Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - If You Think “Clean Eating” Is Stupid, You’re Doing It Wrong...

Episode Date: August 2, 2017

This time I’m going to make a bit of a case for “clean eating” because I think it doesn’t deserve all the ridicule that it gets online, and especially among the “cool crowd” that love to showcase not only how good their bodies look but also how heinous their diets are. I don’t know about you, but if I had to choose between the diet of your average clean eater that thinks sugar makes you fat and gluten causes leaky gut and the diet of your average IIFYMer that doesn’t like to waste calories on nutritious foods like fruit and vegetables, I’ll take the former every time, and I’ll explain why in this episode. I’m also going to talk about a style of dieting that gives us the best of both worlds -- the quality of clean eating and the adaptability of flexible dieting -- something that I’ve dubbed “flexible clean eating.” I know, very creative of me. This style of dieting is perfect for improving not just your body composition but your health and vitality, as well. It also makes you a better intuitive eater and helps you develop a healthier relationship with food, which ultimately makes it easier to a lean, muscular physique without having to count and track everything that you eat. 4:10 - Why is the rejection of "clean eating" a bad idea? 4:54 - Is body composition an indicator of health? 5:50 - What does a smart flexible dieter's meal plan look like? 6:40 - What are the benefits of a nutritious diet? 7:54 - What's the problem with highly-processed food? 11:39 - How can you develop a healthy relationship with food? 12:48 - Are you better off with a "clean eating" style of dieting? 13:40 - What's the best way to eat? 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/

Boys and girls, welcome to another episode of the Muscle For Life Podcast. I am your host, Mike Matthews. And this time I am going to make a bit of a case for quote unquote clean eating because I really don't think it deserves all the ridicule that it gets online. And especially among the cool crowd, you know, the guys and gals on Instagram that love to showcase not only how good their bodies look, but also how downright heinous their diets are. Now, I don't know about you, but if I had to choose between the diet of your average clean eater that thinks sugar makes you fat and gluten causes leaky gut and the diet of your average IAFYM-er that doesn't like to waste calories on stuff like fruit and vegetables, I'll take the former every time.

And in this episode, I am going to quickly explain why. I'm also gonna talk about a style of dieting that gives us the best of both worlds, the quality of clean eating and the adaptability of flexible dieting. Something that I have very creatively dubbed flexible clean eating. This style of dieting is perfect for

not just improving your body composition, but your health and vitality as well. And it also makes you a better intuitive eater and helps you develop a healthier relationship with food, which ultimately is going to make it easier for you to maintain a lean muscular physique without having to count and track every little thing that you eat. Now, before we get into this episode, I'm sorry, but I have to shill for something to pay the bills. No, I'm just kidding. I'm not big on promoting stuff that I don't personally use and believe in. So instead, I'm just going to quickly tell you about something of mine, specifically my 100% natural fat loss

supplement Phoenix it has sold over a hundred thousand bottles in the last several years and it helps you lose fat faster in three ways one it increases your metabolic rate two it amplifies the power of fat burning chemicals produced by your body and, it increases the feeling of fullness from food. In short, it speeds up your metabolism. It helps your body burn fat more efficiently, and it helps you control hunger and cravings and maintain high energy levels. Phoenix also contains no artificial food dyes, fillers, or other unnecessary junk. And all that is why it has over 700 reviews on Amazon with a four star average and another 250 reviews on my website with a four and a half star average. So if you want to burn more fat every day and have an easier time sticking to your diet without

having to pump yourself full of harsh stimulants or potentially harmful chemicals, then you want to head over to www.legionathletics.com and pick up a bottle of Phoenix today. And just to show how much I appreciate my podcast peeps, use the coupon code podcast at checkout and you will save 10% on your entire order. All right, that is it for the pitch. Let's get to the show. It's pretty trendy to sneer about quote-unquote clean eating these days. If you spend any time on social media, then you have undoubtedly seen all of the people that love to boast about the trans fatty sugary pre-packaged delights that they can quote-unquote fit into their macros and still look good? Well, in many cases, I think this is merely an attempt to virtue signal to the fitness intelligentsia. I think that these people are trying to just prove

or demonstrate that they quote unquote get it and kind of just lord it over everyone else that doesn't, you know, so they can feel superior to the great unwashed masses that think that you have to eat a restrictive diet to lose fat and gain muscle. I also think it is stupid because the wholesale rejection of clean eating isn't a disavowal of dietary ignorance and dogma. It's really just a childish denial of our body's most basic need for food and that is nutrition stuff like high quality protein vitamins minerals and healthy fats you know the quote-unquote little things that we need to stay mentally and physically robust and to fight off disease and dysfunction things that we unfortunately won't find in fruit loops Loops, Pop-Tarts, and Talenti

ice cream, which is unfortunate because it is truly delicious. So I want you to remember something the next time you are browsing the IFYM hashtag on Instagram, and that is body composition is not a foolproof barometer of health. You can have a killer six-pack and a whole host of nutritional deficiencies that, if allowed to fester, may literally one day kill you. This is why, if I had to choose one end of the spectrum, I would rather be a clueless, clean eater who's obsessed with coconut oil and kale and afraid of gluten and GMOs, than a rabid, incorrigible, quote-unquote, IFYM-er who refuses to waste calories on stuff like fruit and vegetables because it would mean less fast food and Oreos. Yes, it's true,

the clean eater may never be as lean and muscular as the IFYM-er, but he also won't be as likely to get sick and die, and that kind of matters too. This is why the meal plans of smart, flexible dieters look a lot like those of the clean eating crowd. My own meal plans, for example, are primarily comprised of nutritious proteins, all kinds of fruits and vegetables, various types of whole grains, sometimes some legumes, and usually some nuts and oils for healthy fats. Any kind of indulgence, which for me is chocolate. I know it's not that much of an indulgence, but hey, I like it. 150, 200 calories of chocolate a day is very satisfying to me. But that kind of stuff is always an

afterthought. In other words, I truly practice what I preach. I get the vast majority of my daily calories from relatively unprocessed and highly nutritious foods, and I leave a small caloric buffer for treats. Now, eating like this has obvious benefits. I mean, the more nutritious your diet is, the better your body is going to perform and feel both inside and outside of the gym. Now, I know there's diminishing returns here, and that's true up to a point after which continuing to make your diet more nutritious

isn't likely to make any noticeable difference. But let's be real, most people are probably never going to get to that point, especially considering how awful most people's diets actually are. Now, there are other big benefits to this smart, flexible style of dieting that many people don't realize until they've done it for a while for themselves. For example, eating like this teaches you how to be a good intuitive eater. And that really matters because if you ever want to be able to maintain your ideal physique without having to plan and track every single thing that you eat, then you are going to

have to get used to eating a lot of relatively unprocessed and nutritious foods. This really is the secret to effortless weight maintenance because most quote-unquote healthy foods tend to be lighter in calories and very filling and nutritious. In short, these are the types of foods that your body's natural mechanisms for regulating appetite work best with. One of the many problems with highly processed foods is they tend to be very high in calories yet not nearly as filling or nourishing, which short-circuit these mechanisms, which makes it much easier to overeat. Smart, flexible dieting also ensures that

your body gets at least most of the nutrition that it needs. Eating a lot of nutritious foods isn't necessarily enough to provide your body with the entire spectrum of micronutrients that it needs to perform optimally, which is one of the reasons why I recommend and personally take a good multivitamin, but it can get most of the job done. So you need to remember that in the end, health and vitality just matter a lot more than muscle and body fat percentage. You're probably not going to care how big your biceps are when you are having a heart attack. And the bottom line is smart, flexible dieting will significantly reduce your risk of chronic

disease and of heart disease in particular, which is the number one killer in the world. And that, in my opinion, really is one of the biggest reasons to fuss over all of this diet and exercise stuff in the first place. Smart, flexible dieting also minimizes your exposure to various chemicals, hormones, and other substances that can be harmful to your health. Now, you probably know that we are exposed to an overwhelming number of chemicals every day through simply eating, breathing, and drinking. This list is long and includes all kinds of things like tobacco smoke, herbicides, fungicides, insecticides, disinfection byproducts, plasticizers, heavy metals, parabens, surfactants, phthalates, and now what you may not know is just how seriously this chemical load can

affect your health. For example, research shows that our daily exposure to endocrine disrupting chemicals commonly found in stuff like plastic bottles, metal food cans, detergents, toys, cosmetics, and pesticides increases the risk of neurological and behavioral disorders, male infertility, birth defects, endometriosis, obesity, diabetes, and some cancers, and can even lead to diminished IQ scores. That same study estimates that these chemicals are responsible for at least $340 billion, with a B in annual healthcare costs here in the United States alone. Think about that, $340 billion in healthcare costs here in the United States, and that's just one class of chemicals out of many that our bodies have to deal with every day. Many of those conditions develop slowly, too. You might not notice the gradual decline until one day it's just apparent that something is very, very wrong.

very wrong. So we can and we really should attack this problem in two ways. First, we can keep our bodies as healthy and functional as possible. And second, we can reduce our exposure to these harmful substances as much as possible. The first one is best accomplished by the things that most everybody knows, but very few of us actually do. And that is exercising regularly, not being overweight, not smoking, and not abusing alcohol. And as far as the second one goes, eating mostly unprocessed foods and choosing organic produce if you can afford it, and also using quote-unquote clean cosmetic grooming and cleaning products are big. We will never be able to get our exposure to these chemicals down to zero, of course, but fortunately we don't have to. If we just take good care of our bodies through healthy lifestyle habits and thus

maintain a strong immune system, we can live in today's modern polluted environment and remain healthy, vital, and disease-free. Another big benefit of smart flexible dieting is it helps you develop a healthy relationship with food. And this is a rather big one because a lot of what goes on in the fitness space really isn't healthy or desirable. For example, you see a lot of yo-yo dieting, you see a lot of food abstinence, you see starvation dieting, binging and purging and emotional eating. None of this is normal. This is not the way that it's supposed to work. In fact, in some cases, what you're looking at is a legitimate eating disorder that can really

actually ruin someone's life. So if you want to look and feel great for the long haul, then you're going to have to cultivate and maintain a healthy relationship with food. You know you're on the right path if you generally eat until you're full and then stop. You don't have overwhelming psychological or emotional desires to eat individual foods or just food in general. You don't seriously struggle with cravings. You see food mainly as a source of nourishment. You enjoy eating nutritious foods that give you energy and fuel your daily activities. And you don't feel guilty when you eat the occasional quote-unquote unhealthy food. You know, I'd even go as far as saying that if you don't check most, if not all of those boxes,

then flexible dieting on the whole maybe isn't for you. You might be better off with a more restrictive quote-unquote clean eating style of dieting because for you, flexible dieting may just degenerate into the eat junk and be lean if it fits your macros game that I was talking about earlier. Yes, any food can fit your macros, but what about cancer and heart disease, chronic fatigue, and stuff like that? How do those fit into the macros? Now, of course, that is flexible dieting taken to the extreme. And when clean eating is taken to the extreme, you're looking at orthorexia, which is an unhealthy obsession with eating healthy foods. And of course, that also is very unhealthy. So the idea then is to be flexible and intelligent about it

and naturally develop a positive eating mindset that is enhanced and not perverted by dietary flexibility and freedom. So here's the bottom line. More and more people are ridiculing clean eating these days, probably because it just makes them feel better about their shitty diets. And I say, don't listen to them. Maybe even pity them because their neglect of the nutritional side of dieting is going to catch up with them someday and in many cases probably sooner rather than later. So in the final analysis, here's how it looks. Clean eating guarantees nothing in the way of muscle gain and fat loss

because that dimension of dieting is ruled by numbers, you know, calories and macros. And flexible dieting, on the other hand, guarantees nothing in the way of nutrition and health because that dimension is ruled by the quality of your food choices. And that's why the best style of dieting, in my opinion, really is the best of both of those worlds you know you could call it flexible clean eating if you will and i kind of like that maybe it should become a thing hey there it is mike again and i just wanted to say that i hope you enjoyed this episode and found it interesting and helpful now if you'd like to read about all this stuff as well, then head over to

muscleforlife.com, that's muscleforlife.com, and legionathletics.com, L-E-G-I-O-N, athletics.com, because I've published over a million words of free articles on the blogs on those websites on all types of things related to building muscle, losing fat, and getting healthy. New articles go up every week on both sites as well. So if you like what you read, then definitely hop on my mailing list and you will be notified when new stuff goes live. My email subscribers also get exclusive deals on my products and services and other goodies. So there's that too. Thanks again for listening to this episode and I will see you in the next one. Oh, and before you leave, let me quickly tell you about one other product of mine that I think you might like.

Specifically, my workout app Stacked. It has tens of thousands of users and close to 400 reviews on the Apple store with a four-star average. And it helps you get more out of your training in several ways. It helps you quickly and easily plan out your workout routines. It gives you quick access to useful tools like plate math and one rep max calculation. It allows you to visually track your progression in your workouts, as well as your body measurements and much, much more. It's free to download too. So if you want to check it out, then head over to www.getstackedapp.com or just hit

the iOS app store and search for stacked workout and you will find it.