Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - MFL Podcast 53: Live Q&A: Gaining Strength but Not Size, How Long You Should Diet, and More!

Episode Date: May 29, 2015

In this live Q&A I answer questions about what do to when you are gaining strength but not size, how long you should stay in a calorie deficit, and more! If you want to get in on the next one and ask me questions, sign up here: www.legionsupplements.com/qa/ QUESTIONS FROM THIS Q&A: When's the sleeping product and fish oil coming out? When are the new flavors of Whey+ coming out? Mike, BLS focuses exclusively on the 4-6 rep range. But if you follow Brad Schoenfeld (who I learned about from you), his plan cycles between a "strength phase" (like BLS 4-6 rep), a "metabolic phase" (15-20 reps) and a "muscle phase" (6-8) reps. He insists that this rep cycling is how to MAXIMIZE hypertrophy. Your thoughts? How often should you do abs? In your book you recommend taking 2-3 grams of Omega-3. My question is, is it best to take all 2-3 grams at once or can I take 1/2 with lunch and 1/2 with dinner? Is it possible that I'm making strength gains, while the size of my muscles remain the same? Do you have an estimated date when we can expect a beta for Stacked on iOS? Also in regards to Stacked, are you making the app compatible with the Apple Watch? Did you go to college? If so, what was your major and how has it helped? If not, please explain why and how you came to where you are. When guys in the gym come up to you and start telling you stuff that you know is "bro-science", how do you correct them without making them mad? Or is that possible? How much will Forge cost and will it be available on Amazon? What's your favorite app to track macros? Also, do you measure your meats and grains raw or cooked? How do you feel about the Hodgetwins? Would you reached out to them at all or consider having them on your podcast? Have you heard of the vegan raw till 4 diet? (Fruits until 4 and then cooked potatoes, rice, etc. after 4.)If so, what are your thoughts? On the point of eating a lot of food/carbs when trying to get bigger, this is where I'm at and I completely agree that eating so much gets old. Would you say getting or making your own mass gainer shake would come in handy? Thoughts on mass gainers when getting tired of eating so much? What bf% test method does BLS refer to when cutting down to the recommended 10-12% to start bulking up again? How long is it safe to be in a calorie deficit for? Is it until you get to your target body fat%? When do you recommend doing HIIT? I lift 5 days a week at night and 4 HIIT session a week in the morning. Is this ideal? In 2 months I went from 104 kg to 97 kg following your custom meal plan. I haven't been able to keep following the plan because I feel tired, hungry and low sex drive, should I add more calories? Any chance of you creating the super multivitamin that you wanted to initially create but was too expensive? Or any chance of creating a fish oil product or probiotic? I never know which to select and trust your word 100%. Thanks Mike!!!! How do you feel about Layne Norton's / Matt Ogus' PHAT routines? How did you go about starting a supplement company? The business process, not the reasoning behind starting the company. What's the inspiration for the poster on the window sill? What's the least amount of protein (g/LBM) can you take to prevent muscle loss during a deficit? 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 my books. Seriously, though, it actually is. I make my living as a writer, so as long as I keep selling books, 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 basically 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 grind away in the gym every day doing workouts that you hate. Now 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 books for free, one of my audiobooks for free with a 30-day free trial of Audible. To do that, go to muscleforlife.com forward slash audiobooks. That's www.muscleforlife.com forward slash audiobooks. And you can see how to do this. Now also, if you like my work in general, then I really think you're going to like what I'm doing with my supplement company, Legion.

Now, as you probably know, I'm not a fan of the supplement industry. I mean, I've wasted who knows how many thousands of dollars over the years on worthless supplements that really do nothing. And I've always had trouble finding products that I actually thought were worth buying and recommending. And well, basically I had been complaining about this for years and I decided to finally do something about it and start making my own products. And not just any products, but really the exact products that I myself have always wanted. So a few of the things that make my supplements unique are one, they're a hundred percent naturally sweetened and flavored. Two, all ingredients are backed by peer-reviewed scientific research that you can verify for yourself because on our website, we explain why we've chosen each ingredient and we also cite

all supporting studies so you can go dive in and check it out for yourself. Three, all ingredients are also included at clinically effective dosages, which are the exact dosages used in the studies proving their effectiveness. This is important, of course, because while something like creatine is proven to help improve strength and help you build muscle faster, if you don't take enough, then you're not going to see the benefits that are seen in scientific research. And four, there are no proprietary blends, which means that you know exactly what you're buying. All our formulations are 100% transparent, both with the ingredients and the dosages. So you can learn more

about my supplements at www.legionathletics.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'll save 10% on your order. All right. Thanks again for taking the time to listen to my podcast and let's get to the show. Hello, hello. It's Mike and I'm back with another episode of the podcast. In this episode, it's actually a live Q&A that I did last night. I do them over at Legion, which is my supplement company. The URL is legionathletics.com forward slash QA if you want to get in on the next one. I do it once a month and I kind of just, I just take questions live for about an hour, hour and a half from, you know, everybody,

whatever. And Jeremy sits there and he picks out the questions and I just answer them. And that's pretty cool. You know, people, people are, are, are really liking it. And I think that you will get some value out of it because the questions that, that I'm, that I'm answering, you will get some value out of it because the questions that I'm answering, we try to stick with questions that are generally applicable, not just super specific to one person's circumstances. So yeah, if you like it and you want to get on the next one, again, the URL to sign up so you can get notified is legionathletics.com forward slash QA. And yeah, I hope you like it.

All right, so let's get started. I'll take the first question here. So the question is, what are some short-term strategies you use for losing weight if you've got an event coming up, such as a holiday or whatever, anything you can do in the final weeks coming up to the event to maximize fat loss? There's not really much you can do beyond, you know, to maximize fat loss, you have your calorie deficit and you have your, which is kind of driven by how much food you're eating versus how much energy you're expending through exercise and, and, uh, you know, just physical activity in general. Um, and then you have, uh, so I, you know, personally, I don't, I don't, I don't really drop my, my calorie intake below BMR. So if I wanted to lose fat as quickly as possible, I would,

uh, I guess drop down to BMR or right around BMR. And then, um, I would, for me personally, I know that my body can, I can get away with about six hours of exercise a week when I'm cutting. So I kind of max out my exercise, take my calorie intake as low as I can get away with about six hours of exercise a week when I'm cutting. So I kind of that max out my exercise, take my calorie intake as low as I can go without causing problems, and then use supplements that help like caffeine, uh, yohimbine, sinephrine, some of the other, uh, some of the other ingredients, basically ingredients that I, that we put in our fat burner Phoenix. And then we have the fat burner, uh, forge, which is a bit different. It's for fasted training. Um, so I guess that's worth mentioning as well. I would do all my

training fasted with supplements that help you burn more fat. Uh, and, and like in the case of your him being, for instance, you have to be fasted for it to work. Um, so yeah, I mean, and then if you want to look as good as possible and you're trying to like, you're on a time crunch, um, cut your carbs to somewhere around, I'd say a half, uh, maybe, maybe one gram per two pounds of body weight, something like that. Um, and not that it's going to help you lose fat faster, but it's going to flush water out of your system a bit. So like your subcutaneous water levels are going to go down. The amount of water that you're holding under your skin is going to go down and that just makes you look leaner and better. Um, so yeah, I mean, that's really it. And then there's no, nothing, there's nothing really that you can do with manipulating salt intake and potassium intake and water intake, because it's more likely you're just going to

mess that up and you're just going to end up holding more water than if you would have just not even messed with it. So generally I just recommend you keep your sodium potassium levels, not even messed with it. So generally I just recommend you keep your sodium potassium levels, uh, in the normal range, which for most people it's, let's say two to four grams of sodium a day and four to six grams of potassium a day. Drink your gallon ish of water a day. And, uh, yeah. And then just, uh, you know, lose as much fat as you can and go lower carb for the week leading up to it to kind of just shed water. And then that's about as good as you're going to look for, you know, whatever event you have coming up. So let's go on to the next question here. When are the sleep product and the fish oil coming out?

So the sleep product, which is the name is Lunar, which I'm happy with. It's surveyed well with everybody and I like it. That is realistically about two and a half, maybe three months away because, um, I'm, I'm actually getting samples of it next week. And I don't think it's gonna be very hard to flavor because there's nothing in there that tastes really bad. So, um, assuming the flip, the samples are good. When I placed that order, it's going to take about eight weeks. So that's one of the, it's just one of the downsides, as you know, there's basically like

what I've learned the hard way is you in this game, you need to have a safety buffer of stock and it takes a lot of money. So you have to have a lot of money just sitting in inventory that you never do anything with just in case something happens like what happened with us. And that's why we ran out of stock of way and triumph. And that's why we've had trouble staying in stock in general is because one sales spike very randomly for us where we don't do anything. It's not like we turn on some big advertising campaign. It's just, we get a lot of word of mouth sales, which is great, but it makes it, it's just, we get a lot of word of mouth, um, sales, which is great, but it makes it, it's very unpredictable in terms of demand. So we've had it like with triumph with our

multivitamin, it was doing its thing, doing its thing. And then out of nowhere, sales double the daily sales double. We don't, we don't even know why somebody out there promoted it. We couldn't figure it out. Um, all we know is all of a sudden on Amazon and our website, the number of bottles per week doubled. And so then what that means though, is Amazon and our website, the number of bottles per week doubled. And so then what that means, though, is the order that I had placed previously, it was done with calculations of a certain number of bottles per week with some certain growth built in. But I wasn't assuming that it was going to double. Like I try not to in general, I try not, be overly optimistic about things because then it just, you know, I'm going to go into something going, okay, what's a safe, like, I know we can grow

this, you know, 25%, uh, month over month. I don't know if I can grow this a hundred percent month over month, but that's what happened. Um, anyways, we're, we're, we're getting it all sorted out now and our manufacturer is doing some, some stuff to help us. And it's part of the learning process, I guess. Um, but that's when the sleep product is coming out. The fish oil is, I'm actually, I'm working still on the quotes right now because what I want to do with it is very, very expensive. So I have to see how can I get the cost down? Because in looking at the cost analysis of it, as you know, our products aren't cheap and we don't want to make cheap products because cheap products are cheap for a reason. It's because the formulations are crap. I mean,

really, or the quality is crap. You, it's, you get what you pay for is very true with most supplements. There are certain things that I guess that wouldn't be totally true for like vitamin D. Okay. Vitamin D is cheap and it's not, you know, it's, there's no special form of vitamin D. Um, it just is what it is. But with many other products and many other ingredients like protein, and there's just so many different things where even like in pre-workouts, the quality of amino acids that you're getting, you can get cheap beta alanine from China and you don't know what,

who knows really what it is. Or you can pay more for good beta alanine that you know is good and it's pure. And, you know, so there's just because a product says it has beta alanine doesn't mean that it's high quality. So obviously I'm all about quality. And but, you know, that means that my my on average, my product costs, my production costs, my cost of goods are probably four to five times most companies. And I can do that because I don't have to spend nearly as much as they do on advertising and marketing because I have people like you because people talk. And when, you know, if you do something cool and you do something kind of special, like I think what we're doing with Legion, word gets around and that basically allows me to put more money into my production.

And, you know, I'm also going to be going in the direction of, we're going to take the company where we want to put more and more into creating a better customer experience. So we have some very cool things coming, some very cool upgrades to the website, to how we're going to be offering all of our products. Uh, there's going to be free shipping, uh, is going to be in the mix. Um, there's going to be gifts. I like putting money into that as opposed to pouring money into expensive advertising campaigns, because I think that doing that and just making you, you know, our customers as happy as possible is just a better way of going about business. You know, if you've read Tony Hsieh's book, Delivering Happiness, you know what I'm talking about.

So I want to be the Zappos of the supplement industry. Anyway, the fish oil is a few months out because I don't know what I want to do. If I can't do it, basically, if I can't make the product that I want to make, I'm just not going to make one because it's not worth it. We've had to do that before. We have to turn down some ideas because, yeah, sure, it would make money, but that's not the point. We want to make all of our products need to meet a certain standard. And if we can't do that for the right price, then, you know, we move on to something else. All right. So let's go to the next one here. So when, when are the new flavors of way plus coming out? Um, I'll take, I'll take this quickly because a product question. I want to just talk about our products, but this one I want to talk about

quickly because I'm, I'm kind of excited. So I've been going back and forth with the Whey Plus product because it's very hard to get the flavor right. And flavors matter, and we've been working a lot on it. We've already gone through like three revisions of the flavor system, and we're happy with where it's at now with this next batch that is actually shipping out from a manufacturer like now. So it'll be back in stock within the next week. But the problem is the leucine that we're adding, it doesn't, leucine tastes really bad. I like the fact that there is additional leucine in each serving. And I like the research, like I like, you know, the marketing angle of it. And I like that there is a very good chance that over time there is an added benefit to that. However, what I don't like is how it impairs the taste. And some people, we found this by selling thousands and thousands of bottles and getting

a lot of feedback. Some people are very, very sensitive to leucine. It just, it tastes terrible to them. Me, it doesn't taste so bad to me. I guess I'm kind of used to it. Um, even from like taking it with fasted training before fasted training and stuff. Um, but some people are very sensitive to it. And, uh, so what we've decided to do is our, in the next few months, we're going to be rolling out a new way plus. And what we want to do is we want to go in the direction of, we want to create a, it's going to go, of course, everything's going to be natural and that's not going to change. Natural flavoring, natural sweetening, no added crap, but we're going to take the leucine out, add some more protein in because we're not amino spiking. We're not saying those four grams of leucine are not counting toward the protein

count, even though technically we could do that legally. A lot of companies do like we're trying some different proteins now to just get a kind of get an idea of what we're up against in the natural protein market, I guess you could say. And one that we really like, they have 12 grams of additional amino acids. It's glutamine and BCAAs added per serving. And when you compare the scooper grams to which is a 30 gram scooper to what they're claiming in terms of protein, plus all this other stuff, plus the additional glutamine, plus the BCAs, plus the sweetener, plus the flavoring. Basically, each scoop has about 12 to 13 grams less protein than they're claiming. It's shitty, and a lot of companies, they can get away with it legally.

And as you can imagine, this protein that they're using, it comes from New Zealand, and it's very expensive. I'm actually looking into it because it tastes really good. But, you know, my costs on it are very, very high. So I'm wondering, how are they – this is a small company. How are they possibly selling this for $39, 2.2 pounds, unless they're really actually making no money on it? And then when I was looking, I go, well, that's why, because it doesn't have their, their 2.2 pounds of protein is probably more like one to 1.2 pounds maybe. And then, oh, now that makes sense. That's why they can sell it. So I'm not, I, we don't, we don't do that. So what we're going to do though, is we're gonna take the leucine out and then we're gonna

add protein in. So I believe the macros on the new protein is going to be like maybe 26 grams of protein per scoop, give or take. And we're looking into some 100% grass fed protein from Ireland, actually. And grass fed, one of the reasons why you don't see grass fed in any of our marketing is because it's bullshit. Basically, grass fed is a marketing claim. If you just says grass fed this, that, whatever, it just means that the cows ate grass at one point in their life. It means that on the way into their, you know, prison cell, they munched some grass maybe, or someone threw some grass at them, grass fed, there you go. So that's why we didn't really do that. Cause you know, I couldn't

confirm. I was actually did have it checked out. Like are, are these a hundred percent grass fed cows or we don't know. And basically it was like, yeah, we don't know, but they're definitely, there's very little chance it's a hundred percent grass fed. But this protein that we are checking out from Ireland is 100% grass fed. So basically, if that tastes anything like this other protein, this New Zealand protein, then that's a winner. We want to go in that direction. We want to make a delicious protein that's all natural, great macros, keep it real simple and real clean and real tasty. So that's kind of like our little plan for our whey protein. So let's go to the next question here. The question is, or this is kind of a statement and then probably a question.

So he said, BLS focuses exclusively on the four to six rep range. But if you follow Brad Schoenfeld, I think I'm mispronouncing his name, who I learned from you, his plan cycles between a strength phase like BLS, a metabolic phase like 15 to 20 rep, and a muscle phase, six to eight rep. He insisted this rep cycling. He's had to maximize hypertrophy. Your thoughts? Periodization is great. And actually, if you read my book, Beyond Bigger, Leaner, Stronger, it's a periodized program. It's periodized a little bit differently. What Brad's talking about is a linear periodization where you'd be working in a certain rep range for like four weeks, and then you'd do another rep range maybe for four weeks, and then another rep range for four weeks, and then you'd deload and start over again.

That's one way of doing it. I prefer a different style of periodization, which kind of comes from the Westside Barbell School of Weightlifting, which is a big powerlifting. It's really a whole methodology, and it's a, it's, it's whatever Louie, Louie, what's his name? It's like a Westside barbell is the, is the, is the, uh, mate probably made powerlifting really what it is today. Um, but so in your workouts, you're, you start your workouts with some very heavy lifting. This is also called reverse pyramid training, by the way. So like, this is what I do personally. So my, at the beginning of my workouts, I warm up and I do some very heavy two to three rep stuff. So that's my like

very, very heavy deadlifts, squats and presses basically. And then the middle of my workout, um, is four to six rep, like bigger, leaner, stronger, uh, type work. And it's the same type of exercise as bigger and stronger. It's just there. It's just a bit different in the programming. And then the end of my workout, the last couple of sets are higher rep. I go eight to 10, maybe 10 to 12. Um, I don't do super high rep stuff because I don't really see, uh, I've done a lot in the past and I didn't see, I saw the best, uh, gains overall from actually just emphasizing the four to six rep range, which is why that's what I emphasize in BLS. But now that I have, um, really, I mean, I've gotten the most that I'm going to get out of my body naturally.

I've found that including that very, very heavy and some higher rep stuff definitely has helped me continue to move up in my weights and improve my physique. So I think that periodization is good, but I think it's better suited to advanced weightlifters, people that have at least a year of good weightlifting under their belt that have put on their first 20 pounds. These are numbers for guys, girls will be half that, 20-ish pounds of muscle and built a baseline of strength. So then one, when you're doing your heavy, heavy stuff, you are strong enough and you understand form well enough to not hurt yourself. I don't think it's really safe for people new to weightlifting trying to do like two to three rep, you know, where you're working with 90 to 95% of your one rep max deadlifts, for instance. And then also in my Beyond Bigger Than You're Stronger program, there's a power. There's a week there in the end where you do some one rep stuff.

Same thing with squats and presses. I, you know, I just don't, I don't recommend that for people new to weightlifting. It's also very, it's, it's intimidating and it's, you know, when you're moving that much weight, if you don't know what you're doing, you can, you can get hurt. Um, and then also with the higher rep stuff, higher rep, uh, training, I, I feel, and this is based on, on research and just based on experience as well, working with a lot of people. And then in my own training is that it's, it's better suited to people that have enough strength to move around some decent weight in those rep ranges. So that's one of the problems when you're new to weightlifting

is you're weak and you try to do a lot of this high rep stuff and you can't really move much weight. So you're not going to cause much, uh, there's not much muscle damage and not much progressive overload when you're weak, trying to push, you know, the little baby dumbbells for, for 20 reps. But, you know, give that a year of like good, uh, middle rep range, heavier type of strength building, muscle building training. And then now, you know, what used to be the 20 pound dumbbells, now you're able to rep out 60 or 70 pound dumbbells. Now that starts to matter. Um, so anyways, that that's my take on it. And honestly, with these kinds of things, I think there's a point of like, it's not even a hundred percent relevant to most guys and girls that just want to be muscular, strong, healthy, look good, feel good. Um, you honestly would not even need to know more than what I lay out and

bigger than you're stronger and thinner than you're stronger. And you could just do that. And if you want to see results of it, just go to muscleforlife.com, my website and go on successes. And you can just see, we have hundreds up there now. And so many of those are, that's, that's how people want to look guys. They want to add, you know, guys over the, over their first few years, they generally want to put on 30 or 40 pounds of muscle, be lean, and that's it. They're not trying to become hugely massive or hugely strong or trying to max out, trying to squeeze every last ounce out of their physiques. They're not, they're not interested in competing. Um, and so for people that are,

I mean, obviously then you get into drugs and that's a whole nother world. But of course, I mean, that's where, that's where some of the finer or more complex aspects of training and nutrition come in is when you really want to be, you know, have your body be operating at 98% of its genetic potential. Um, but that's, that's really in my experience, not most people like, you know, yes, they want to continue training for the rest of the, once they really get into it, they see it as a lifestyle and they always want to get better. But, um, there it's just, there's not that much to be gained by, uh, trying to get too granular about, you know, what you're doing when you're training. You have those basic fundamentals, 20% of all the stuff

that you could possibly know is going to give you 80 plus percent of the results anyway. And that's proper, you know, proper diet, proper nutrition, uh, how to, how to manage energy balance, how to, how to balance your macronutrient intake, um, emphasizing the heavy compound lifting, progressive overload. Um, you know, yes, the metabolic fatigue is an aspect as well, but, uh, anyways, I just, you know, some people, I think they get a little bit too much into quibbling over the, the minor details when it's not even relevant to them. All right. So let's take the next question here. How often should you do abs? Simple question. I like to do abs three times a week. I have actually a routine on, on muscle for life.

If you go to muscle for life, just spelled out muscle, F O R life.com. And then you search abs, you'll see it comes up and it's a very simple routine. It doesn't take very long. It involves some weighted abs and then some unweighted stuff. Maybe adds 15 minutes to your workout. And I found that it's very, very helpful in that a lot there's kind of a, it's just like a thing that people will say that you don't need to train abs if you just do your heavy compounds. And I disagree unless you have great ab genetics. If you naturally have a, you know, bulky, nice set of abs that really stand out. Okay, fine. Then yeah, it's true. You don't have to, but majority of guys and girls don't. Um, and one of the reasons why is because

you have that rectus abdominis, you have that front, those front ab muscles are not that heavily engaged by heavy squats, heavy deadlifts, heavy presses. They are engaged, but not nearly as much as the other core muscles. So what's true is you don't need to do anything else for your core, the rest of your core, if you're also lifting heavy compound weights. Like I don't do really anything for my obliques anymore because I don't want them to get bigger. Because the bigger your obliques are, the leaner you have to stay, or it just starts to make you look fat. I mean, you don't want your waist to look wider and wider. Um, so I don't train my obliques directly. I don't train it. And the rest of my core is really just worked out by my heavy compounds, but I do do training still for my, the, the front, the abs, right? The people normally

think of abs. And, uh And there are a handful of exercises that you can do that really engage those muscles well. And it's kind of like calves. If you have calves, then fuck you. No, I'm kidding. If you just have them naturally, I naturally have no calves. I've been, I have had to work so hard just to have anything. But it's like that. If you naturally have calves, then you don't need to train calves. If you don't, if you're like me, like genetically I had zero calves, then you have to train them hard and have trained them a lot. And, uh, you know, just to get him to do anything. Um, so that's the same, same thing with abs. I know guys and girls that naturally always had great abs. All they had to do is get lean and that's it. And then I know people have,

you know, worked with a lot of people that naturally didn't have much in the way of ab development. And it took a good six to eight months of dedicated ab work to really get them to pop. So he says in the book, you recommend taking two to three grams of omega-3 fish oil or omega-3 oils per day. My question is, is it best to take all two to three grams at once or can I take one half with lunch and one half dinner? Either way, that's totally like whatever you want to do. I like to take some after I train actually with my post-workout meal. There's a bit of research that shows that omega-3 fatty acids can increase protein synthesis rates. It's a minor thing.

It probably doesn't make that big of a difference, but hey, who knows? A lot of these little things may make a difference like when you add them all up. A lot of these little things may make a difference when you add them all up. When you're doing six different things that tip the scales a little bit in your favor one way or another over the course of a year, that might be something. So there are a lot of little things like having some protein before you go to bed. It's not to prevent catabolism. You're not going to break down and lose your muscle when you sleep. But there is research that shows that having additional amino acids.

So let's say you eat dinner at 6 and that was your last meal. You go to bed at let's say 11 and you sleep for eight hours, but there's a point there where your body's going to run out of the amino acids. It's going to have absorbed what you ate and then it's done and it can't repair your body any further until it has amino acids again, because those are the raw building blocks, right? So if you have some protein before you go to sleep, then you're just giving your body an additional little infusion of amino acids. And that's why there's some research that has shown, it's very simple that eating some protein before they go to bed, it speeds up muscle recovery. Makes sense. So little things like that. Okay. You do that. You take a vitamin D also has been shown to, uh, improve protein synthesis rates when combined with, large infusion of amino acids, which is what you get when you eat like whey protein, for instance. So I take some vitamin D and some fish

oil in my post-workout meal and I take the rest later at lunch actually. So that's that. Is it possible that I'm making strength gains while the size of my muscles remain the same? Yes, absolutely. Muscles can get stronger without getting bigger. That's because there are neuromuscular adaptations that can occur that that's the result. So if that's the case and you're not losing fat as well, like you, you know, that, cause that can, if you're sure that you're taking measurements and you know, you're not getting bigger, but you're getting stronger, you're not eating enough. It's really that simple. If you just increase your calories, increase your daily calorie intake by a hundred and give that a week and see what happens. Just eat 25 grams more carbs every day. And if

your weight is still in your, your weight is not changing. Obviously if your muscles aren't getting bigger, if your strength is going up and your weight is going up and it just looks like you're not getting bigger in the mirror, don't worry. You are. You're building muscle. If you're gaining a half a pound to a pound a week and you're getting stronger every week, you're doing it right. Don't change anything. But if you're getting stronger and your weight is not going up and you are not seeing any changes or not, whether measured or whatever, then you just need to eat more. And some people need to eat a lot of food to gain muscle regularly. Like some guys, I've, I've, I don't know, I've said this many times, but it's something that just bears repeating. I've, I've worked with quite a few guys that are like 160, 170 pound guys, my height, you know, six foot, six, one, six, two.

So fairly skinny. And they had to finally work their way up to about four to 5,000 calories a day, every day, just to gain anywhere from a half a pound to a pound a week. That's pretty, uh, like that might sound cool, but actually eating that much food every day, I've done it before it, it gets old. There's by the time you're, you can stop, you're actually pretty happy to stop because it's just a lot of food. But that's how some metabolisms and some bodies work. And you don't even need to, you don't need to get into fancy formulations or trying to calculate things. That's the simplest way to do it is if you're getting stronger, but not gaining weight and not gaining size, eat a hundred, a hundred calories more per day. If that doesn't do anything, increase it by another

25 carbs. You can pretty much cap your protein at one gram per pound when you're in a surplus and you can cap your, your fat intake at about 0.3, 0.4 grams per pound. Um, and then you can just raise your carbs up as high as you can tolerate it. Most people, once they get upwards of two to two and a half grams per pound, it be gets to be a bit much. Um, and so then once you've capped that, if you still have to increase calories, you can then go back and start increasing your fats again. And eventually you will get to a point where you will build muscle and you will steadily gain weight. You just have to find that sweet spot for your body. And that's part of the process. All right, here's the next question. Do

you have an estimated date when we can expect a beta for stacked on iOS? Also in regards to stacked, are you making the app compatible with the Apple watch? Uh, yes. So the beta should start this summer. I I'm not sure exactly when my guess is it's going to be probably end of June, some maybe July is when it'll be beta ready. Um, so then I'll gather up a number of people, maybe 50 people and just get people using it and get, you know, feedback and see how it's working. Um, and on the Apple watch, not initially, no, but we are going to be adding that, you know, it's actually like, I should have, um, I kind of jumped into this app thing with like, okay, here's my idea for the app. This shouldn't be that hard to put together. Right. And, uh, the, basically the, the designer that I'm working with, um, just didn't work on it like he was supposed to.

And now it's all – it's a couple months late. Like I really wanted the beta to be done by now. But that was kind of my fault because in the beginning, like he does good work and he's – you're going to see it's a very pretty app and it's very nice. But it's just – he's very slow with, he just doesn't work enough essentially. Um, so, you know, that's kind of my fault. Like he swore that this was going to, he was going to work hard on it and get it done. And I kind of took his word, but you know, I should have known better. So in the future, there's that lesson to be learned. And then also, um, looking back at it, I actually, there are different sections to this app. So there's a whole section for body and planning your body goals and tracking body progress.

There's a section for obviously exercises. There's a section for workouts, building workouts, building workout routines, doing workouts. And then there's a whole section setting workout goals. There's a whole section for reviewing all your progress. It's going to be very customizable, almost like analytics and Google, where it's going to be a dashboard where you can, you're can be able to track all different kinds of stats. Because you are probably interested in, let's say there were three key indicators you wanted to watch your progress on. Let's say you want to watch your body weight, your body fat.

Let's say there's more. Body weight, body fat, and you want to watch your progression on your big lifts like your squat, deadlift, overhead press, and bench press. And so that's what matters to you. So you'll be able to go into this section of the app and quickly you're going to be able to customize that dashboard so you're going to be able to see your progress on those things specifically. Also, you're going to be able to graph things in different ways.

Yeah, linear line graphs are fine, but there are other useful ways to graph data that allows you to better analyze things. Um, so I have all these different, like these are some cool things built into this app, but what I should have done really is I should have just built the workout section first exercises and workout cause they have to work together and gotten that out kind of, uh, the, the lean startup kind of minimal, minimum viable product approach. And then just gotten that out, which I would already had out by now. And then, you know, add the other things that aren't as crucial. But Hey, whatever, I'm, you know, it's, it's going to get done. It's just taking a little bit longer than I wanted. So, and once it's out and running and everything's good, then we'll look at integrating with Apple and doing the Android and version and et cetera.

Did I go to college? And if so, what was my major and how has it helped? If not, explain why and how you came to where you are. No, I didn't go to college. It's kind of funny. So I went to private schools for high school and well, really for all schooling. And here in Florida, you have to get a certain number of credits to graduate. So you have a certain number of hours that you have to study. I don't remember how many hours it was, like 12, 15 hours per credit or something like that. And I never really took summer breaks or spring breaks. I always just studied. I would go do the summer study programs and spring study programs because I don't know, I just liked, that's what I like to do. So that's what I did. And so I, by the time I was like 15

turning 16, I had racked up enough credits to, I could either just graduate, I could get my diploma or I could go on and do some pre-college stuff and decide, you know, I'm going that direction. So I had to decide then like, what do I want to do? And, uh, in talking with my dad, um, who went to college, he majored in something in business and has had a lot of success in business and speaking with different business kind of colleagues of his. Some of these people had gone to Ivy League schools and getting opinions like, should I go to college? And it was nice that I got people like, a lot of people, that's the standard thing.

Of course you go to college. No, not even a question. But that's not how my dad is and that's not how the people I spoke with are. And I guess I was also speaking with the right people because I was speaking with entrepreneurs that had built their own companies and, uh, made a lot of money. And so they didn't, you know, they don't really care what the normal thing it is and what they don't care. That's what people think that's what you're supposed to do. Um, so what they, what they basically had told me was, um, that I like, what do I want to do? Where do I see myself

going in my life? Is there a specific vocation that I want to take up? Do I want to go, do I want to study medicine? Do I want to study law? Do I want to be an engineer? Do I want to, you know, do anything like that? And, uh, nah, I didn't think so. I didn't really like none of that really, you know, I like studying, but as a, I didn't feel like that I had any passion for any of that. And I didn't really know. I just knew that I was going to end up doing my own thing, uh, as an entrepreneur, have my own type of business of some kind. And for that, basically one for one, they told me then there's no reason to go to college. They said, you know, I said, yeah, you can go major in marketing or something, I guess, but like you could also just learn it, just reading the right books and just doing it.

You could do that as well. So that's kind of where, what it boiled down to is like, either I was going to try to get into an Ivy League school and play that game and try to climb the corporate ladder and kind of have a meal ticket. That's what you have. So if I would have went and got an MBA from some Ivy League school, I would have had a meal ticket to make a couple hundred thousand dollars a year doing something. But that just didn't really appeal to me, and I wasn't interested in going off and just partying and kind of wasting time. So instead what I did is I started working. I worked in one of my dad's companies. I worked in a different company that he was invested in.

I worked in different companies of people that he knew just to get exposed to different types of work in different industries and find what did I like doing. And along the way, I found writing. I mean, I always liked reading and studying. So it was kind of just like, I wonder if I'd like writing. So my initial interest in writing was fiction, actually, and it's still still actually a strong interest of mine. And something that I'm working on. I don't have much time to do it. But I just want to make sure that this is using the right audio. Sorry, one second. Sorry, one second.

I just want to make sure it's using... Yeah, okay, cool, it is. I don't know if it is. I can't check. Anyways, sorry about that. So, I... I don't know if it is. I can't check. Anyways, sorry about that. So I found writing, and still actually working on a fiction project, so I don't have much time to give it. But then along the way, I eventually found my way into something through my dad, building employee training programs for mainly healthcare professionals, like dentists and doctors and physical therapists and stuff. So I was writing a lot of how to kind of technical stuff. And I enjoyed the, I enjoyed the, the research, research aspect aspect of it and the

kind of breaking it all down and making it understandable for, for people. And, um, you know, so that's, that's kind of like the long story short. I mean, I was also, you know, in my early twenties, I did a bit of traveling. My wife's from Germany, so I would go to Europe a lot and we'd go around and have fun. So it was there was a bit of like I was trying different things and then I would go and travel and have fun and try different things until I finally found something where I was like, OK, this is worth dedicating myself to. And and then eventually that led to me writing Bigger Than You're Stronger. And and that then led me to writing more books and Muscle for Life and, you know, Legion. And now I just keep on finding more and more things to get into basically. So let's see, next question. When guys come in the gym or when guys in the

gym come up to you and start telling you stuff that you know is bro science, how do you correct them without making them mad? Or is that possible? Fortunately, I go early in the morning and it's just a handful of people and they don't really, they don't, they don't, they kind of, they'll ask me for advice, but they don't really try to tell me. If they do, it's kind of like, hey, I got right. I heard that eating carbs after 3 p.m. makes you fat.

Is that true? I'm just like, no. And they're like, okay. So, but in general, God, I mean, it's been so long since I've had that. Um, you know, honestly, maybe it's just my personality. Um, I would just personally, I'd probably just tell them like, not, not be confrontational, but just be like, yeah, not really. I mean, and then explain, you know, especially if you know what you're talking about, if it's something like that, and then you could just say, no, you know, eating carbs at any

time doesn't make you fat. Overeating makes you fat. You know, this is just a matter of energy balance and, you know, calories in calories out macronutrient balance, where do you get those calories from? End of story. Meal timing doesn't matter. But I'm also not one to argue with people about things like that don't really matter. I mean, I can be pretty argumentative if I care. But if someone is not going to listen to what I say, I don't care. They can believe whatever they want. Like, I don't really try to correct people in the gym. I don't only if like someone's going to hurt themselves. Like just recently, just yesterday, there was a guy deadlifting and he had maybe 315 on the bar or something and terrible form. I mean, his back was like this from the bottom. And, and I, I did say something. I was just like, Hey, just so you know, like you, you're, you're going to hurt yourself eventually. Like you, you, you don't really don't want to be rounding your, your spine like that. You want to kind of neutral back. And then he actually was receptive to it. He doesn't know that I'm like any, he doesn't know I do anything like this for a living. He just was, I guess, receptive to what I had to say.

So, you know, I don't know if someone's bothering you, you can't just say like, look, let's just agree to disagree. You can do your thing. I'm going to do my thing. And, you know, I just, I don't like in general, when people try to push their, uh, opinions and attitudes too much, like it's fine to just have discussions and have healthy debate, but some people get really pushy about, they want you to think about things their way. Fuck that. That's fucking stupid. And I don't really have much patience for that personally. Um, next question, how much will forge cost and will it be available on Amazon? Forge is going to be, um, actually I don't, I don't, we were playing with our pricing. Cause

like I said, we're going to be, we're going to be doing more bundles. What we're going to be doing. A lot of people, Legionnaires, I'm gonna start using that cause I think it's cool, uh, have been asking for bundles, bundles and you know, and with a good reason, like, Hey, I want to buy, I'm already buying the stuff. So can I like buy it in packages and pay less money? And, uh, so the answer is yes, that's what we're going to be doing. We're creating some different bundles. We also have more products to do it. Now we felt kind of stupid. Like if we only had three or four products to be like one bundle, I guess that was kind of the quad pack, like, uh, you want everything. Okay. But now we have some more products and we have, we're kind of getting creative in how we can package it to meet people's specific needs so they can save some money and get

free shipping. So, um, I believe the price is going to be somewhere around 33 to $35 and it will be discounted based on bundles and such, but that'd be like a single bottle price. Um, and it's going to be also like Phoenix is going up a couple of dollars in a single bottle, but we're going to be offering discounts because again, we have to, as we kind of like looking at all the, the, the business model, we want to be putting more and more money back into customer experience. So, uh, free shipping, free upgrades, free gifts. We have some pretty cool ideas. I think you're really going to like.

And, um, so we're, we're going to be, uh, you know, playing with things to get it all in the right place, but that's, uh, that's going to be the price somewhere around $30, give or take probably a few dollars more. Yes. It's going to be on Amazon. Um, so, you know, you'll be able to get your prime, but then, like I said, now we're going to start offering free shipping as well. So that's going to be pretty cool. And then we're going to be doing our own subscription service as well, which we're going to, you know, offer obviously discount to participate in that. So the, anyways, these are all things that we'll start. We'll, they'll be rolling out over the next few months. So just, it always takes more time than, you know, you want to do anything when it comes,

when it involves like developers, coding, website, internet stuff, it always is slow. So next question, what's your favorite app to track macros? Also, do you measure your meats or grains raw or cooked? Good questions. I get asked that both of those fairly, fairly frequently. So my favorite app for tracking would be MyFitnessPal, although there probably are better, like MyFitnessPal is very bloated and this is a whole section of stacked. Like the first whole phase of stacked is just going to be for weightlifting. And then we're going to add in some cardio stuff. And then we're going to add in a whole diet thing. And that's going to be a big project, a big undertaking.

But, uh, I have just as many complaints about diet tracking apps as I do workout tracking apps. Well, maybe not just as many, because at least, at least the diet ones are useful, but they're very cluttered and I think not very intuitive. Um, but my fitness pal works and I'm, there probably are some other ones that are out there that are simpler, especially if you're just tracking macros, it's really not that complicated. Um, however, my fitness pal, you can set custom macros on their website and, um, just stick with it. And it's pretty simple. I like to weigh everything, uh, generally like to weigh, uh, raw because I'm making one meal at a time. Uh, these days, at least like I'm doing, I do a lot

of one pot stuff these days, but if I were meal prepping, like if I was making a bunch of food, then it, some people like to do measure cooked because if you're gonna make a big vat of rice, for instance, it's a bit easier just on the spot to know, okay, one cup of cooked rice, bam, done. As opposed to, because one cup of cooked rice turns into, sorry, one cup of raw rice turns into a lot of rice. That's a ton of rice, right? So if you're gonna be weighing your rice raw and then cooking it, then when it comes time to eat it, you're gonna have to remember like, oh, wait a minute. Like, okay. So this was, this was three cups raw. It made that much rice or however much. So I got to, I got to portion that out now. That's a, that's a bit annoying. So if you're doing meal prep, big amounts of food, I recommend that you weigh your individual meals

cooked. Um, but if you are doing just, you know, you're going to, you're going to cook up some meat, you're going to cook up some vegetables and cook up some rice one meal. Then I like to make, I like to weigh raw because it's just easier, more accurate because the weights don't fluctuate with moisture and such. Next question. How do you feel about the Hodge twins? Would you reach out to them at all or consider having them on your podcast? You know, I don't really know much about them to be honest. I've just heard about, of course I've seen some of their videos. I don't know how, I don't really know much about them to be honest I've just heard about of course I've seen some of their videos um I don't know how I don't know really I don't know if they're just there to be entertaining or if they're actually like offering valuable information to be honest I'm sure there's some some value in their channel right I mean they have a lot of followers but uh

in terms of having on the podcast maybe if there's something I just, I try to keep the podcast. Like my goal with the podcast is really just to be very educational. I'm not a big fan of podcasts in general because I find that there's just too much babble and it's like an hour long. And I feel like I didn't even get anything out of that. Like I maybe, you know, listen to someone make some funny jokes and it was like, huh, I guess that person person's interesting or, you know, listen to someone make some funny jokes and it was like, huh, I guess that person person's interesting or, you know, good for that person. And they made a bunch of money. Okay, cool. But I didn't take anything away. Like, what am I going to do with that? Like, you know, the only podcasts I like are podcasts where I come away with at least a couple ideas,

different ways of thinking of things or things I can do. Like, and that's just kind of how I am. So, uh, with my podcast, that's why I try to just keep it pretty educational. Even with the Q&A type stuff, I want to keep it practical. I'm not really interested in talking about myself, talking about my life, talking about my story. Of course, people need to know some of that to even know why they should care what I have to say. But really, I try to just let my information speak for itself and just be practical. So every podcast you can walk away with, let's say three, like you learn three new things that are actually relevant to your life. And you know, if you're wanting to get fit, that matters now, like good.

So you have three new tools. You just learned about reverse dieting. You just learned about, you know, stubborn fat and you just learned about how to lose weight quickly. Like we're talking about earlier, right? So if you have, if you have to lose as much weight, you have to look as good as possible in two weeks. Those are useful things. Um, so, you know, I, I'd have to check them out further to know if it really would make any sense. Next question. Have you heard of the vegan raw till four diet fruits

until four and then cook potatoes, rice, et cetera. After four, if so, what are your thoughts? until four and then cook potatoes, rice, et cetera. After four, if so, what are your thoughts? Yeah, that sounds dumb. Like it sounds like a good way to just get people to trick people into like eating their fruits and vegetables. So if that's what it takes for you, I guess then you could do that. Or you could just make a meal plan and or eat like a, you know, eat. If you eat two or three servings of fruit and vegetables a day, you're good. And you should be doing that. There's no question. Research shows that people that do that, that eat more fruits and vegetables than the average person,

and that's where the government bases their recommendations on. I don't remember their exact recommendations. I want to say it's like three-ish servings of both fruit and vegetables a day. You're going to live longer, and there's a much lower chance that you're going to, or at least a significantly lower chance that you're going to get various diseases and die. So, you know, do that. Um, does that mean that you need to follow some kind of trendy till whatever diet? I don't think so. Um, but if you like it, then do it. And that's really the kind of the story of a lot of diets, keto, just low carb, you know, uh, vegan, vegetarian, uh, intermittent fasting, just traditional dieting. If you like it, do it. But the, the real health benefits that

you're going to get, and this is going to be an article, I'm going to be writing an article. It's going to be long, um, on just the whole subject of healthy diets, because there's just so much misinformation out there about what is, there is no ultimate diet for humans. The human species, and I'll be talking about this in the post, and you just look even going back thousands of years,

we've survived in all kinds of different diets and our bodies can adapt very well. But the goal isn't to just survive. The goal is to thrive. And for that, there are no like, there's not one diet that you're going to thrive on and everything else is bad. However, there are some good guidelines that are going to help you find or help you create a diet that you can thrive on. So, um, and, and, and those guidelines kind of preclude certain types of diets and certain types of food choices.

For instance, if your diet contains a lot of fried food, bad idea. Eat some fried food now and then. Who cares? It's not going to kill you. But if you're eating a bunch of fried food or something obvious like that, that's bad. You are impairing your health and it's going to catch up with you one day. However, if you're just eating a sensible diet, the majority of your calories are coming from relatively unprocessed foods, high nutrition value foods, whole grains, legumes, fruits,

vegetables, seeds. There are so many different foods that you can eat. High quality proteins, majority of calories coming from that. And then you're getting some, you know, spend, spending some junk, some calories on junk every day. Who cares? Um, the majority of those of the benefits though, when we look at the bigger picture, that's one aspect of being healthy, much more important though. And I'm going to be talking about this in this article and there's research to back this up is exercise. Regular exercise has even been shown to counter act nutrition, uh, nutrient deficiencies, poor dieting, essentially, not that you can just like get away with whatever you want eating as long as you exercise, but exercise is the key to health. If you do not exercise your body regularly,

I don't care how you eat. You are going, your health is going to decline much more rapidly than somebody who exercises regularly, especially somebody who does some resistance training as well. And especially, especially as you get older, when your body tends to lose more and more muscle sarcopenia, um, which is like the more muscle, the less lean mass you have, the higher chance that you're going to get some sort of disease and die, uh, as you get older. And it sounds morbid and whatever, it's true. So preserving muscle mass and preserving strength helps preserve the immune system. It preserves your body. It preserves your ability to move and stay healthy. So if you're exercising regularly, you're not smoking, you're not drinking alcohol, right? You're not an alcoholic. You can have some

now and then of course, but you know, on that point of alcohol, it's kind of interesting because there's a lot of normal, like the normal thing with alcohol is that, oh, moderate intake is healthy for you. And, uh, Jeremy and I were talking about this. He had listened to a podcast with, um, I believe it was like the head researcher from life extension, which life, you're not familiar with life extension, huge, huge billion plus dollar company that they sell products, which they actually, I like a lot of their products they they're high quality products they're more for medical community type products not really like for people that work out necessarily I mean you can buy them but there they have that's really they make

their products for doctors really and then they produce you know magazines they do a lot of research but they have a board of like I don't even know a hundred doctors and PhDs and so this guy was the lead researcher, just a genius, basically. Some of the stuff he's saying, he's like, what did you even just say? I don't even know what you just said. However, he's talking about alcohol, right? And he's basically saying that, you know, he's looked into it. He's done a lot of research in alcohol.

And he has not found any research that in his mind justifies the general belief that regular alcohol intake is good for you. He said that, you know, a lot of the research that is used to support such claims is either misconstrued, poorly designed, poorly executed, or mistaking correlation as causation. And, you know, and this guy, he's not just speaking from, Oh, he's read some abstracts. Like this is a dude who has studied thousands of scientific papers. Um, really, really, uh, uh, somebody in another league and understand what he understands and in the physiology of the body and the, just the, the, both the, the breadth and the depth of his

understanding. Uh, I was like, Whoa, this guy is like next level. Um, but basically long story short, as he was saying, look, you want to know, he said, alcohol is a poison. Your body can either deal with it well, or it can't. He doesn't believe that there's any good evidence to support that it's healthy for you. So if you have to drink it, okay. But if you want to know if it's going to cause a problem, don't drink any alcohol for two months and then introduce it in your. But if you want to know if it's going to cause a problem, don't drink any alcohol for two months and then introduce it in your diet. Uh, and you know, obviously you're not going to get trash, but start drinking it, uh, you know, in, in the way that you normally would moderately for, for health reasons and see how you feel. If you feel worse, you should stop

drinking it. Your body cannot deal with it. Well, it's not going to benefit your health. Um, end of story. If you feel all right, it doesn't mean that it's actually benefiting your health. It just means that your body's able to detox, able to detox it well. Um, so I know it's kind of like a random, you know, tangent, but anyways, my point is part of being healthy is not being an alcoholic. That's very, very unhealthy. No question. Alcoholic be like, if you're drinking alcohol every day, uh, especially a significant amount of alcohol every day, it's bad for your health and not smoking. Smoking is terrible for your health.

One of the worst habits you can set in being sedentary and smoking probably the two worst habits that are going to guarantee that you're going to have health issues one day. So when back coming all back around to the diet point, my point is, yes, you should, uh, you can eat, you can, you can do fine on all kinds of diets, but don't think that you can get a work, get around exercising and not smoking and not drinking a bunch of alcohol. Those are the real pillars of health. And then when you add diet into that, then you really, it's the whole picture. Um course, if you are doing those things, exercising regularly, not drinking alcohol and not smoking, but if your diet is terrible, of course you're going to have problems, but

you can get away with quite a bit more when you exercise. So I'll move on to kind of like, that was a long one. All right. So next question on the point of eating a lot of food carbs and trying to get bigger. This is where I'm at. And I completely agree on eating so much gets old. Would you say getting or making your own mass gainer shake would come in handy thoughts on mass gainers when getting tired of eating so much? This is a, this is a good one. I'm glad Jeremy picked this because there are a lot of guys out there in the same position. And even actually some girls that I've

spoken with that are just naturally very lean and you know, they've, they, they want to build some muscle and strength and they have trouble. Um, so the long story short is there's also even a, there's a fiber issue too. When you have to eat 4,000 calories a day, you really don't want to be having a hundred grams of fiber. You're just going to have, you know, your stomach's gonna be upset. You're going to be gassy, bloaty. You're just going to not feel good. You know, you want to kind of keep your fiber. What's the general recommend? I think for a 2000 calorie diet, it comes out to like 30 grams a day, 40 grams a day, something like that. Um, so in that case, how do you eat a bunch of calories, uh, without getting a bunch of fiber and without just feeling like you're literally

stuffing your face all day. So one is of course, sticking to calorie dense foods. and without just feeling like you're literally stuffing your face all day. So one is, of course, sticking to calorie-dense foods. In terms of carbs, that's stuff like whole grain pasta, super calorie-dense. Certain fruits are actually like dried fruits, like raisins are extremely calorie-dense. Even grains, brown rice or white rice, pretty calorie-dense and easy to eat. I like seeds like quinoa, pretty calorie-dense. What you don't want to be doing is you do want to be having your vegetables and your fruit, but you really want to just be

eating enough of that, a few servings a day, maybe four or five total of each. Because if you're eating too much fruit or vegetables, when you're bulking, you need a lot of calories, it actually becomes a problem because you're getting, you're full, but you're not getting much satiety from, or you're getting too much satiety from your food. It's the opposite of cutting. So, um, you know, a lot of people, actually, what guys will do is they'll add in fruit juice. Um, and you know, if you don't want a bunch of added sugar, which I understand, I personally, you know, I'm not afraid of sugar. I know sugar is not bad per se, but there is a point where like, you know, if you're having a hundred grams of sucrose a day, that's not good for you.

Um, a hundred grams of natural sugars, like in fruit and other things, that's fine. But I'm talking about a hundred grams of table sugar a day is, is probably not good for you. Um, so fruit juice though, you have the natural sugars. You can buy, you know, fruit juice that has no added sugar, or you can just juice your own. Um, some people also like to, what they do is, uh, they'll, they'll juice like some fruit and put vegetables in there to get their vegetables. And so you have like a nice, you can make a, and then you can put oil in there as well. So you can make like a nice high calorie. That's kind of like a weight gainer,

right? You put protein powder. Um, so high calorie, like I, you know, whatever you like, if you like, um, something that's really, really good, his coconut meat, if you buy coconuts and cut them open and take the meat out, you know, I'll tell you a funny story. So my, my father-in-law introduced me to this, making these coconut drinks. I'd come over sometimes when he's, he travels around a lot, but when he was in town, he'd be make these coconut drinks and they were so good. And I was like, Oh my God. So you take the meat of a coconut in the blender with the, with the coconut water, blend it up with ice. And it was delicious. Maybe a little bit of a vanilla extract as well. And I was like, holy shit, this is good. And so I started making them myself at home and, um, I would do two coconuts to scrape all the meat out with the, the water and the milk and the coconut and the ice

and the vanilla. And, uh, after like, you know, a few days of doing it, I was like, hmm, I drink that shit, and I'm not hungry for like six hours, that's probably not a good sign, I wonder what's the calorie, it's like, it's just coconut meat, how bad is it, it's fucking 150 grams of fat per coconut, one like medium size coconut meat was 100, I was drinking 300 grams of fat every day, so I was wondering, I was like, how am I, why am I getting like, I'm gaining fat quickly right now. What the fuck is going on? Um, so it's super delicious though. So if you keep that in mind, if you took, if you, you know, you could do 30 grams of fat from coconut meat and you could do some, uh, banana, you could do some orange juice in there. You could do some vegetables, some green vegetables, some kale,

some stuff that, you know, spinach and blend it all up. And you can make like an easy, you know, put some protein powder, thousand calorie drink that, um, yeah, it's going to fill you up for a bit, but it's liquid. And, uh, or you can just drink straight juice. Like I know guys and I understand we're like, they're eating a ton of nutritious food and they just go, I need another a hundred carbs or 50 carbs for the day. And I simply cannot bring myself to eat any more food. I'm just going to drink two, three cups of orange juice and be done with it. Totally understand. There's nothing wrong

with that. Um, so, and then there's just like dealing with it, just getting used to eating a lot. I know like I haven't bulked in a while because I don't really feel a need to, but the last time I was bulking, that's how I felt by the end of it. I mean, I had, I was ending my days with, uh, is my camera going to refocus here? Camera. Yeah, there we go. I was ending my days with like a massive bowl of spaghetti with meat sauce. And I was just like, I would just, I couldn't just didn't want to eat anymore. I was so happy to cut and just be able to, you know, I ended at about 4,000 calories a day and I started cutting it like 3,000 calories a day, just cut a thousand calories out just, and it felt so much better right away. Um, so I hope that helps with, you know, getting more food in, uh, what body fat

percentage test method does BLS refer to and cutting down to the recommended 10 to 12% to start bulking up again. Um, I'm going to link an article on this. Uh, well link it, I guess, probably in the, when we post this to, to, um, to YouTube, uh, if you go, go on muscle for life.com and search for percentage, I think that should come up or search for body fat, two words. And you'll see, I like to use a caliper. Um, it's a one point test, which ironically I found is actually more accurate. I've tried multiple, multiple, multiple, uh, multiple multi-point test, which ironically I've found is actually more accurate. I've tried multiple, multiple, multiple, multiple multi-point testing methods. Bio, like the, you know, bioimpedance or bio, yeah, impedance, yeah, impedance would be it. Those machines can be very inaccurate.

It depends on when you ate, depends on when you worked out, depends on hydration, you know, where you're like you're holding handles or anything that is passing electrical current through you is very likely to just be wrong. So you can forget about scales and the things that you hold in the gym. And then, of course, there's stuff like DEXA, super accurate. DEXA is an x-ray scan. So that if you have access to a DEXA machine, then, you know, you're going to know with 100% accuracy really where you're at. Hydrostatic testing is very accurate. Bod pod can be accurate. Although I've, I've heard from people to get really weird readings from bod pods, like way wrong, like by the picture, that guy is clearly 10 or 11%, but the bod pod reads at 20%. No, impossible. Like if it read maybe 13%, okay. Maybe, you know, who knows, but you know, not double. So that's the

body fat point. So the question, how long is it safe to be in a calorie deficit for? Is it still to get your target body fat percentage? Um, generally speaking, uh, I don't like to go much below my BMR on intake. That's really when I stop. And that's when I recommend people stop. Um, if you search for going muscle for life and search for not losing weight, three words, not losing weight. And you'll see an article I wrote that, uh, kind of lays this out for you, um, on how you juggle moving more and eating less to, to get as lean as you can before you have to stop. And you have to then reverse diet, which if you go on muscle for life and you search for reverse diet, two words, you'll find an article on that as well. Um, and, and then you speed your metabolism back up and then you can do it again.

But you don't want to get into this. You don't want to start eating, you know, 80, 70, 60% of BMR, basal metabolic rate, which is like the base amount of calories your body burns while at rest. Because then you start getting into starvation type stuff where you're just not going to feel good. You're going to start losing more and more muscle. That's one of the big mistakes people make when they try to lose weight is they get impatient. They just cut their calories drastically and, uh, they, it messes up body comp and it just makes you feel terrible. So, um, some in terms of how long until that, you know, occurs, uh, it depends. Some metabolisms are very resilient.

Some people, they don't really need to reduce calories much, and it's very easy. Some people need to reduce calories more, and it's not so easy. But that is something that you just – that's, again, a point of learning your body. You do – it's just you have to learn your body. You do, it's just, you have to learn your body. Cool. Okay. Let's take the next question here. When you recommend doing HIIT, high intensity interval training, I lift five days a week at night and four HIIT session a week in the morning. Is this ideal? Yeah, I wouldn't do more than that. I personally can't do more than that. Actually. Like that's where I draw the line. I draw the line when I'm cutting. There's no point to do so much hit. Uh, you know, if, uh, you're not cutting, but if you're cutting, unless you just like it, but if you're cutting, um, that's where I, I found that I can't do more. That's the maximum amount of exercise I can do

before. I just, I just don't feel good. It brings me down, uh, or I just get into a bit of an overtraining type of thing. So five weightlifting sessions per week, about an hour each, and then four hit cardio sessions a week, no more than 30 minutes each, usually closer to 25. And that's it. That's all you need. You're gonna burn a lot of energy. And, uh, as long as you on point with your diet, I do like using certain supplements because it speeds up the process. It's not necessary, of course, but my philosophy when it comes to cutting is let's get it over with as quickly as possible without being stupid. Let's get out of the deficit as soon as we can.

Let's hit our goal, get out of a deficit, and get back to having good workouts and eating more food and being happy. Next question. In two months, I went from 104 kilograms to 97 kilograms. That's great. Following your custom meal plan. I haven't been able to keep following the plan because I feel tired, hungry, and with a low sex drive. Should I add more calories? Yeah. Um, yeah, that's that go search muscle for life.com, uh, reverse diet search for that. And that is probably what it is time to do again., this is a good example. So two months go by, person's in a calorie deficit, they lose a bunch of weight.

You know, that's seven kilograms, that's a lot of weight. And some people's bodies, their metabolism, they just keep on rolling and they keep on going. But I've even found myself at about the 10 to 12 week mark of being in a calorie deficit is just where my body, I can feel it's just like, please, can we, can we have a break, please? Um, and my workouts just aren't that great. And again, it's lower sex drive, it's lower energy. And fortunately you're not, you haven't damaged your metabolism. That's bullshit. It's just slowed down and your, you know, your hormone levels are not, you know, optimum when you're in a calorie deficit. So you can just reverse diet your calories back up and bring everything back into the range. Bring your hormones back up.

You're going to feel better. Your workout's going to be better. It's a break from the psychological aspect of dieting. And then you go back into deficit and do it again. It's really that simple. Next question. Uh, any chain, Mike, any chance of you creating the super multivitamin that you wanted to initially create, but it was too expensive or any chance of creating a fish oil product or probiotic never know which select and trust your word a hundred percent. Thanks Mike. Um, on the super multivitamin, honestly, no, because, um, the, I think the initial cost was shit. It was like 40 to $50 a bottle or something, my cost. So what am I supposed to do?

Like even if it's 100% margin, a standard type of retail markup, that's an $80 to $100 multivitamin. I don't know anybody that's really going to pay that. And so it would just be a disservice really. Kind of people would be like $100 multivitamin, what is this? Like is this real life? But I do have a solution. The solution is some of the molecules that I wanted to include in the multivitamin, like sesame and there are a few others. I I'm, I'm, I'm spreading them out

into other products. So like the sesame, I'm looking at putting it in a fish oil because there's actually, there's some synergism as well between omega-3 fatty acids and sesame. There's a, so that would be cool. And it'd be unique. Again, as I mentioned earlier, I'm not sure if I'll be able to do that because it's very expensive, but I would like to, I'm looking into it. That's my goal. And there are some other, you know, some other cool ingredients. Berberine is one we wanted in Triumph, but we ran out of space basically. So what we're going to do what at least like tentatively the plan is to create berberine as berberine as a standalone product. We're going to see if we can work out, work in something else cool to make it, you know, more than just berberine. I'm not sure if there's

anything else that really makes sense to go into it. But then what we can do is we can sell berberine in combination with some other like recovery type things, uh, where you'd be like, let's say this was a stack, a recovery stack. So you'd have like protein, whey protein for obvious reasons, recharge for obvious reasons, obvious reasons, triumph, obvious reasons, plus berberine now is a standalone thing. Um, because berberine is an awesome molecule and has a lot of great benefits. Uh, so those are some ideas that we have to kind of like, I just have these lists of molecules where I'm like, I want to do something with these, but you know how, so that's kind of what we're looking at. Um, next question. How do you feel about Lane Norton, Matt Ogis's, uh, fat slash Matt Ogis's

fat routines? Um, yeah, I've actually, I've spoken to a lot of people that have done those routines and, um, basically like I, you know, I like, I like lane. I was, I've had on the podcast. I've spoken to him about other things, whatever. Cool guy. Nice guy. Um, his program that was super intense. It's not for new weightlifters.

It's for advanced weightlifters. It's for, in my opinion, bodybuilders, like people that are really, really serious about their training. And I've spoken with a lot of guys that have tried to run it and they end up over-trained and they end up like run down. Like they, they just, there's no question. It's not just them being a bitch. It's not just them going, Oh, these are hard workouts. Like, no, they're not sleeping well anymore. They have no sex drive. Their appetite is getting, you know, going down the tubes. Um, and that's in a calorie surplus. Like these are guys that know what they're doing.

the tubes. Um, and that's in a calorie surplus. Like these are guys that know what they're doing. So it's not that you can't run that program fat, but, uh, it's not for everybody. And in my experience, chances are you're, it's going to beat the shit out of you, give it two months and you are going to be destroyed. So, um, people that can run it for long periods of time, you know, genetics or other things that I'm not gonna talk about or no. So, um, you know, I don't know. It's, uh, it's, it's just a very, very intense program that is not for everybody. And, um, you know, if Lane were here, I'm sure you'd agree with that. Uh, I think, I think it's, it makes perfect sense that in, in terms of the layout, I like it, but, um, it's just not for, not for everybody. Uh, so how did you go about starting a supplement company, the business process, not a reasoning behind starting the company? Um,

well, I mean, I don't, I don't know how much I can really can go into that question. I don't want to like bore everybody with logistics of how do you start a supplement company? Um, you can imagine, I mean, you have to create your formulations. You have to do a bunch of research and you have to find that manufacturers and you, you only, there are a lot of things that you need to keep in mind with manufacturers that cause, you know, even if you don't want to screw customers, manufacturers can screw you. You can think you're getting what you want or what you paid for and you're not getting it. Like I was saying earlier, you know, you could be, you could say, Hey, I want to put beta alanine in, uh, my pre-workout. I want to put, I want to put five grams. I want to do it right. And then little, do you know that beta alanine is garbage, you know, cause it was

gotten from some disreputable source in China or something. Um, and then there's the marketing. So, I mean, honestly, okay, here's, here's the real answer, uh, for, for supplements. If you're thinking about starting a supplement company, my recommendation is don't. I mean, unless you have hundreds of thousands of dollars to put into it in the beginning, because that's what it takes, and unless you have a real solid handle on the science and on the research and you know how to make good products, and unless you have a real platform to be able to sell them and that people are going to listen to you. Um, and unless you have experience building and running a business and unless you're a very, very good marketer, like there's a lot of things that, uh,

you know, I, cause I see these companies that come along and they try to blatantly knock off what I'm doing, like straight up straight up, almost the same formulations. Almost copy-paste status on my copy that I write. Like they're trying to just do what I'm doing, period, without even being creative about it. And they're completely failing. They're getting nowhere. Because this is not an easy industry. Like some people I think they see, especially people that have seen how I've kind of come up.

Me and my people, my guys and my team. And it seems like it's so easy and it seems like it came so easy to us. And that's not really true. You know, there's a lot of stuff that goes on behind the scenes, a lot of work that goes on behind the scenes. And we are very, very good at what we do. And we work with people behind the scenes that are very good. Like some of the biggest internet markers out there period are help us personally. Cause they like us and you know, some, we pay some, we don't have to pay, but, uh, don't think it's easy money. If you don't get into it because you think it's easy money, cause it's not, and you're going to end up losing a lot of money and it's not going to go anywhere. So I don't know into it because you think it's easy money, because it's not, and you're going to end up losing a lot of money, and it's not going to go anywhere.

So I don't know. I'm sorry if that's demotivating, but I just want to be honest about it. Okay, so let's do – should we do one more, Jeremy? One more? Yeah, I'll just take this last one. Funny. Maybe one more after this last one. All right.

So what's the inspiration for the poster on the windowsill? Oh, that's a Bucky Fuller quote. There's something I kind of like. Let's see. That's loud. Uh, so it's a quote from Buck, Mr. Fuller. He never changed things by fighting the existing reality to change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete. Just a quote of mine, a quote of his that I really like. And I actually had this like made. I forget. I found a digital artist and they made this just because I wanted it as a cool poster. And, you know, it's just that just resonates with me personally.

it's just a, that just resonates with me personally and something that I, you know, I, I think I, I've, I've kind of exhibited just in, in my work and what we do at muscle for life and how we've kind of go gone about things and really gone out of our way to be helpful and focus on just, yeah, being helpful and not asking for tons of money for everything. And just kind of like knowing that if we can really help people and, uh, that they're going to talk and that's eventually it's going to come back and we're going to be able to be in business. We have to make money. Of course, it's not all about making money, but without money, I can't be here doing this. So, you know, I just, I like that, that frame of mind where instead of just sitting there on the sidelines, criticizing things that, you know, say what's wrong with this, what's wrong with that, get in there and do something, show that there's another way to do it

instead of just saying, oh, that's all stupid over there or pointing out what other people are doing that are bad. Um, so that's kind of the story of that. Um, all right. So the last question here, what's the least amount of protein grams per pound of lean mass that you can take to prevent muscle loss during a deficit? I wouldn't go lower than one gram per pound of lean mass that you can take to prevent muscle loss during a deficit. I wouldn't go lower than one gram per pound of lean mass. Um, personally though, I wouldn't go lower than one gram per pound, unless you're very overweight, in which case one gram per pound of lean mass is fine because research shows that as you get leaner, you need more muscle. You need more protein to preserve the muscle that you have. So when I'm cutting, um, like I, you know, I'm probably going to start cutting in the next few weeks, just kind of for fun. I mean, I'm

already pretty lean. I'm maybe 8%, but you know, whatever, it gives me something to do, I guess. Right. Um, get really lean again, maybe do some pictures or something. Um, but, uh, I, I'm going to be eating about 1.2 grams of protein per pound just because, and it's based on some research and I've written about it. If you just search for protein on muscle for life, you'll, you'll find some articles. Um, there's the satiety of it and there is the muscle preservation effects of it. Uh, and there's also like the thermic effect of food. It's just a good macronutrient. You don't have to go crazy with your protein intake, but, uh, it's not, you know, as a

general rule, I kind of tell people just try not to eat less than 0.8 grams per pound of body weight or one gram per pound of lean mass. Um, but you know, if you go with the 0.8 per pound of body weight, one gram per pound of lean mass. Um, but you know, if you go with the 0.8 per pound of body weight, it's just simpler to calculate. Um, and, but again, I recommend higher. I recommend really actually one gram per pound. And if you're lean, if you're a guy around 10, 11, 12%, you want to get real lean, set that to 1.2 grams per pound. If you're a girl around 20%, one, you go below same thing. Um, and, uh, yeah, so that's it. All right. That is everything for tonight. I hope you enjoyed the, uh, the live Q and a, we're going to keep on doing these. Sorry for the last minute, uh, you know, uh, notice on it,

but, uh, we will, you know, maybe we did send an email yesterday, I guess, but, uh, it's good. We had a lot of people come out and I'm glad to get the questions. We'll be posting this up on YouTube. Um, I think actually it will, it'll make a good podcast as well. Um, so, you know, if, uh, if you're just kind of getting here and you missed it or you missed half of it or whatever, you'll be able to watch it on the Ustream. You'll be able to watch it on YouTube. It's going to be on the podcast. So yeah, thanks. And come next time and bring your questions, whatever it is. Like if it's business questions, marketing questions, nutrition, diet, or training, whatever. I don't care. I'll answer anything. Personal questions, doesn't matter. So yeah, thanks again. And I'm excited.

We're going to have everything back in stock in the next month or so. And we have new products in the pipeline. Like, you know, we have this joint product, we have sleep product, we have a greens product, we have a fish oil that we're working on. Um, and, and five pound protein, some new way, this whole new style away and stuff. So a lot of cool stuff coming. Um, so thanks for being patient. I am sorry. The out of stock thing is no one's more annoyed than Jeremy and me. That's for sure. So, um, you know, but we are, like I said, we do have some things in place now where we should be able to prevent this in the future. And if it does happen, it's not going to be for this long.

All right. Hope you have a great night and, uh, I'll see you on the email and blog comments and everywhere else. Okay.