing with them. All right, well, that's it for this episode. I hope you enjoyed it and found it interesting and helpful. And if you did, and you don't mind doing me a favor, please do leave a quick review on iTunes or wherever you're listening to me from in whichever app you're listening to me in, because that not only convinces people that they should check out the

show, it also increases search visibility and thus it helps more people find their way to me and learn how to get fitter, leaner, stronger, healthier, and happier as well. And of course, if you want to be notified when the next episode goes live, then simply subscribe to the podcast and you won't miss out on any new stuff. And if you didn't like something about the show, please do shoot me an email at mike at muscleforlife.com, just muscle, F-O-R, life.com, and share your thoughts on how I can do this better. I read everything myself and I'm always looking for constructive feedback, even if it is criticism. I'm open to it. And of course, you can email me if you have positive feedback as well, or if you have

questions really relating to anything that you think I could help you with, definitely send me an email. That is the best way to get ahold of me, mikeatmuscleforlife.com. And that's it. Thanks again for listening to this episode. And I hope to hear from you soon.