Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Live Q&A: Training Alone, Reverse Dieting, Mini-Cuts, and More...

Episode Date: September 11, 2015

A new episode of the podcast is up! This episode is a recording of my last live Q&A I did over at Legion and in I take questions on how we make new supplements, upcoming products, reverse dieting, finding gym partners, and more... If you want to get in on the next one and ask me questions, sign up here: https://legionathletics.com/qa/ QUESTIONS FROM THIS Q&A: 00:54 – How about a training video with you and Brittany Perillee? 01:30 - How do you get back into lifting after few weeks of a break? 03:54 - What's your research process when considering a new product for Legion? 10:53 - I love the mixability of Legion's Whey but I find it has a slightly bitter aftertaste. Is that because of the stevia? 15:05 - How long does your ab circuit typically take? 16:09 - What is the Stacked beta release date? 19:30 - What do you think of intermittent fasting on weekends while eating at a moderate surplus the rest of the week to keep fat gain to a minimum, and be able to eat out once or twice a day with family/girlfriend and eat almost anything (as long as it has a good amount of protein)? 25:50 - Can I train fasted on a bulk diet? Is it a problem for muscle growth? 27:45 - Would you rather be shredded but 5 ft tall, or skinny fat and 6ft 5? 28:42 - Is reverse dieting completely necessary? I know Lyle McDonald simply suggests eating at maintenance for 2 weeks and then bumping up for a surplus. What do you think? 32:30 - As an entrepreneur, how did you develop so much self-discipline and efficiency? 37:22 - Would you substitute cardio with yoga once a week? 38:03 - Any advice on rehabilitation? 43:53 - I train for 5k races and run 5-6 miles a day. Should I increase protein intake to preserve muscle or carb intake to spare protein being used for fuel? 46:03 - How long can I be in a calorie deficit? Is 3-6 months to long? 50:45 - Everyone knows that the maximum NECESSARY protein intake is .82 grams per pound of bodyweight. And if we allocate more than that people say, "That's TOO MUCH protein!" But what does this mean? What if I LIKE eating protein? What if I weigh 175 pounds but I ENJOY eating 350 grams of protein per day? 55:48 - What do you think of mini-cuts? 55:16 - Any tips for finding someone to train with? 59:24 - In order to make gains one must be in a caloric surplus. Can this caloric surplus be calculated on a weekly basis? 1:01:07 - Do you run into people that tell you how lifting is not healthy and that counting calories doesn't work? 1:08:08 - What's your opinion on continuing to taking Forge/Phoenix even while bulking? Wouldn't the improved insulin sensitivity help with improving the ratio of muscle to fat gained during the bulk? 1:12:32 - Today I ate a protein bar that was horrible...not many are great, as we know. Will Legion be making anything like that? 1:15:53 - If you eat too much sodium, how long does it take to get rid of it? 1:17:39 - At what point does it make sense to start adding in HIIT? Want to get my best advice on how to gain muscle and strength and lose fat faster? Sign up for my free newsletter! Click here: https://www.muscleforlife.com/signup/

Hey, it's Mike, and this podcast is brought to you by Legion, my line of naturally sweetened and flavored workout supplements. Now, as you probably know, I'm really not a fan of the supplement industry. I've wasted thousands and thousands of dollars over the years on worthless supplements that basically do nothing, and I've always had trouble finding products actually worth buying, and especially as I've gotten more and more educated as to what actually works and what doesn't. And eventually after complaining a lot, I decided to do something about it and start making my own supplements. The exact supplements I myself have always wanted. A few of the things that make my products unique are one,

they're a hundred percent naturally sweetened and flavored, which I think is good because while artificial sweeteners may not be as harmful, some people claim there is research that suggests regular consumption of these chemicals may not be good for our health, particularly our gut health. So I like to just play it safe and sweeten everything with stevia and erythritol, which are natural sweeteners that actually have health benefits, not health risks. Two, all ingredients are backed by peer-reviewed scientific research that you can verify for yourself. If you go on our website and you check out any of our product pages, you're going to

see that we explain why we've chosen each ingredient and we cite all supporting evidence in the footnotes. So you can go look at the research for yourself and verify that we're doing the right thing. Three, all ingredients are also included at clinically effective dosages, which are the exact dosages used in those studies that prove their effectiveness. This is very important because while a molecule might be proven to, let's say, improve your workout performance, not all dosages are going to improve your workout performance. If you take too little, you're not going to see any effects. You have to take the right amounts. And the right amounts are the amounts proven to be effective in scientific research. And four, there are no proprietary

blends, which means you know exactly what you're buying when you buy our supplements. All of our formulations are 100% transparent in terms of ingredients and dosages. So if that sounds interesting to you and you want to check it out, then go to www.legionathletics.com. That's L-E-G-I-O-N athletics.com. And if you like what you see and you want to buy something, use the coupon code podcast, P-O-D-C-A-S-T, and you will save 10% on your order. Also, if you like what I have to say in my podcast,

then I guarantee you'll like my books. I make my living primarily as a writer. So as long as I can keep selling books, then I can keep writing articles over at Muscle for Life and Legion and recording podcasts and videos like this and all that fun stuff. Now I have several books, but the place to start is Bigger Leaner Stronger if you're a guy and Thinner Leaner Stronger if you're a girl. Now these books, they're basically going to teach you everything you need to know about dieting, training, and supplementation to build muscle, lose fat, and look and feel

great without having to give up all the foods you love or live in the gym grinding away at workouts you hate. And you can find my books everywhere. You can buy books online like Amazon, Audible, iBooks, Google Play, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and so forth. And if you're into audiobooks like me, you can actually get one of my audiobooks for free with a 30-day free trial of Audible. To do that, go to www.muscleforlife.com forward slash audiobooks.

That's muscleforlife.com forward slash audiobooks, and you'll see how to do this. So thanks again for taking the time to listen to my podcast. I hope you enjoy it, and let's get to the show. All right, so thanks for coming by. Sorry that Jeremy and I completely forgot to do this at the end of last month, so we'll just do two this month. I've got to put it in the calendar or something. Let's see, Jeremy is saying, can everyone hear me? Let me know in chat if you can hear me. Okay. All right, cool. Sounds like we're good. So anyways, yeah. So let's get started. Again, you can just put your questions in chat. Jeremy's going to go through them and he's just going to

be Skyping them over to me and I'll just take whatever gets thrown my way. how about a training video with you and Brittany Pirelli? Uh, I don't know how my wife would think about that. I would, I would do it for fun. Uh, I actually, I actually, uh, I invited Brittany to come on the podcast just to talk about training and stuff. And, um, she didn't want to. i was like okay no i mean she i i think she uh just like yeah she didn't really like doing interviews and stuff so i was like oh that's cool it's just an idea um all right so get the next question here so how to get back into lifting after a few weeks of a break um a few weeks like it depends if if you, if you take one week off, you can just come back as you know, and nothing changes two weeks off, you'll come back. Maybe you'll

lose a rep or two. You're not going to come back. You're not going to lose muscle. Like if you were to do nothing in terms of weightlifting or resistance training or whatever, and eat like, you know, not enough protein, it would still take a few weeks before you actually start losing muscle. Like you're going to come back weaker, but that doesn't mean that you've lost muscle in, let's say you take two weeks off, but you just kind of keep your diet right. Um, and you eat, you just, let's say you eat around your TDE and you eat enough protein. You're going to come back where you left off. Basically, if it's three weeks plus, you know, a point where if it's at a point where you're, you've lost several reps, then who cares? You just drop the weight, um, and work in your rep range. If it's been like, you know, in the past,

my wife's from Germany. So I used to go there when we were just dating, she lived there for a couple of years and we were kind of doing the long distance thing. And so I'd go whatever, pretty frequently. And, uh, sometimes I'd be there for four or five weeks and there was only in the like little place where she lived. There was one little shitty gym and it was kind of, you know, I didn't have a car, obviously my own car. It was just kind of a pain in the ass. So sometimes I wouldn't, I'd only get one or two workouts in a week, sometimes none, because then we'd be out traveling like, you know, around Europe and stuff and I'm not going to worry about it. So I would come back sometimes, you know, after I'd only had done like some body weight stuff in the hotel room as hotel rooms, as we were traveling around after three or four weeks of that. And, uh, it's just hard. I mean, you know, I just would

like go lower, lower weight, higher rep, just kind of get back into the groove. Uh, usually end up nauseous from my workouts. It just was what it was. But, um, within a few weeks or so I found like I could be off for four weeks or mainly off for four weeks and, and then come back and within a few weeks, just be back to where I was when I left off. Um, and, and also it's just worth saying that like, if you could just get in one or two workouts a week of heavy lifting, like do, and that's what I, that's what I would do now. Like I'll be over in Europe at the end of the year and I'm just going to shoot for, I mean, I, well, we'll see. I mean, we'll see where we end up going, what we're doing, but if it's possible, I'm going to shoot for, you know, I don't know, two or three workouts

a week. And I'll probably just do like an upper lower or maybe a push pull legs just to maintain. And that's totally fine. That's, that's good enough to maintain. And so I think that's it on that. So next question, what's your research process when considering a new product for Legion? So next question, what's your research process when considering a new product for Legion? I guess there's a variety of things or factors. One is looking at what is actually selling because on Muscle for Life, when I link to different supplements and stuff, different things that I recommend, things that I take and use, I can track those sales because I participate in Amazon's affiliate program. And they pay a small percentage anywhere from like – depending on how much stuff you sell every month, it ranges from like 4% to 8.5% I think on product category and stuff. But so first, like when Jeremy and I were first looking at putting the Legion together, that's how we decided on our initial products. What are people actually buying through my recommendations?

Because then that's a safe place to start. I know, I knew that if I could make those products, if people were buying a lot of pre-workouts through my links and I make my own pre-workout, uh, then, you know, I shouldn't have a problem selling it. And so there's that. And then there's, of course, just looking at the category in general. Um, is it a popular category? Is there a lot of competition? That's good. Uh, if there's not a lot of competition, that's not good. Um, because that means that it's there's not a lot of competition, that's not good because that means that it's just probably not a viable type of product. And then it's looking from there at the science side of things. Can I make a good product, right? So when we start looking in the molecules and formulations, and we've had to scrap several products that, yeah, it would make a lot of money,

but the products wouldn't be good. I want to be able to make products that I don't have to, to pitch. Uh, it doesn't take like an exaggerated kind of over the top Billy Mays type of sales pitch to sell. I like products that, uh, I can lay out all the facts. It's, it can be an educational process and say, um, like for instance, we have a sleep product that's going to be coming out, um, called lunar, and it's going to be out in a couple of months or so, um, give or take probably six to eight weeks. And, uh, so in that, with that product, it's the educational process is okay. So why is sleep hygiene important? Um, what are the, what are the, what are the negative, uh, effects of, of poor sleep hygiene? What are the positive, uh, you know, benefits of good sleep hygiene? How do we improve our sleep hygiene first through lifestyle like diet, exercise, some things you can do before you go to bed and blah, blah, blah? When you have all that in, what can we do on top of that to sleep even better?

And that's where supplementation comes in. When the sales, it flows naturally and it's educational and it's kind of just logical to buy the product if you're running into an issue and if you have the money for it, then it only makes sense to do these things and then add this on as well. And so like we've had to ditch, for instance, any sort of testosterone type of product or even a hormone just optimizer. Like I would really like to make a male health product, but I just, there's, you know, take triumph or multivitamin, which to be fair, you can't take it right now. Cause it's been out of stock forever, which is ridiculous. And I mean, it was just, it was a learning experience for, for, for us on, on what happened when we ran out of inventory, because what happened is our manufacturer that I'm not using them anymore. Um, basically they kept on telling us like, Oh yeah, we have everything, all the ingredients, but one ingredient. Oh, and then it would be a new problem the next week,

a new problem the next week, something else the next week. But we kept on getting told like, Oh, don't worry. It's going to run on this date. Don't worry. That date would come and go, come and go, come and go. And we, and basically in the end, what it boiled down to is they – I had 10,000 bottles on order with them of Triumph. And they wouldn't run it because they just didn't care basically because they have Herbalife and they have all these other big companies, massive, massive companies. And they had exploded themselves in this merger and they were behind. And so basically they said, fuck everyone, but our biggest accounts, but they wouldn't tell everyone else that instead they just would string us on basically and tell us they're going to run it. And then not tell us, not tell us not in the end, we found out like they just don't care. They're not going to run it because they don't care and they're not going to sort out the

ingredients problems and blah, blah, blah. So I had to actually just cancel that order, find a new manufacturer. And then they rushed production six week production time, which is really fast in this industry. Eight to 10 week is normal. And now finally all those bottles are wrapping up. And so it's gonna be back in stock. Anyways, back to the point is take triumph. If you know that there's, there's your hormone optimization, you know, zinc, magnesium, vitamin D, uh, vitamin C, there's just not much you can do. Like all the random little herbs and fancy things that you see in test boosters are shit. They don't work. They don't do anything. Um, and it doesn't really make sense to make a separate product that has more or less the same ingredients

that triumph has. Uh, and you know, for what? So if you want to be healthy as a guy or as a girl, take triumph. So there's an example of a product that we've had ditch where there's a huge demand for it. Yeah, sure. It can be easy money. I could, if I didn't care,

I would just make it and I would just sell it like bullshit. I, you know, it wouldn't be hard to do that, but that's not in keeping with what we're about. No, that would just not be kind of a, that would just be me throwing away my integrity for what to just add,

you know, a product to make some more money. I can add a different product like lunar, the sleep product and make money from that. And it's a good product and I can, it's in keep, it is, uh, in line with kind of like what Legion is all about. Um, and, and muscle for life and what our whole thing is all about. So that's, I guess that's kind of the process. And, uh, and yeah, so then, you know, there's a lot of research that goes into it and we, you know, we have someone that, that helps a lot with that and that's, uh, that's like his whole world. And so he's very good.

And, um, so yeah, I think I'll just move on to the next one now. Oh, also, by the way, we do have greens coming to, I know he's saying that, but we're, we're going back and forth on the flavor. Actually, we could have already had it done and out probably like a month and a half ago, but we want to get the flavoring better. Like I bought a bunch of the greens products that are bestsellers on Amazon and they're fucking terrible. They taste so bad, except for one. There was one that it was like minty that tasted all right. But most of these, these green supplements are awful tasting. Like I can't believe that these guys are selling tens of thousands of bottles a month, uh, between Amazon and all their other accounts because they taste so bad. Like who'd actually want to drink that shit? I guess people are

putting it into smoothies with fruit and stuff from juice or something because with water, it was disgusting. Like I ordered six or seven and they were gross, all of them, but one. So we want ours to actually taste good with water. Like maybe, you know, it's still going to taste like a greens product. There's a lot of stuff in there that doesn't necessarily taste great, but we want it to taste good where you'd be happy to drink this with water and you don't have to mix it with a bunch of calories because me personally, I don't want to do that. I want to just drink it with water. I don't want to have to mix it with juice and waste calories on juice just because my greens product tastes terrible. So that also, you know, that's, that, that's why that one's not out yet, but

where I think the next sample run that we get from them is going to be good. Like this last one that we got today was, was pretty good. We just wanted a little bit more improved. So, um, that's almost there. All right. So the next question here, I love the mixability of legions way, but find as a slightly bitter aftertaste. It isn't so bad when mixed with fruit, but on its own a bit more noticeable. Is that because of the stevia? To the point I was just talking about, it's a good question. That's the leucine.

It's not the stevia. Some people actually are sensitive to stevia, but we're not using – there are two different types of molecules that are extracted from the stevia leaf that are generally used for sweetening. We're using one that's less bitter. But still, some people are sensitive. Like my wife does not like stevia. It tastes bad to her. Jeremy actually doesn't really like stevia all that much. It doesn't taste good to him. He has that bitterness. It's a little bit of bitter aftertaste from stevia. Me, I guess I can kind of taste it, but it doesn't bother me. But what you're probably tasting is leucine. And because we add leucine, uh, there's an additional four grams of leucine added to every scoop, which by the way, is not, it's not that does that. We're not counting that as protein

on the label, which would be a, which would be amino spiking. That's actually there because of, uh, uh, there's a few studies that show that particularly in a post-workout, uh, meal that the more leucine, the higher the leucine content of that meal, the higher the protein synthesis rates. So it's one of those things that's not a huge, oh my God, this is changing the game. And that's not how we sell it, of course. But with each of our products, we're always looking for how can we make this a little bit better? So like, yeah, we could just sell a whey protein isolate, but we wanted to look at it like, okay, whey protein isolate, naturally sweetened, naturally flavored. That's a good, good place

to start, but how do we make it a little bit more? And that's what we came up with was, oh, well we, there's, there's, there's this research here. This is, you know, it's valid. It makes sense. Let's do it. Let's add some extra leucine. The problem though, is that, and we've learned this now, leucine, it want to taste like shit. If you buy it just by itself, like in bulk, it's terrible. It's really awful tasting. And therefore it's very hard to mask, especially when you're using natural sweeteners, uh, natural flavoring. And we don't want to just like, you know, have to have five grams of Malta per serving. Um, there's already, there's like less than one gram of Malta per serving because maltodextrin is great for cutting bitterness. So we were using a

little bit of Malta because for that reason, uh, and you know, we don't want to just have to put a bunch of Malto. So basically what we've decided after getting a lot of feedback, selling thousands and thousands of bottles is that we're just going to remove the leucine and we're switching over to, uh, an even better tasting, higher quality protein. Um, well, I guess it's hard to say higher quality. Like we're using the highest quality whey protein isolate you can find right now in the United States. But we're switching to an isolate from Ireland that we all just think it tastes better. And that's not really surprising.

If you've ever been to Europe and you just taste anything over there – I know Ireland is not Europe, but you get what I'm saying. But if you've been over the pond, everything tastes better, especially the dairy, just European dairy. They're much stricter on their – in terms of what you can and can't do with the livestock. And it's been like that for generations and generations and also with the land itself. And so the net effect is everything, every single food thing except for steak. I would say American steaks are better for some reason, but everything else in Europe tastes better. Everything, eggs, dairy, grains, fruit, vegetables, everything. Like you're surprised at how good an apple can taste when you go to Europe and eat, you know, an apple that you just buy from the grocery store.

Like this is the best apple I've ever fucking had. What is going on? So that's what we're doing. We have to get rid of the leucine because of this reason. It doesn't taste good. And some people are very sensitive to it, meaning some people, they find it, they just think it's gross. Uh, I think it's like, I can see that again. I think I just have a, like a Rottweiler's palette or something. Cause I just, I I'll just like before when I was now I just use forge, but, uh, you know, before I trained fast that I would have

leucine, I just mix it with water and be like, yeah, whatever. But some people like gag when they try to do that. So we're getting rid of the leucine, but we're switching to a protein that tastes even better. And we've done more work on the flavor system as well. And so I'm excited for that protein because it's really good. Like it's really, really good. I think we've done a good job and we've, we've worked a lot on our current protein to get, to make it as unbitter as possible. to make it as unbitter as possible. Um, and I think that our next stuff is at least 25% better tasting without the bitterness. So that's kind of the story of, uh, the way next question on chest and ab day, how long does your ab circuit typically typically take the dips, crunches and air cycles? I feel like it takes me forever. So I wonder how long yours take or last. Uh, yeah, it's a couple of minutes. I mean, you know, you do your cable crunches. I'm always in like the 10 to 15 rep range on the cable crunches. And then you go do the, the, the leg raises. And I'm usually doing like maybe 30 to

50 of those and then doing 30 to 50 air, uh, bicycles. And, um, so it's a few minutes. Uh, but again, remember you don't have to do a ton of these sites. Like if you just did three of those three times a week, that's plenty. Um, you know, uh, some of the people that I speak with that really like want to go after their abs a lot or, or just can. And again, it's not super necessary. I mean, again, I think if you did nine total ab circuits a week, just split them up three days, that's plenty. It really is. Some people, they try to, they really just want to do more. So they do six in each workout for like a total of 18. And I guess there's, you don't, that's not like bad, but it's just overkill. So you shouldn't, you shouldn't have to spend more than 10 or 15 minutes on your abs basically is what it boils down to. Um, quick question here on when is a

stacked coming and update beta release and so forth. Um, So basically we're at a, I'd say we're like 70% there in terms of getting to beta. They're working on just a lot of like all the basic functionality is there and it's working. There's just a lot of bugs right now and just working through some different functionality stuff. I'm actually going to be sending out an update soon though. It's just being coded. So, you know, the page is being put together so you can see how it's going to work and you can see the design and, um, I'm excited for it. It's the, the whole thing, uh, has dragged out and taken a lot longer than it should have. Uh, again, mainly because the designer is just a lazy asshole and, uh, took forever. And it was really my fault for choosing

him though. I should have known just given my previous history with him that I, why, why, like, why would I go with him again? Even though he swore he would get this done and on the flip side, I, he's done a good job. Like his design is very nice. And I think you're going to appreciate the aesthetic of what he's done, but this, the design was supposed to be done in the end of January. So what has happened is the coders have had to kind of work piecemeal on it. So whatever, learned a lesson there, but in the end, it's not going to matter because the design is basically done. I'm chasing up on him to the designer to get the last couple of things done, but it's basically done. And the app is, I'm excited because it's just so much better than anything else is out there. I know I say that and you'll see when you get to use it and you'll see

in this update, at least you'll see some of the functionality and how it looks. Um, but it's, there's just a lot of, uh, it's, it's not, it's, it's a, it's a clean intuitive app built by someone that actually lifts weights and knows the most important, like what needs to be really good about these apps to make them more useful than just a Google spreadsheet. Because even, even some of the better apps out there that people use, uh, you know, like, uh, I think, I won't call you out in particular, but, um, yeah, I'd say the best that I've used are like, not bad. There's nothing in it that where I go, I like that. That's, there's a reason why I should use this over a Google spreadsheet. Really? I mean, cause you can just lay out in a Google

spreadsheet, everything, and then just roll through it. And, and, you know, if all you're doing is just recording your numbers, which is generally all you're looking to do, you don't even need an app to do that. And, and also, you know, with like 82 in-store purchases and stuff, just annoying. So, um, I'm going to say, what do we have September like ninth or something? I'm going to say that if by the end of this month, if the, if the coders, the dev team, if they have all these bugs that they're working on right now, wrapped where basically it's good to go, all the core functionality that you're going to want to use, there'll be some peripheral stuff that we're saving for last, but like really the core of the app done by, by end of the month. Um, that would be,

that I think that's a realistic target. And, uh, and then everything else like through beta testing, like start selling it. I'm thinking December, January, um, just cause I want to give enough time to really get good feedback and make sure I don't want to release something. Of course, it's not going to be a hundred percent perfect. There will be bugs that we don't find. And that's just an ongoing thing, but I don't want to like rush something out. That's kind of like half broken because I don't, why? Like I might as well take the time and spend the money just to get it more or less right the first time. So yeah. What do you think of intermittent fasting on the weekends while eating at a moderate surplus the rest of the week to keep fat gain to a minimum and be able to eat out once or twice a day with family, girlfriend, and eat almost anything

as long as it's a good amount of protein. That's a lot to that question. All right. So intermittent fasting on the weekends while eating at a moderate surplus the rest of the week. Yes, calorie cycling is good. I'll say this. If you're at a moderate surplus, let's say you train five days a week and then, you know, you take the weekends off.

So you're, if you're in a moderate surplus on those training days, mild to moderate, let's say five to 10%, of course, that's good. You know that that's going to help you with, with building muscle. You're going to be strong in the gym. You're going to be eating a lot of carbs. It's good. And then you can, uh, negate that surplus, um, you know, with a, with a larger, more aggressive deficit, somewhere around 25%,

maybe even as high as 30%, depending on how big your surplus is during the week, on like Saturday, Sunday, when you're not training, you don't need as much calories, and so forth. And you'd probably go, you just eat less carbs, essentially, is what you do. Nothing else would really change. But what you should know about that, though, is that's still not as good as just being in a moderate surplus or a mild to moderate, I'd say a mild surplus, really what it is five times. That's a mild surplus seven days a week. Like if you, for, for muscle building purposes, because of course your body's still recovering Saturday, Sunday, it's not that, you know,

Oh, you finished training on Friday. So now all recovery is wrapped up by Friday night. So you can go into deficit for two days. Your body is still recovering for several days, especially after, you know, heavy intense workouts. Um, so if you're, if you're, if you're in my position where, where I'm at with my body is that I've, I've achieved the majority of, of my muscle growth potential I've achieved. Maybe if I wanted to go really ham and I could gain another 10 pounds or so of muscle over the course of the next few years, but I'm not really looking to do that. I kind of have the look that I want right now. Um, so calorie cycling for someone like me would make sense. Um, although really for me, I'm just looking to eat around TDE, but let's say I was like, you know, five pounds

lighter and I wanted to gain those five pounds then. And I still wanted to stay lean because I like staying lean. And it's also kind of like relevant for my work just because people want to, most guys want to look lean. I mean, that's one of the big things they want to have some muscle and be lean. So I want, I need to represent, you know, what most guys want to look like just for the purpose of my work. And, you know, so people can go, Oh, he walks the walk. Um, so, but if that were the case, then calorie cycling would make sense where I would gain that weight slowly, but I would gain little to no body fat along the way. So if that's you, then yes, that could work for you. If though, if you're like, let's say you still need to gain another

20 pounds of size, just to even be happy with where you're at, then I wouldn't recommend that. I just recommend a good quote unquote lean bulk where you're in a mild surplus seven days a week and save the calorie cycling for in the future when you're more in my position where you're going, okay, I just kind of want to maintain my physique. I want to, I want to slowly, I want to get stronger in the gym. I want to slowly gain some muscle over the next year or two and without really having to, to, to bulk up from, let's say, you know, 8% body fat to 15, I would more like to stretch out maybe from eight, maybe and get up to 10 ish. And because you know, you're, you're, it's unlikely you're going to get your calories

exactly spot on. And if you're going to calorie cycle, you're better off being a little bit on the high end. You're better off airing a little bit of the high end than the low end. If you're trying to progress in the gym. So that's that part of the question. And then in terms of like IF, sure, if you like it, do it. Like I actually do it myself just usually because I skip breakfast on the weekends because I like eating fewer, larger meals on the weekends because my calories are lower because I'm not lifting. So I do eat a bit less on the weekends. Um, and, uh, you know, not every weekend. Sometimes I'll

eat breakfast. It just depends if I feel like eating breakfast. Most of the time I don't. And I just start eating around 12 or one. And, um, generally I like to eat more of my calories later in the day, just cause I enjoy it more. Uh, I don't have any other reason other than that. Really. I just like having more food at night and I'm not a super big breakfast person unless it's like pancakes or waffles or something that I'm not I mean not that pancakes waffles are bad but I was doing the pancake and waffle thing like for months and months and months and I just beat it to death and then lost interest in pancakes and waffles and then had nothing really worthy of replacing them so I just started saving my

calories for later in the day when I can make food that, you know, dinner type of food that I want to eat. Or as you were talking about going out to restaurants now, eating out once or twice a day and eating anything you want, that's not going to happen. Just to let you know, unless like if you want to stay lean, if you want to stay at 10% body fat, this is for a guy, obviously we're under, and as a girl, 20% or under, you're not going to be going out once or twice a day on the weekends and eating whatever you want. No way. Because unless whatever you want is like low calorie foods, but that's not why you're going out. You have to realize restaurant food is, it can be delicious, but it's a nightmare for just dietary reasons because you make food taste good, pretty much any food, by adding fat, by adding cream, by adding oil, by adding butter.

And that's just what you do. So you don't know. You have no idea how many calories you're eating and you'd be surprised. You go to a restaurant and if you're going to go hard and you're going to be like, Ooh, I want two appetizers and I want an entree and I want a dessert. Uh, depending on what kind of cuisine that is. I mean, that could be thousands and thousands of calories. I can be 3000 calories. I can be 5,000 calories depends on what you order. So you can imagine like being, eating, eating a thousand to 1500 calories at a restaurant is like being very conservative with your intake. That's, uh, me, that means that like you intentionally chose lower calorie options,

basically. Um, so just, just, just know that. Um, and it's, you know, you can do it eating out twice a day, but you, you need to know foods and you know, macros, or you will end up overeating. I guarantee it. So what will happen is you'll be in a surplus through the week and then you'll go to the, you'll go out on the weekends and you might think that you're not that high calorie, but you're eating a thousand calories more per day than you think you are and so forth. So, um, all right, next question here. Can I train fasted on a bulk diet? Is it a problem for muscle growth? Um, you know, I actually like training fasted. So I understand. know, I actually like training facets. So I understand, uh, I just like the feeling of having an empty stomach, but I will say if you have some protein

or really actually, if you have some carbs before you train, like 30 minutes before you train, if you have, let's say 50 to 80 grams of carbs, um, 50 to 60 is probably enough. Really. You're going to be stronger. You're going to notice in that and not just stronger, but like for me personally, that's a difference of like 20 pounds on my squat. It's not a small amount. So, you know, it's kind of counterproductive when you're bulking, you want to be pushing as much weight as you can. You want to be pushing everything as hard as you can. So fasted training, it's very likely that you're going to be stronger by having food before you train. Also, it's very likely that you're going to be stronger by having food before you train. Also, it's very likely you're going to be stronger training later in the day. I wrote an article about this a while ago that, you know, for whatever reason, I think it was guys in particular, tend to be stronger later in the day.

And from what I had read back then when I wrote the article, it wasn't exactly clear why the most likely reason was hormone fluctuations and hormones throughout the day where anabolic hormones are a little bit higher later in the day, which doesn't mean anything for muscle growth per se, but it's just a little bit of a boost for strength. So if you're bulking, like ideally you would be training probably around 4 or 5 p.m. where you've already eaten food throughout the day and then you're having carbs before you train, protein as well because you might as well. And then, of course, afterwards you're eating protein, carbs as well. So, but if you want to train fasted on a bulk, sure, you can do it. It's not going to get in the way of muscle growth at all. You know, I would recommend that you have something like leucine or HMB or BCAAs before you train fasted, um, just to counteract some of the,

the muscle degradation that occurs or some of the accelerated muscle degradation that occurs. All right. Next question. Would you rather be shredded, but five feet tall or skinny fat in six foot five? feet tall or skinny fat and six foot five. That's like a great choice. Oh shit. Um, uh, what, what, I don't know, dude, six, five. That's so absurdly tall. That's uncomfortably tall. That's like, you can't, you don't even fit in cars. I guess I'd just be a shredded midget, dude. At least I could still do what I do.

I could be like, yeah, whatever. I was fucking, well, I'm five feet tall, but look at me, dude. Here, check out how I do it. Oh, I think I shredded Danny DeVito. Oh, that's great. That's great. Okay. Next one. Uh, is reverse dieting completely necessary? I know a lot of McDonald's simply suggests eating at maintenance for two weeks and then bumping up for a surplus. What do you think? Um, it's a good question. You know, I think the, the biggest benefit of reverse dieting is preventing you from just going ham on food after you've been in a deficit for a while. Because there's no question that after you've

been in a calorie deficit for 8, 10, 12 weeks, whatever, that your body is primed to store fat at a rapid pace. So the last thing you want to do is finish your diet and then just start slamming down food, especially high fatty foods, because you are going to gain fat back very quickly. So I think that's, that's the, the, in terms of like, um, TDE calorie or calorie, the reduction in calorie burn and calories burned, it's not so much a reduction in your BMR. Um, like if you look at the Minnesota starvation experiment, which I've talked about in different articles and podcasts and so forth, these were guys that, um, it was during world war two and there was like a simulated starvation, like as if, as if they were prisoners of war. So this was like six months of, or was it six months or no, I think it might've been

a year. I don't remember now. It's been a little bit since I've looked at it, but when they were eating about 1500 calories a day and burning over 3000 calories a day, uh, because they were doing physical labor and stuff as if they were a prisoner of war. burning over 3000 calories a day, uh, because they were doing physical labor and stuff as if they were a prisoner of war. And, uh, you know, after, after many, many months of this, the, the, in terms of, I think the biggest reduction in basal metabolic rate was about 14, 15%. Um, so, and that's like, that's true starvation. If you're eating half the energy that you're

burning, you, you are starving your body. Uh, I mean, a lot of these guys, they looked like, you know, prisoners of war after afterwards. So it's more reduction in your total energy expenditure, which is expressed in different things. Like you're going to burn a little bit less energy when you are exercising. You're naturally going to move less. You have, it's called non-exercise activity thermogenesis, NEAT, N-E-A-T, where some people are very high NEAT types where they fidget around, they move around a lot, and it actually can add up to be quite a lot of calories in terms of energy burned. And you have low NEAT types that are naturally just like slothful and just sit there and don't move. So when you're in a calorie deficit over time, your body, it adapts in different ways to reduce its energy expenditure and you don't even necessarily realize what's happening. So the big benefit of reverse dieting is slowly introducing more food back in to prevent like just binging or just way overeating.

And then there is that where you're slowly working your body's energy expenditure back up. So, you know, um, I would say, try it. I would say that, I mean, that's really, that's one of those things that I don't disagree with what Lyle's saying. Um, and I, the safe play is to reverse diet, which is, that's why what I recommend, uh, especially for people that are new to dieting. So they've just dieted down for the first time, you know, obviously I'm a big proponent of flexible dieting. So they haven't had to completely restrict all the foods that they like. But you don't get to eat as much as you want to eat when you're in a calorie deficit. It's just the way it is.

So when people are new to dieting, I don't want them to go from that and be like, finally. And then even if they don't go binge, what I'll see sometimes people do, it's like a calorie creep. They just slowly – they add a bit more like every day, you know, they're a bit more bites of this, a bit more bites of that. Cause they're not diet, they're out of the diet mentality now. Like they're done cutting. Now they can be a little bit more relaxed with their intake, but then that can get out of control. And within a week they're eating way more than, than they really should be. So, um, I would say, give it a try. I would say, you know, cut, and then you can try what Lyle's

talking about. Just go right back to TDE in terms of your intake, um, and see how you feel, see how you look. And then next time you cut, uh, try reverse dieting, see how you feel, see how you look and, you know, see which one you like more. Next question as an entrepreneur, as an entrepreneur, how'd you develop so much self-discipline and efficiency? Um, I guess I've, I've kind of written about these things. And I mean, it's hard to kind of summarize that because it's, I don't know, it's just kind of like who, just the way I am, I guess. But, you know, there are, I can say that if you're struggling with that, like, for instance, maybe incorporating habits that you've wanted to incorporate, there is just that kind of reality that the things that you need to do, there's a difference between things you want to do and things that you should do, that you know you should do. And things that you know you should do are almost always take effort in the beginning. It's never necessarily just easy to start doing

whatever it is that you need to do every day to get to where you want to be, especially in today's culture. It's much easier to just be like, yeah, fuck it. I'll do it tomorrow and just like turn on Netflix or something. So, uh, you know, a lot of it is you have to, you have to know, uh, really, you know, what, what, why, why are you trying to do this? Why is it important? Why does it matter? What are you trying to achieve? Start with the end in mind. Where are you trying to go? And, um, and you know, I'm just a big believer in habits and routine, basically, like where I have a very set routine in my life. And I and I've had it now set for a long time and I refuse to change it for anything but like emergency pressing reasons, basically. And when when it's when I have that certainty with myself, like these are appointments I'm going to keep like tonight. I'm going to be here at six, whatever, 655. And we're going to start this. There was no question in my mind. Maybe I'm going to come like tonight. I'm going to be here at six, whatever, 6.55.

And we're going to start this. There was no question in my mind. Maybe I'm going to come. Maybe I'm not going to come. I don't know. Let me see what's on Netflix. Oh, fuck it. I'm not doing it tonight.

You know what I mean? I guess there are people out there that operate like that. That's just not how I am. So I kind of treat my most important things. And that doesn't necessarily just mean work also. I mean, there are things in my personal life, maybe with my family, even my stupid shit. I play golf once a week where I'm going to be golfing every Sunday from 1 o'clock until 5 o'clock or maybe 6 o'clock every week, period, unless I have a really, really good reason not to. And there's a reason for that.

It's I like being outside. I like using my body. I like doing something other than just weightlifting. I grew up playing sports. I kind of miss it a little bit. And so it's a valuable activity to me. I like doing something other than just weightlifting. I grew up playing sports. I kind of miss it a little bit. And so it's a valuable activity to me. So I'm kind of just rambling, but that's – I'm going to be – I think a good way for me to help with these kinds of questions is I'm going to be – we're going to send out the first one this week.

I'm going to be doing kind of a books of the month type of deal because I read a few books a month, maybe three to five, depending on how long they are. And some I like and some I don't like, but I'm going to start building up my book recommendations on Muscleful Life for all different types of things. So then I could say, oh, you know, because I get emailed with these types of questions too where I can just be like, hey, you need to go check out these books. Like, for instance, I just read – I may have read this in the past. I don't remember, but anyways, it may have been a reread. Um, the seven habits of highly effective people, like for, for this kind of question, I'd recommend that book. It's very long and the dude's very verbose. He goes, he belabors every point to the point to where you're like, Oh my God, I understand. Can you please move on? But there are some great insights in there and I do, I really recommend it. Same thing, Flow. Although Flow is not as

verbose and it's better written and more enjoyable to read, but it's more academic and dry. But I'd highly recommend that you read the book Flow as well. Another book recently that I read that we also do at the office here, a monthly book club where we all read one book and then we all discuss it together. There's a book called The One Thing, which I recommend that I think is very good for when talking about efficiency because efficiency is good. Being able to get a lot done in a short period of time is good, but you need to also be able to prioritize and know what are the most important things that need to be done. Because when we die, our inboxes are going to be full. Our to-do lists are going to be still too long. We're never going to get all the things

done that we can think of done. So we have to decide what's going to get done and what's not going to get done. And so I think even more important than efficiency is that prioritization because you can take someone that's really good at prioritizing, but they're inefficient. And in the long run, they're going to way outperform the person who's very efficient, but can't prioritize, prioritize for shit and just does whatever it is that comes to mind or whatever it is that gets thrown on, thrown his way or her way. Um, so anyways, I think that the, the, this little book thing that I want to do, I'll be curious to see people's feedback if they like it, but, um, I'm going to be sharing like some of the key takeaways, some of the things I really liked

from the books and it might help you where if you like any of the things that I liked about it, you know, it might help you go, I should read that book. Uh, next question is a possible, Oh yeah. Yes. Okay. So, um, would you substitute cardio with yoga once a week? Uh, yeah, sure. I, you know, I, the cat, you have to look at the calorie burn of it. Um, it depends on the yoga, obviously, like if it's just stretching yoga, you're probably not going to burn much in the way of calories, but if it's more power yoga type stuff, um, then, uh, I'm sure that you can burn a fair amount of energy, especially if you're doing a little bit of like, if it's a, I don't know, 45 minute class or something like that. But yeah, I think yoga is great. I actually used to do

it myself once or twice a week. Um, and I felt, uh, I liked the stretching and also just felt good after, I don't know. I felt it's a different feeling than working out. So I think yoga is great. All right. So any advice on rehabilitation? I haven't done upper body workouts in two months now due to forearm tendon pain. Any ideas? Try to test that a few times and mess it up even more. Um, rehab is really not my specialty and I just, I don't have much insight. Like I know things that I've read and I know from working with some people, but I myself have not really worked through, like, you know, I strained my back deadlifting this week, which is the first thing that I've had really happen in a, in a long time that beyond just like showing up, working out and leaving and rinse and repeating over and over and over.

Um, and which was random, it wasn't even that heavy. It was like four 15 and it felt totally fine. And I was, you know, at the top of a rep and it just felt like my back was like a muscle spasm. Like it came almost like a little bit, like I just lost tension in my lower back and now it's sore. And you know, I don't know, I might have to wait a couple of weeks before I deadlift again. So the, I know that like, if you're having tendon issues, you have to rest it. That's super important. You have to stop doing whatever it is that's pissing it off. Um, very, very important. And, uh, you know, that's the guy that I work out with was having some, uh, it was somewhere in his elbow. It was like golfer's elbow

type thing. Cause he's actually started golfing again. Um, and, and also working out with me and basically for about four or five weeks, he had to, and he didn't push to the point where it was a problem. It was just starting to bother him. And he had to four, four, four or five weeks. He couldn't do, I think it was side raises actually is what he couldn't do. So no side raises whatsoever, not lighter weight, not, Oh, I'm going to try it. Not, I'm only gonna do one set, nothing. He didn't do anything that, that put any stress on the tendon four or five, maybe six weeks go by. And then it's fine again. Uh, no problem. He also is getting massage, uh, massage, depending on the problem, massage can help. I get massaged once a week for just that reason.

You know, when we, if you work out, if you know, intense type of workouts, um, they, they put a lot of stress on the body and they're going to cause muscles to, you know, intense type of workouts, um, they, they put a lot of stress in the body and they're going to cause muscles to, you know, uh, remain tight that they can't relax. And the next time you work out, it's, uh, there's a better chance that you can hurt it, which may be what happened with my lower back. I don't know. It's kind of random. Um, but, uh, you know, again, it could have been even like at the top, I didn't fire my glutes properly. That was my guess when I was looking at it. Um, cause you know, just a little tip when you're coming up on the deadlift, once the bar kind of gets to your knees, as you're coming up the,

the, the motion, and it's a lot of glute, uh, flexion that that's kind of what finishes like the whole movement. Isn't so much picking the weight up. It's actually more moving your hips forward. Um, so when you actually more moving your hips forward. So when you're down, your hips are back, you know, you're down your bars on the ground. It's not just like squatting the weight up. It's more a movement of thinking of like putting your crotch forward and, and standing up as you do that. And, and at the top, your glutes are, I mean, you're, you're firing them as hard as you can. So, um, I think I just didn't do that. And then by not doing that, it puts more stress in the lower back. And, um, you know, I'm like,

I guess I'm lucky it wasn't, uh, any sort of injury. It's just kind of a strained muscle that, you know, whatever I've had things happen like before. So again, I don't have great, I mean, I know there are some supplements that can help with inflammation. Like curcumin could help you. Spirulina could help you. Fish oil can help you. Um, and those are good just to take period. I take them all every day because they're just, there's a lot of health benefits. Um, but if you're running into, you know, tendon, any sort of tendonitis, anti-inflammatory, anything anti-inflammatory is going to help. I do. I personally know people will just pop like ibuprofens, you know, every day. I don't like to do that. I would rather, uh, you know, take natural things and then wait it out a little bit. Of course, icing for having inflammation

issues, icing helps. Um, but this is a, this is an area that I actually am going to be diving into more. I don't think I'll be able to get to it for another month or two, because I'm going through all my books right now and updating them to, you know, second editions. So cardio sucks is about 2.0 is about to come out and it's greatly improved over what I had before, which is one of the earlier books that I wrote. And I didn't really, it was a short, simple book. I didn't really know if anyone was going to care kind of thing. Like I tried to make a good book, but I'm just better writer now. And I know more and blah, blah, blah. Um, so, you know, then, uh, also I'm working on the second edition of the shredded chef, which is going to be, I'm really excited for because, uh, expanding the content.

And, um, I had done a survey with, with everyone that bought the first edition, or at least all the people that came and joined my list and, you know, got a lot of feedback on the recipes, which recipes they really liked was rich recipes. They didn't so much like how things could be improved. So, um, when that's done, I'm going to be rolling through muscle myths and possibly agree and get lean. And then I'm going to be starting on a new book project, which is going to be all about mobility and rehabilitation. And well, I guess it's going to be more about mobility, but there's some overlap there that, you know, depending on what you're running into, that there are probably some different mobility type of things that you could be doing in terms of whether it's foam rolling or, or, or mashing, um, you know, the, the,

the soft tissues or stretching the soft tissues or different sorts of exercises and things that would help. Um, so yeah, I'm sorry. I can't be more helpful on that, but it's just an area that I'm, I'm not familiar with enough yet to like have any advice that you couldn't just get Googling basically. Uh, runner's knee trying to figure out how to help it heal. Yeah. It's yeah. Yeah. Same. Sorry. On the same, on the, on the knee issue. Although you can check out if you go on muscle for life. Um, I posted an article just

last week on joint pain, um, for the, for the knee I talk about, cause I've had some patellar tendonitis, um, very mild. Uh, but you know, what I found was, found was there was, I had a lot of tightness in my right quad, like my right quad was a lot less flexible and just tighter than my left. And by working on that, it helped a lot with the patellar issues that I was having squatting. So anyways, check out, check out the article. Next question. I trained for 5k races and run five to six miles a day. Should I increase protein intake to preserve miles a day should i increase protein intake to preserve muscle or carb intake to spare protein being used for fuel currently one gram pound one gram per pound for protein yeah um i would say you know before you go running i would

have some protein before and after i'd have some protein one gram per pound is going to be fine no no reason to be eating more than that um and you can have some carbs before i mean it's going to help your performance uh and in general I mean, it's going to help your performance. Uh, and in general, a higher carb diet is going to be better for preserving muscle just because when you're, when your carb intake is higher, your insulin levels are just going to be higher in general and insulin isn't anabolic, but it's anti-catabolic. So that's one of the reasons why a heart, a high carb diet is just better for building muscle because you have protein synthesis and protein breakdown. And the balance between those determines whether you gain muscle or whether you lose muscle.

If your synthesis is higher than breakdown, you've gained. Vice versa, you've lost. So you can affect that by affecting either side of that scale. You can increase protein synthesis or you can decrease protein degradation. And insulin decreases protein degradation, protein breakdown. So that's one of the reasons why I recommend a high carb diet for when you're dieting, because it helps you preserve muscle and it also helps you preserve strength in the gym, which helps you preserve muscle. But yeah, if you're running a lot, I also just recommend that you get a, make sure that you, uh, you know, unless you're cutting and if you're

cutting, that's fine. I mean, that's a lot of cardio to be doing when you're cutting. I would probably recommend a more mild deficit if that were the case, maybe a 10% deficit. Um, and you're going to have to work in your weightlifting. That really depends on your body. You might only be able to lift two or three times a week, uh, just because you, if you lift more, there's a point where your body starts to feel shitty. Um, but if you're not, if you're not looking to lose fat, then, um, make sure that you're eating essentially as much as you can, uh, without gaining fat. So really, you know, eat at your TDE and try to increase above your TDE, try to reverse diet up and see how high you can bring your,

your food intake without, you know, gaining fat. If that's, if you care, basically. All right. Next question. How long can it be the calorie deficit is three to six months too long, trying to get to sub 10% body fat. Um, not necessarily too long. No, it depends where you're starting. And you know, it's more, uh, what determines when you should come out of, out of a deficit is more how much you're eating, um, relative to your BMR, your basal metabolic rate and how you feel. So if you're at a point where you're, you've cut your calories down, you've reduced them down to your BMR, maybe even a little bit below BMR, you're not feeling very good. You know, you have low energy of low libido.

You're not sleeping good. You just kind of feel rundown. It's time to come out of a deficit. And that goes back to, we were talking about earlier, you could reverse deficit or sorry, reverse diet out of that, which is what I would recommend. Or you can jump up to TDE and see how your body responds. Again, in working with a lot of people, I can tell you for a fact that reverse dieting is reliable in that you're not going to put on fat and you are going to feel better. And it's really only adding four weeks or so to get to TDE. It's not like it's a, you know, a three month thing to, to reverse diet. Um, so if you're kind of new to dieting, then I recommend that if you're not, and you already know that you can just jump to TDE,

fine, then do it. But, um, there is no set. Oh, don't cut for longer than blah. It's really like once you're, once your intake is down around BMR, you don't want to go way below that. So like my BMR is about 21, 2200 calories. I end my cuts. I have never gone lower than 2000 calories a day. Um, and just because I know that the lower you go under BMR, the worse you're going to feel. There is a point where your body goes, all right, settle down. This is too much. So I play it by that. If you're starting, you're wanting to get below, you know, getting below 10%, I can

tell you that if you're starting around, let's say 13, 14%, you want to get down to, let's say 8% or 7%, you're looking at probably three months. If you're starting above like 15% or above, I wouldn't even try to go straight to sub 10. I would get to 10 first and then reverse diet. Just take a break. Even it just gives you a psychological break from, from, you know, being in a deficit for, for that long, uh, that, you know, that it's going to take to get there, uh, work, you make, make sure that you're eating, you're back up to TDE, your weight stable, and then go for the 10% to 7%, which again, I mean, that could be, uh, eight to 10 weeks for sure. Um, just because fat loss is slower as you get leaner, it gets slower

because you're dealing with stubborn fat. You're dealing with fat. That's just resistant to being mobilized and you can supplement to help. That's where supplements can help particularly in fasted training. You know, uh, you have like caffeine, you have green tea extract, you have your him bean, basically the stuff that you're going to find in, like, if you were to, if you were going to, you know, have a Legion fat loss stack, which we're going to be releasing soon with our new website, by the way, is you have pulse for the caffeine and also just for the other stuff. But in terms of fat loss, we have caffeine and that, that works synergistically with, uh, uh, several of the ingredients that are in Phoenix and as well as yohimbine,

which is in Forge. So that's kind of the fat loss stack. And you take those together and you're going to, you can do that at any point in your cut, but I would say it is very noticeable. Once you get down to that, if you're a guy or down to around 10% body fat, 11% body fat, if you're a girl, 20, 21%, and you want to start going lower, I can tell you for sure that it is noticeably faster when you are supplementing with those supplements and training facet. And, um, you know, again, it's not even really like a supplement pitch of my stuff, whatever, buy whatever brand you want, but I can tell you that caffeine, uh, green tea extracts and efferent, you know, the stuff that you're going to find in Phoenix, um, plus your him being that works really well for, for accelerating fat

loss and especially accelerating stubborn fat loss. Um, and it's also nice. Um, I've noticed that once you get down to, let's say anywhere from six to 70% and you stay there for a little bit, if you come back up, it, for whatever reason is easier to come back down. Just like how, once you've built muscle, once it's, if you can, you can not train for years and go back and gain back quickly. There seems to be a similar effect with body fat where once you've gotten to be pretty lean and you stay there for a while, you can, one, your body becomes resistant to getting fatter. Um, I talk about this in an article on muscle for life on, if you, if you search muscle for life, you search a set point, S E T new word point. You'll see an article

I wrote on this where one, your body becomes more resistant to just being fatter. It kind of it's new default becomes this leaner state. Um, if you do get fatter, which of course you can, you know, food, you'll get there. It's, it's for whatever reason, faster to get back to, you know, the, that leaner kind of set point. So, um, there's a, there's a, a benefit there. All right. Next question. Everyone knows the maximum necessary protein is 0.8, 0.82 grams per pound of body weight. And if we allocate more than that, people say it's too much protein. What does this mean? What if I like eating protein? What if I weigh 170 pounds, but enjoy eating 350 grams? Damn, you like eating that much protein? That's crazy. If I'm eating my minimum fat intake, 0.4 grams per pound and

carb intake fueling workouts. All right. So I'll summarize that question. That was kind of rambly. So basically you have this, in terms of protein needs, you'll hear like the standard gram per pound. You'll hear that a lot. And then you'll have some people say you do not need more than 0.8 grams per pound. And I think that there's – when you look at – there's quite a few studies out there on protein needs, especially protein needs of athletes. And here's the thing. As you get leaner and as you have more muscle, you need more protein, especially if you're a calorie deficit, I would say 0.8 grams per pound or per pound, uh, is not enough. If you are in my

position, like if I wanted to cut right now and get really lean, uh, that would not be enough. I'd be better off eating more also even for the, for the satiety effects of protein, I would be upwards of 1.2 grams per pound. But if you're not in a calorie deficit, is there really a difference, practically speaking, between 0.8 grams per pound and one gram? Probably not. It's not like you're going to gain so much more muscle because you're eating a little bit more protein.

But again, I mean, some people, they get, they get, they freak out about this. You know what I mean? Like, what are you talking about? You only need 0.8 grams per pound. No, you don't need one gram per pound. Like, dude, if there's, I wrote an article on the Legion blog actually about protein needs and summarize quite a few papers, quite a few studies are in there that I referenced. And, you know, with certain things, I like to be kind of on the safe side, where if you want to be on the safe side, especially if you're a lean person with a relative amount, you know, if you have a decent amount of muscle and you train regularly,

eat a gram of protein per pound, and you're going to be fine. If you, for whatever reason, need to squeeze in that extra three bites of Pop-Tart or something, then okay, fine, drop it to 0.8 grams per pound and eat a little bit more carb if you really want to. But it's kind of just splitting hairs. It's a pointless argument. The argument would at least be worthwhile if we were talking about 0.3 grams of protein per pound versus a gram, because then that would free up quite a bit of calories for other things. Um, but we're not talking about something so minor. And, uh, so no gram per pound is not too much. Now, if you want to eat 350 grams of protein per day,

sure you can. Um, you know, I, I'm trying to remember on, uh, I was just looking at a review recently on protein intake and up upwards of 400 grams a day. And if I remember correctly, in people with healthy kidneys, it was fine. But realize that you are sacrificing your carbs if you do that. And that's not ideal. I mean, 175 pounds, unless you have a crazy- ass metabolism or you're on a crazy amount of drugs, you're not going to be able to eat a ton of calories. And if you're eating 350 grams, I mean, you could be eating, let's say 170 grams of protein per day. And that's an additional 170

grams of, of carbs that you could be eating. And that's going to make a huge difference in your training. That amount of carbs on top of whatever you're eating now is going to be like big, big difference. You're going to notice it every workout, you're going to be stronger. You're going to have more energy. You're going to have that more high insulin anabolic environment, which I was talking about earlier. Um, you know, and so you are actually sacrificing something that, cause let's say you did 350 grams of protein per day in like 200 carb and some fat that is for muscle building and strength building purposes is quite a bit worse than 170 grams of protein. And let's say like 400 grams of carb and some fat

there. I mean, that's a huge difference in terms of training and, and, and, you know, what kind of results you're going to see from your, from your workouts. Um, and in terms of 0.4 grams per pound of fat that you do not need that much fat. That's, that's a lot like for health purposes, 0.3 grams per pound of fat-free mass, not body weight, but fat-free mass is, uh, is, is, is adequate for health reasons. If you want to go a little bit higher than that. Okay, fine. That's why when cutting, I recommend 0.2 grams per pound, just cause that works out to be about 0.3 grams per pound, just cause that works out to be about 0.3 grams

per pound of fat free mass. Um, and it's easier for people. Um, so you're getting enough protein, you're getting enough fat for your health, but you know, you're, you're not waste quote unquote wasting or spending a bunch of calories on fat that could be carbs, which are gonna make a much bigger difference in your cut. Um, and so even if you're not cutting though, like if you're bulking, you know, I guess if you want to eat that much fat, you can, um, but it's, uh, it's a bit more than you need. What do you think of mini cuts? If you think they're okay, how many times throughout a bulk should they be done? I'm not really a fan of mini cutting. If you're bulking, I recommend that you just don't blow up your diet so you can stay in a, Jeremy says impossible. Um, so you can stay in a mild surplus,

uh, you know, and, and really drag it out. So like, let's say you're a guy, you're starting at 10% body fat, give or take, or you're a girl starting at 20% body fat. You know, if you're going to bulk, I would like to see four to six months, uh, before you're up into that, before you've gained the six or 7% body fat that necessitates cutting. Um, and that means sticking to your diet. I mean, that means like, you know, you have to, instead of just going out and having cheap meals or cheap days, it's much smarter to save your calories on those days. on those days. So like, if you're going to go out to a restaurant at night and eat a bunch of food, um, just eat protein throughout the day. So come into that, that meal at night with all, basically all your carbs and fat, uh, that you can then, you know, go ham. I mean, you can eat so much food before you just are disgusted with yourself. So if you can minimize that damage, you know, then you can do that by what I just said. Um, and I'm not a fan of mini cuts because I feel like in my experience, when you're bulking, you get into this, uh, when you're doing

it well, you're doing it right. You get into a rhythm and there's, there's like a momentum that gets built where every week, you know, like every you're sleeping good, you have high energy, you have high glycogen in your body, your workouts are good. You're making gains every week on reps on your big lifts. And that, that gains on reps turns into gains in weight. And I feel that in my experience with my body and just working with people that throwing in mini cuts can screw up that momentum for some reason. And so I'm not a fan of it. I think it's totally fine if you're maintaining, if you're in a position where you're just happy with your body and you just kind of want to keep it the way it is and you eat too much, like let's say you go somewhere for the weekend and you're like, I don't give a shit.

I don't get to eat food like this. I'm going to just eat everything. And you gain a pound of fat over the weekend and then you go into a deficit for a week to get rid of it. Who cares? Why not? You're just trying to maintain anyway. But that's a luxury. I mean you have to earn that, and you get to where you want

to maintain, and then you can have more flexibility. But if you're not there yet, I recommend just a more traditional mild surplus, long periods of time, push heavy weight, progress in your lifts, and save the mini cuts and the calorie cycling and all that stuff for when you're more just in a maintenance mode. All right, next question. Any tips for finding someone to train with? All my friends are too lazy and flaky as I've discovered the hard way. God, any tips? No. I've gone through the same thing. I mean, I've always had someone to train with, but it's changed over the years for the same reason. I mean, some people, they just quit. They get sick and never come back. They, this, they, that, or they change their training times. You know, I go early in the morning, which understands not for everybody. Um, so I've though I've gone for long periods of time

working out by myself, six months, you know, and I don't even mind it because I get through my workouts a little bit faster. Um, and I don't have any problem asking people for spots if I need it. And you, I really only want a spot on heavy bench pressing, not that it's totally necessary. I can go in the power rack obviously and set it up properly. I don't even need a spotter. So remember you can do that. Uh, so, you know, but if I don't want to do that, I can just grab someone for a spot. And, uh, if I'm military pressing, sometimes like have a spotter as well. Um, but you know, so I don't know, and come just learn to enjoy isolation that's my life lesson um any tips for finding so no okay so hey mike understand in order to make gains one must be in a calorie surplus can the calorie surplus be calculated on a weekly basis for example

if my tde is 2000 and in order to make gains i have to bump it at 2200 instead of eating 2200 every day can i eat 1800 on four days and eat 2700 remaining three days, even though I'm in calorie deficit on my training days? Thank you. Uh, no, I wouldn't recommend this because when you're in a calorie deficit, it's it what's happening is, um, your body's ability to synthesize proteins. It's impaired. And that's why that's the long story short. There are also some hormonal things that, that, that change as well. Um, that is why you, it's very hard to build muscle when you're in a calorie deficit, uh, if you're not brand new to weightlifting. Um, so when you are trying to maximize muscle growth and you're trying to max maximize, you know, strength progression, um,

you want to basically have no days in a deficit basically. Now, of course, if you're like in a surplus six days or something like that, and then you're in a deficit one day for whatever reason, it's not like you've screwed everything up, but the more days in the week that you're in that, that you have that surplus, the better it is for your training. Um, and I mean, period, it's just, this is what it is. So I, you know, I kind of covered this in just a few minutes ago, so I won't go all back through it. Um, it kind of goes back to that mini cut point is, is I know that's enjoyable. I understand. Cause then you get to, you know, for whatever reason, if you're thinking like Friday, Saturday, Sunday, you're going to eat more Friday night, you're going to go out Saturday and go outside Sunday. You're going to, you know,

go to the family dinner. Yes. That's enjoyable, but it's really not optimal for, um, if you're, if you're really trying to get the most out of your training. So I would recommend not doing that. I'd recommend saving that for when you're in a maintain mode basically. Do you run into people that tell you how lifting is not healthy and counting calories doesn't work? If yes, how do you deal with it? Yeah, yeah, I know. It doesn't remind me of today.

Someone came on Muscle for Life today, and they had like nine different discuss accounts for the comments and started a conversation with themselves. I know it's them because I can look at the IP address of the people that are posting. It's an idiot. So he's actually having a conversation with himself like calorie kind doesn't work. I, you know, McDonald's for 15 days and gained 32 pounds. And then he would respond to his own thing with a different disgust count, pretending to be somebody else. Like, yeah, this guy's an idiot.

Calorie kind doesn't work. And like, and then, and then, so I just banned him and deleted it all. Which I don't, I rarely do. But if I only ban people that are straight trolls, basically, like I'm totally fine with people to disagree with me and have like a, an actual discussion. But if they're just trying to troll me, I just ban them. I don't have time for that. Who cares?

Um, so lifting is not healthy. That's the dumbest shit I've ever heard. No, I've never, that one of actually, I don't know if I've ever heard before. I've had people say that cardio is, is more healthy than, than weightlifting, which is not true either. Um, but I've never had anyone say that. Like, um, there's research. If you search for like Google, like study lean mass mortality or something like that, you'll find that basically the amount of muscle that you have on

your body is directly related to just all cause mortality. Meaning the less muscle you have, the more likely you are to just die one day of disease, of dysfunction, fall down, break your hip, and you're fucked. Also, your muscle lean mass is a – you could think of it as like a – it or a severe or a muscle wasting disease. Uh, and you're in the hospital for a long period of time, the more muscle you have, the more likely you are to survive that basically. So like one of the most healthy things you can do is to have a larger amount of lean mass than, than what is normal because normal lean mass levels are low and they get lower as you get older. If you can have the opposite, if you can have higher than normal lean mass and maintain that as you age, basically you're, you are ahead of the curve in so many ways.

The quality of your life, uh, is, is, is just going to be better because you can do things that people you're, you know, as you get older that you're people of that age can't do, whether it be water skiing with your kids or whether it be dirt biking or playing sports or whatever, you're, you're less likely to get hurt. Like I said, fall down, break your hip, stuff like that. You're less likely to get sick. Uh, you're just better in every way. Essentially, um, your insulin sensitivity is going to be better. So you're not going to deal with all the health problems that come with obesity. Um, unless, I mean, you, I guess you could, if you really ate an absurd amount of food, but if you at least understand how dieting works, then you'll be fine.

You don't have to be like shredded to be healthy at all. You know, a guy with a good amount of muscle, 15% body fat is perfectly healthy. So that's the lifting. I would just be like, what are you even talking about? Like, how could you say weightlifting is unhealthy? This makes no sense. It's not, it's also, maybe they would say it's bad for your joints. No, it's not, it's also there. Maybe they would say it's bad for your joints. No, it's not. Um, again, if you just read the article, go, go, go look, go search

most of life for joint and you'll see the article I just posted on it. It's not true. Um, that we lifting is bad for your joints. It can be bad for your joints depending on what you're doing and how you're doing it. But if you do it right, it's not bad for your joints at all. Um, and then calorie counting is on work. I mean, that's just the dumbest shit ever, dude. Like, I feel like the calorie counters are, they're just, or the calorie deniers, sorry, are, they're like the truthers of the fitness world. And, you know, I say that actually kind of tongue in cheek because I don't trust our government for shit. Who knows what they're up to, but you know what I'm saying? People that are deny, you know deny just the basic laws of energy balance. Okay, I'll say this. They're the flat earthers. That's actually, that's a better one.

Calorie deniers, people that say that calorie kind doesn't work are the flat earthers of the health and fitness space. They're actually a fucking joke and they should just be shunned, ignored. I mean, there's a reason why the last century of metabolic research has shown that this is unequivocally, there's no arguing this, that for meaningful weight loss to occur, energy intake must be less than energy expenditure, period. End of story. That's why if you Google Mark Haub, I don't know the pronounce, H-A-U-B weight loss, you'll see there's a professor, I refer to this a lot, not because it's like some great scientific experiment, but just because it's to foos people that, that come at me with this stupid shit of like, Oh,

Oh, so you're saying that I could just eat Doritos every day and lose weight. Yeah. That's actually what I'm saying. Go look at this. That's what this guy did. He was just, he's a scientist and he just, just to prove this point, he had like a protein shake and like Twinkies and Oreos and hostess snacks and shit. Um, he just in a calorie deficit, he lost like 30 pounds over the course of a few months. And, and, and basically every major health biomarker had improved. That was the thing that surprised him. Like he was that it just shows how unhealthy being overweight is and how healthy being in a normal weight range is, or he's eating straight trash convenience store diet and everything is better within a few months, every single major, you know,

uh, health biomarker. So, uh, you know, when Pia, I, every once in a while, I see, I get someone on the blog that, that says that. And I'm, and actually I'm, I'm normally like patient with, with, if, if someone is seriously like, you know, Hey, I, what do you, I thought calorie counting doesn't work. I thought blah, but if they're just kind of like, Oh, you don't know what you're talking about. I'll post 50 studies right now that show that calorie counting doesn't work. I thought blah. But if they're just kind of like, oh, you don't know what you're talking about. I'll post 50 studies right now that show that calorie counting doesn't work. Like, oh, okay, please do. Because you have the law of the energy balance is based on the first law of thermodynamics, right? So energy can't be created, can't be destroyed. You can't gain fat from nothing. Fat is an energy store. So you can only gain it if you have a

surplus of energy coming in and you can only lose it if you have a restriction of energy. So anyways, um, you know, I, again, people don't really say that stuff to me in person, but I do get it every once in a while, but I just linked them to a couple articles and, you know, some people are very stubborn and stuck in their ways and you know this guy that was posting like having a conversation with himself uh he had one of his things was like oh just go paleo and you'll be okay like yeah that makes sense that that's something he would say that's something uh you know someone like brainwashed into paleo would would say not that paleo is a bad way of eating it's's fine. It's a healthy way to eat, but it's unnecessarily restrictive. So if you like eating that way, sure, but there's nothing wrong with eating grains.

There's nothing wrong with eating some of the foods that paleo says you can't eat. Okay, so what do you think, Jeremy? One more? A couple more? Okay, cool. Okay. All right. Well, we'll do a couple quick ones before we wrap up here.

I'd like to keep on going, but I still have to finish tomorrow's article. All right. So the next one here is, what's your opinion on continuing taking Forge Phoenix even while bulking? I know it sounds counterintuitive at first, but wouldn't the improved insulin sensitivity and such help with improving the ratio of muscle to fat gain during bulk? My standard recommendation is save your money, actually. I would just save the cutting supplements for when you're cutting. And I mean, I get where you're coming from. The only thing you have to keep in mind is that like sinephrine, for instance, you're going to build a tolerance to sinephrine over time, just like you build a tolerance to caffeine over time. Um, and I would say this, it's not going to

be bad for you to, to do that, but I don't practically speaking think it's going to make that much of a difference. Um, because kind of the point of bulking is that you maintain that calorie surplus. So if you're like, let's say, let's say you keep on doing, you know, caffeine, uh, and, and Phoenix and forge. So you're, you're burning an extra, let's say between the caffeine and Phoenix and forge to you have the, you'll him be, let's say between all that, you burn an extra 200 calories a day. You have to account for that in your intake. So that means you're just gonna have to eat 200 calories more than usual. And obviously over time that, you know, spike in your basal metabolic rate is going to decline over time because your

body builds tolerances to stimulants. Um, so, you know, if after several months, it's now 150 calories and it's just, you're gonna have to eat it anyway. So yes, maintaining, um, of course, you know, good insulin sensitivity is a big part of, uh, of minimizing fat gain when you bulk, but there's not much you're going to do in terms of supplementation. I would say maybe berberine, uh, you know, outside of the standard stuff that I recommend, like fish oil can help with that and making sure you're getting enough omega-3s is good for that. There's some stuff in Triumph that can help with that. But the main thing with that is just being lean and being physically active and training your muscles.

Those are the most powerful things you can do to help maintain an insulin sensitivity. Supplementation can help, but you're going to get the most bang for your buck from your diet, really, and making sure that you are in a, in a slight surplus. You're not just piling on body fat. So, you know, I would say now, just save Phoenix and Forge for when you're cutting and when you're bulking, just make sure your diet is right. And you know, if, if, if you take Triumph, then that, that will help a little bit in that regard and among the many

other things it can do but it's not so much of a supplementation thing and you know we've actually funny that you you asked that uh probably why jeremy chose it is because that's one of the products going back to even what i was talking about in the beginning that we we looked at making we wanted to is there something we could make that even you could have like before a cheat meal let's say before you're going to eat a bunch of food is there something you could have like before a cheat meal, let's say, before you're going to eat a bunch of food, is there something you could take that would prime your body basically like increase insulin sensitivity enough to where you're even less likely to store fat from that meal? And there just was nothing that was compelling enough to make us want to make a product and, you know, again, feel good about selling it. And basically because anything we sell, we want it to not just like, Oh, kind of work. Like we want it to be like, this works. Like we want you to be able to take it and be like, wow, that this is worth my money. Like I actually feel a difference like

triumph. So many people love triumph because they actually feel a difference. They have more energy when they take it, they have more focus. And, uh, you know, I've had quite a few people that are, are also like, I mean, a lot of, a lot of the, our following is, are the very educated people. And so there, they know that like, are they just kind of tricking themselves? And so they'll stop taking it for a little bit and start taking it again where they're just like, no, I mean, I just feel better when I'm taking triumph or, you know, forge, you know, that works. Like, you know, that, that, yeah, that your hymn beans in there when you take it, because you feel it, you get, you sweat more,

your heart rate is higher. It works. There's no question. So, you know, in terms of like, yeah, that yohim beans in there when you take it, because you feel it, you get, you sweat more, your heart rate is higher. It works. There's no question. So, you know, in terms of like a, a insulin kind of optimization thing, there was just nothing natural that really, really, you know, did it for us. Um, the one thing that we do really like is berberine. We've tried to work it into products, but it tastes so bad that we haven't been able to use it. We may just sell it as a standalone product, um, as like an add-on, which is an optional and explain why we would add it to this stack, you know, but we'll see on that. Haven't, haven't quite decided yet. Um, all right, next question. Today I ate a protein bar that was horrible. Not many are great as we know. Will you be making anything like that? I would love to make protein bars.

It's something that next year we'll be looking at. We're also going to do an energy drink as well because like you, you probably do the same thing. I'll have Pulse randomly throughout the day because I just – one, I think it tastes good. But two, I just like the effects. I like the beta-alanine tingles. And I really actually – what I really like is the um, the caffeine theanine combination is really nice for working for just, it boosts mood. It boosts my focus. And, you know, the vast majority of my work is writing and thinking, and I just really like it. Um, but for that reason, obviously stuff like beta-ene, beta-alanine, ornithine, there's no reason for

just the, if I wanted just something to like for the pure mental and mood effects, there are other things that I would swap for those ingredients. So that's the energy drink that we want to make, which the formulation is actually done. We just haven't pulled the trigger yet on starting development because we're just, you know, have a lot of money tied up in just getting everything back in stock that we have and getting ready for the holidays. So next year, we're going to start reaching out to, you know, manufacturers of drinks and stuff. And that's also when we're going to start looking at protein bars because yeah, I think there's some cool things that could be done with protein bars. Um, you know, you have right now, obviously quest bars are probably just still dominating the world and

you know, they're just shady with their net carbs is bullshit. It's not, you know, you think that only has two grams of carbs, but it doesn't, it could have 15 grams, 20 grams of carbs. I wrote an article about that in MFL. If you want to search for it, search for net carb and you'll see why that's bullshit. So, um, I think there is an opportunity to do something special there, but haven't looked into it yet. Uh, another product that's just kind of makes me whatever just reminds me is that we want to look at doing, I think we can do a good job on as a weight gainer. Um, I don't like that phrase weight gainer. Uh, just like I don't like fat burner, even though we use fat burner, cause that's just now it's become

synonymous like Phoenix. What else do I call it? I guess I call it a fat burner. Um, but you know, it's, uh, I think of it more as like a fat loss accelerator, but that sounds stupid. Um, so anyways, on a weight gainer, a meal replacement shake for, for people that have to eat a lot of calories and just hate stuffing down all that food or, um, for people that just want the convenience of it, you want to finish your workout, drink a shake, go to work and be done with it. You don't want to have to eat breakfast. And that'd be me for sure. A hundred percent. Um, so with, uh, some interesting type of carbs in there and, uh, some interesting healthy fats and good protein. And, um, so anyways, that's another product that we're gonna be looking at, um, next year. When it would be one of our next products, actually, we have the greens product

coming out, then the sleep product. Um, then we're gonna be doing some more flavors of protein. We're gonna be doing some big protein jugs, um, some new flavors of pulse, I believe. I mean, we have watermelon coming out. I don't remember. Um, then we're gonna do fish oil. Uh, that's going to be a new product. And then we're going to be looking at like some of these other things like the energy drink and, um, protein bars waking or probably one of the first things, just cause I know that those, those products are popular and I personally don't like them. And I don't recommend them because a lot of them are just full of shit calories. They're just full of like simple sugars and just crap. I'd rather people eat food and get some nutrients for that

thousand calories. So that would be my idea for a waking or be more like a nutrient dense, an actual, you could say healthy, but a nutritious meal replacement, um, that, you know, meets all your, all your macro and calorie needs. Um, next question. If you eat too much sodium, how long does it take to get rid of? That's a good question. You know, I think it depends on, on body to body. Like, uh, Jeremy, he just holds more water naturally and sodium will rock him and he'll, he'll hold water for several days. Um, where from, uh, from like him and I, if we went to eat the same foods, uh, in terms of sodium content and everything, like, yes, I will hold water, but he's going to hold more than me and he's going to hold it for longer. That's just the way his body is. Um, so me personally, uh, I notice it like if I, if I go to a restaurant over the weekend and eat a lot of

food, which also restaurant food, keep in mind, like a general rule of cooking is salt the shit out of it. If you want it to taste good, basically. Um, and in a teaspoon of salt, a teaspoon has about 2.3 grams of sodium. So you can imagine, you know, if you're eating like, again, if I go to a restaurant and I have like two appetizers and I have an entree, I have someone else's entree. Sometimes if I'm going to go ham, I just eat everything. I can eat so much food in one sitting. It actually kind of blows my mind sometimes. But you can easily eat, what would you say, Jeremy? Like 10 grams of sodium. Yeah. I mean, in one, in one go, if not more, depending on what foods you're eating. Um, so if I do that, I notice

that I'm holding water for about two to three days, man, two ish days, uh, until it finally normalizes. And depending on how much I actually ate, of course, there could be some fat in there as well. So it kind of depends, but, uh, I would say that, you know, if you eat a hot, if you eat a lot of food and after three or four days, you're still looking what you think is bloated, it's probably fat. And if you've brought everything back to where it needs to be and your sodium intake is back down normal, your potassium intake is normal because it's just the fluctuation that causes the fluctuation. So as it comes back to, is it normalizes? You should see that the water retention normalize. Um, last question. All right. So last question. Um, and then, and then I got a call at a night and finished writing. Uh, so at what point does

it make sense to start adding in hit? I'm at 13% now and I'm trying to keep my deficit moderate. Um, that's a good question. I would say if you're at 13%, like what I've done, see, I've done it different ways. I've done no cardio just to see how lean I could get doing no cardio. And I found that I could get to about 10% give or take. And I just couldn't get lower because I would have to have reduced my calorie intake too much, um, or tried to wait, lift even more. And it just, it would become a problem. Um, and so I found that I had to add cardio at that point just to keep the body fat coming off. Uh, and so I would say, uh, you know, let's see. I mean, I I've known guys and girls as well that don't have to do any cardio

period just through weightlifting and diet. Um, you know, they just have fast resilient metabolisms. Um, they, their energy expenditure just stays high and they don't have to do any cardio and they can get pretty lean. Um, now of course, guys that are girls that are getting super lean are doing cardio period, but you know, I've known guys that can get down to the 8% range and girls that can get down to the 17, 18% range without any cardio. So it kind of depends on your body. You don't have to do any, if you're happy with your progress, uh, and you have a, um, a moderate deficit, then don't do any. But if you find that you get stuck, then that's when you know, and you're tracking your intake

and you make sure that you're doing everything the way it needs to be done. Then you know that you have to burn more energy and it makes more sense to add some cardio. If you're doing as much weightlifting as you can, if you're doing like your four to six hours of weightlifting week, I wouldn't recommend trying to bump that up to eight hours of weightlifting week. For instance, um, I would say add, you know, add some cardio. Um, so yeah, I think that's simple answer there and gonna, gonna have to call it a night. Uh, but I hope you enjoyed it. And, um, you know, we'll be doing another one this month just to make up for missing last month. So that'll be at the end of this month. We'll send out another email. We'll just do it the same way

that we did this one. And, uh, yeah. So if you, if I didn't get to your question tonight, uh, you know, sorry, you know, we get a lot, as you can see, and Jeremy does his best. He does a good job sorting, you know, getting through them and trying not to repeat questions that we've already addressed. So, um, if we didn't get to your question, then just come next week and, or next one, it's gonna be in two weeks, two or three weeks. And,

you know, just, just ask it again. And, and, and then, you know, hopefully if,

if it's something we haven't already covered or something that, you know, Jeremy tries to pick things that would be broadly applicable, then, you know, there's a good chance that I'll get in the mix. So, yeah,

you know, I hope you like this and have a good night. And article coming tomorrow on Legion, it's gonna be on intermittent fasting and I'm happy with it. It's coming together nicely. I think you're gonna like it. So that's it for now.

Have a good night. And thanks for spending the time with me.