Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Q&A: Diet Soda, Specialization Routines, Thoughts on 5:2 Diet, Carb Tolerance, and More

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hello and welcome into Muscle for Life. I am Mike Matthews. Thank you for joining me today for another Q&A episode where I answer some questions that people asked me over on Instagram. If you want to ask me questions, then follow me over on Instagram at Muscle for Life Fitness and every week or every other week. I have quite a few of these already saved up for future episodes, so I don't always post a new one every week, but usually every week or two on Wednesday or Thursday, I put up a story asking for people to give me questions. And then I go through all of the questions that get submitted and I pick ones that are being asked often or that are very topical or that are just interesting to me. And usually I'm looking for questions that I haven't answered a million times before.

Starting point is 00:00:52 And I answer them briefly there on Instagram and then come over here on the podcast and give more detailed answers because I can only put so much into an Instagram story. All right, so in this episode, I am answering questions like, what's the best type of cardio if you only have 10 minutes? Is drinking diet soda okay in moderation? What do I think of the 5-2 intermittent fasting diet? Can you train with heavy weights while you are also preparing for a long distance run? And several more. And again, if you want me to at least review your questions,

Starting point is 00:01:33 I can't promise that I will answer all or any of them depending on what they are. Follow me on Instagram at muscle for life fitness and pay attention to my stories. Okay, the first question comes from CAA1997. Thoughts on OnlyFans, good or bad? Oh, it's great. I mean, is there a bigger hallmark of an enlightened culture than depraved women degrading themselves for money from porn addicted simps. If there is one, I don't know it. Charlie O. Mac Isaac, Charlie O. Mac Isaac. Okay. He asks diet soda. Okay. In moderation, or is it cancer water? It's definitely not cancer water. Totally fine. Basically all of the alarming claims about the supposed dangers of diet soda and artificial sweeteners are false or very, very overblown. That said, I would not recommend drinking a bunch of diet soda or just having a lot of artificial sweeteners every day forever.

Starting point is 00:02:36 Because one claim that is panning out in research is that these chemicals may not be great for our gut health. research is that these chemicals may not be great for our gut health. And our gut health impacts many aspects of our overall health, performance and well being. And so if we want to maintain an optimally healthy gut, and we do, we probably don't want to be having call it 6, 8, 10 plus servings of artificial sweeteners every day forever. And many people in the fitness world do that because they take supplements. So they're taking, let's say, three or four scoops of protein powder every day that's artificially sweetened. And then they have some pre-workout, they have some post-workout, both of those artificially sweetened. Maybe you toss in a green supplement, maybe BCAAs as well. That's even more. Let's now add an energy drink

Starting point is 00:03:24 on top of that and a diet soda or two. You're now up there. That's even more. Let's now add an energy drink on top of that and a diet soda or two. You're now up there. That is many servings of artificial sweeteners every day. And that probably also will include artificial food dyes, which again, are not as problematic as some people would have you believe. But I personally try to stay away from them. I guess my diet just doesn't really contain things with them. But I personally, let's put it this way, I would not be okay with and I would not personally have the 68 to 10 plus servings of artificial food dyes every day in addition to the sweeteners. a couple of the reasons why I went with 100% natural ingredients for my sports nutrition company Legion. And I started Legion eight years ago now. And at that time, there was some evidence that artificial sweeteners may not be good for gut health. If I remember correctly, though, at the time, it was only in rodents. And I made the call just because I was betting on that

Starting point is 00:04:23 research panning out in humans. And I was thinking with my own health too. I mean, I wanted to use my own products and I didn't personally feel comfortable having all of those chemicals every day. And I, that I also wouldn't personally feel comfortable selling those products to other people and telling them to do it. And so I decided to go all natural, even though it costs a lot more. To give you an example, it costs a lot more even today with Legion, basically much larger now than it was in its first year, second year, third year. It still costs me anywhere from three to five dollars a bottle for my powders to use 100% natural sweeteners and natural flavoring and natural coloring, which is just derived from like fruits or other foods. And if I were to use artificial ingredients, I could bring that down to probably 50 to 75 cents, certainly no more than a

Starting point is 00:05:10 dollar. So think about protein powder, think about pre-workout. So this year Legion will sell, I don't know the number right off the top of my head. I'm going to say six or 700,000 bottles, say five to 700,000 bottles of protein and pre-workout. And maybe you need to include post-workout to get there, but let's just go with protein and pre-workout. And if I were to save two or $3 per bottle, that's cost of goods savings. That means that money goes straight from the top line to the bottom line. And I don't have any partners in Legion. And so that's just profit that I have to pay taxes on and I could just take. So there's a real cost to me personally in using natural ingredients, but I stand by it. I think it was the good move,

Starting point is 00:05:58 the smart move. And I think now it's a even better move, But let's move on. Duke Duke 07 asks, are some people more carb tolerant than others? Yes, absolutely. Some people do respond better to carbs than others. And that doesn't mean body comp, though. There's very little evidence that one person who, quote unquote, responds better to carbs is going to gain less fat from eating carbs, for example. But certainly can enjoy how much you enjoy your diet, which is going to like gain less fat from eating carbs, for example, but certainly can enjoy how much you enjoy your diet, which is going to affect your compliance and that can affect your body comp.

Starting point is 00:06:30 And so, for example, some people find that if they eat more than a certain amount of carbohydrate in one meal, they get bloated and tired. They just don't feel good. They don't ever get a pump when they eat a bunch of carbs. Whereas other people, and I'm one of those people, I have a high sensitivity to carbohydrate in a good way. And I know that from some DNA testing that I did some time ago. And it's just in line with my experience. I can eat a large amount of carbs in one sitting and feel good. I get a little bit sweaty, even like I get a pump and I get no gassiness. I get no bloating, no lethargy. And I might be eating 100, 150, even 200 grams of carbs in one meal. Again, other people, they would try to eat that much carbohydrate and it might put them

Starting point is 00:07:14 to sleep. And the same is true for total carbohydrate intake for a day. Some people find, I can think of some people over the years I've heard from, what they find is if they exceed 200, 300, 400 grams of carbs per day, they get the same type of problem, the same type of reactions to a very high carbohydrate meal. Their digestion gets messed up. They're bloated all the time. They don't have as much energy as they should have for all the carbs that they're eating. They're not getting the carbohydrate pumps and they're not seeing that effect in their workouts that you should see if you're going from, let's say, 200 grams of carbs per day to 400 grams per day. And so that's just

Starting point is 00:07:58 something to be aware of. There is a point where we just can't stomach eating more carbs. there is a point where we just can't stomach eating more carbs. Elliekemptnbpt asks, do you foam roll? No, mostly because research shows that the way most people do it doesn't probably do much. It maybe can reduce Dom's muscle soreness, post-workout muscle soreness a little bit, but it seems to be mostly a waste of time. I guess a caveat to that is if you have trigger points and you have like a knobby foam roller, or if you have a flat foam roller and you can get to a trigger point and you can work on those trigger points that can help tremendously. And trigger

Starting point is 00:08:36 points are little points of pain that refer, usually it's like hypersensitivity in an area. And usually that pain refers to another area. So if you were to press on it, maybe the trigger point is in one of the muscles on your back and you press on it and then you're now feeling it down into your biceps tendon, for example. And if you can work those and desensitize them, it can sometimes produce strangely almost, it seems like miraculous results. Like, you know, you're not able to bench press without some pain in your shoulder. You've tried so many things to address the shoulder and it just doesn't go away. And then there's a trigger point in your back and you have a massage therapist and they work that out or you know of it and you work it out with like a lacrosse ball or something. And then you can bench press with no pain. And so long as you keep that

Starting point is 00:09:23 trigger point desensitized, so long as you don't allow it to develop again, you simply don't have the problem anymore. So a foam roller can help if you can get to some of those points, but it doesn't work usually as well as like a lacrosse ball or a spiky ball. Okay, next question. It's just beige asks, how is the calf training going? Noticing any improvement? Yeah, absolutely. So what I'm doing for my calves, if you don't know, is I'm training them every day. I'm in the gym four days a week right now. And I'm doing four sets every day. I'm in the gym. So 16 hard sets per week. I am working in a variety of rep ranges. I'm doing some of those sets in the four to six rep range, some of them in the six to eight, and then some of them in the 10 to 12. And I have gained quite a bit of strength in my calves. I've been doing that for a couple of months now. So I've gained quite a bit of strength in my calves. Like I'm, I think I started, if I remember on the standing calf press machine, I believe I started probably 220, let's say for 10. I think that's more or less correct. And now I think my last was 290 for six or seven. So getting up there, getting up there

Starting point is 00:10:36 in strength. And I've also noticed an increase in size, of course. And there is a good little rule of thumb here. If a muscle group of yours is not growing despite good programming and good eating, do what I'm doing. Do three to four sets, four to five days per week. So do a total of 15 to 20 hard sets per week for that major muscle group. recognize soreness, train the muscle group every day. If that doesn't really work for you, try to break those sets up into at least three sessions. Try not to be doing 10 plus hard sets for any individual major muscle group in one workout and use double progression. So make sure you're getting stronger. Don't just fall into the routine of doing the same exercises, same weights, same reps. As you are getting stronger, make sure you are adding weight. A double progression works really well. For example, once you hit a top of a rep range

Starting point is 00:11:30 for one, two, or three sets, usually is how it works, you increase weight. And if you do that, and if you stay patient, that muscle group will grow. And that's really how specialization routines work, which I'm gonna be producing some more content on. I should be able to get into it in this next year, is specialization routines work, which I'm going to be producing some more content on. I should be

Starting point is 00:11:45 able to get into it in this next year is specialization routines. So you need a routine to get bigger arms. Okay, here is a three month routine or a four month routine specifically focusing on arms. Now we're not going to neglect anything, but we are going to train everything else a little bit less so we can get 15 to 20 hard sets, direct sets for biceps and triceps, for example. Actually, I probably wouldn't do 20 direct. I probably would go for like 15 direct training for the biceps and triceps. And then the remaining five probably would come from pushing and pulling. But anyways, next question, Jason Remmer asks, what investments do you think

Starting point is 00:12:25 will have the greatest return in this continued recession? Well, this is an area that I'm pretty ignorant in because it's just not relevant to my circumstances right now. My primary investment is Legion. Most of my net worth is in that business. And I am working toward bringing in a strategic partner, which will allow me to take some money out of the business. And then am working toward bringing in a strategic partner, which will allow me to take some money out of the business. And then I will have to look more into investing. How do I diversify this money now that I've taken it out of the business? But over the last several years, I have invested in stocks, just simple ETFs, I forget the name of them, VTI and VXUS. I've put a fair amount of money on those, just total US and total global markets, just trying to go for simple, steady growth, which obviously has been upended, but that's okay.

Starting point is 00:13:27 deals. I don't know much about it, but I know a rich guy who knows a lot about it, who is friends with another rich guy who does it. And so I'm just kind of riding their coattails just because the first rich guy is also a longtime friend of my dad's and I trust him. The guy just makes money. That's what he does. He knows how to make money. So it was just an easy way for me to make money on something that I could only give a cursory explanation of. I couldn't really get into the mechanics of how that business, like, what do you look for when you are wanting to buy a mobile home park? Yeah, I could give you some high level bullet points, but I couldn't break down the whole process. I don't really know it that well, but I've bought some gold and silver over the years. Not that that's so much of an investment as just kind of wealth preservation and disaster planning. If things got so bad, at least I have something there. If I needed to like trade my little junk silver coins for money, I've bought some crypto, mostly Bitcoin bought back in 27 or 2018, put some money into it. And even with all the volatility of the last couple of years,

Starting point is 00:14:25 I'm still up on that, but that's just a long term. I'm just holding it forever to see what happens. I don't really care about even the return so much. I look at that as gambling personally. And in the short term, you know, I, I am looking to just invest more in my businesses right now. That's where most of my money has gone over the last 10 years, back into my businesses, my publishing business and my sports nutrition business, because that's where I got the best returns. No other investments were going to produce the returns that I could get in my businesses. And I have control over my businesses. At least I have a lot more control over my businesses than many other types of investments. Also, how would you like a free meal planning tool that figures out your calories, your macros, even your micros, and then allows you to create 100% custom meal plans for cutting, lean gaining, or maintaining in under five minutes. Well, all you got to do is go to buylegion.com slash meal plan,

Starting point is 00:15:28 B-U-Y legion.com slash meal plan and download the tool. And if I may say, this tool really is fantastic. My team and I spent over six months on this thing, working with an Excel wizard and inferior versions of this are often sold for $50, $60, even $100. Or you have to download an app and pay every month or sign up for a weight loss service and pay every month $10, $20, $40, $50, even $60 a month for what is essentially in this free tool. So if you are struggling to improve your body composition, if you are struggling to improve your body composition, if you are struggling to lose fat or gain muscle, the right meal plan can change everything.

Starting point is 00:16:13 Dieting can go from feeling like running in the sand in a sandstorm to riding a bike on a breezy day down a hill. So again, if you want my free meal planning tool, go to buylegion.com slash meal plan, buylegion.com slash meal plan, enter your email address, and you will get instant access. Next question, Caleb Few asks, what's the best alternative to squats? I know they're the best leg exercise, but I hate doing them. Plenty of alternatives. You don't have to squat to have a great lower body, strong, muscular. You can do lunges. You can do the leg press.

Starting point is 00:16:48 You can do the split squat. You can do the hack squat machine. You can do the pendulum squat machine if your gym has one. That is a deceptively difficult exercise. I like the pendulum squat a lot. Next question is from Mariana22S. She asks, I'm assuming it is a lot. Next question is from Mariana22S. She asks, I'm assuming it is a girl. She asks, what is your opinion on biohacking? It's basically all bullshit. That's the unfortunate reality

Starting point is 00:17:14 because the absolute best biohacks that they aren't telling you about, well, they're things like getting good sleep and eating a lot of nutritious food and doing strength training and deloading in your strength training and not just running yourself into the ground and not drinking alcohol and not using recreational drugs and not looking at porn and reading books and managing stress levels. And I think you get the point. Megan Nomadic Fitness asks, do you always track macros or do you sometimes eat more intuitively? I generally eat more intuitively. I only track or measure if I'm cutting. And I just want to make sure that I'm not suffering from portion distortion where my idea of a certain amount of like rice or vegetables or whatever has just expanded because that's unfortunately what always happens is we we almost always are eating more than we think we are eating and so i will track or count or plan at least in the beginning when i'm cutting just to get everything dialed in to kind of calibrate my expectations portion sizes and so forth i think

Starting point is 00:18:22 it's also smart to do that every so often even even if you're not cutting. So if you've been eating intuitively for some time, and let's say you've been noticing a slow and steady fat gain that you're not liking, and you want to see what's going on, audit your food intake by tracking or planning or counting your calories or macros for a couple of weeks. And you will probably find that, again, you are eating more than you think you are eating. It could be that the tablespoon of peanut butter is not really a tablespoon because the tablespoon that is 100 calories weighs, let's say, 18 grams. I'm not sure that's accurate. It's probably close, though. And your tablespoon, though, is like 30 grams. Okay, so that explains something. And then

Starting point is 00:19:05 the oatmeal that you're eating, you're thinking it's about a cup of oatmeal, but that cup of oatmeal is supposed to weigh, now I'm not sure what a cup of oatmeal is supposed to weigh. Let's just say it's 40 or 50 grams, but your cup is weighing like 70 grams. Okay. Because it's a heaping cup. So those quote unquote hidden calories all add up. And it's hard to catch that stuff unless you occasionally audit your intake. So for what I do, though, generally is I kind of the same stuff every day, I eat stuff I like until I no longer I'm looking forward to it. That for me is the point when I start to make changes. When it's time to make my salad, I'm going to do that actually after I'm done here. And I really am not looking forward to it.

Starting point is 00:19:46 I'm not getting any salivary response. And it's feeling just like a chore, like I just have to eat this. Then I will make a change. And in the case of a salad, I've been eating a salad every day for a long time. And I just make changes to the ingredients. Sometimes, you know, I recently started adding some goat cheese. That was a nice addition. Maybe some like little crunched up chips. That was a nice addition. Different kind of vegetables you can throw in there, especially if they're cooked, that can make it

Starting point is 00:20:11 different enough to prickle the pleasure processors. You can make various changes in the dressing that often is enough where the salad itself doesn't really change, but you start using different dressings, making different dressings. And so I just do that basically with all meals. And then my portions don't really change because my meal templates are not changing. It's just some of the ingredients that go into each meal change. Miss Cape asks, if you only have 10 minutes after lifting for cardio two or three times a week, would you do HIIT or LISS? So HIIT, high intensity interval or on an upright bike or a incumbent bike if it didn't have an air bike. If that wasn't an option, I'd look for a rowing machine, basically something that is no impact.

Starting point is 00:21:13 And if the only option were a treadmill, then I would probably run sprints on the treadmill. But I'd have to pay attention to my recovery because sprints is certainly on concrete. They, and I'm speaking, I can remember in my twenties, there was a time when I would go out and I'd run sprints for probably 15 to 20 minutes outside on concrete. And I was in my twenties. So I was as physically invincible as I ever was going to be. And I had to stop actually, because my hips, particularly my hip flexors, they would get so sore that it was actually getting in the way of my squatting and deadlifting. And it also sprinting on concrete puts a lot of stress on your joints. And although I didn't notice anything in that way when I was younger, I probably would notice that now. I'd notice a

Starting point is 00:22:00 little bit in my knees, they would not feel as good. Like they'd probably be a bit sore in my squatting. And so I would avoid that. And if you don't even have a treadmill, which is going to be less impact, then you can run on grass. That is better than running on the concrete. You can also run up a hill, like a grassy hill. Obviously, it can't be too steep, but that's even better in that you can get the intensity with less speed, which means less force, less impact. Okay, Practical Self Dev asks, thoughts about a 5-2 diet optimized for fat loss, more protein? 5-2 is totally fine, which,

Starting point is 00:22:39 so you know, this is basically where you eat the way that you normally eat five days a week, and then you eat a lot less two days a week. Sometimes it's pure fasting. I don't think those protocols generally recommend 48 hours of fasting. So those two days are not back to back. It'd be a 24 hour fast twice a week. Other five, two iterations allow you to eat 600 to 800 calories two days per week. And that's the one I would choose, by the way, out of the two.

Starting point is 00:23:05 I would only eat protein, basically. And that is a viable way to lose weight. You eat as you normally do five days a week and then two days a week. Don't have to be back to back up to you whenever just two days a week, you are only eating, let's call it 150 ish grams of protein. Obviously there's going to be like trace amounts of fat, maybe trace amounts of carbs. If you want to throw in some vegetables, you don't want to exceed 800 to 1,000 calories. So a lot of protein, maybe a piece of fruit, maybe a little bit of vegetables, maybe, but that's it, two days a week. That can work quite well. So long as you don't accidentally eat more on the five days to compensate for the two days. You should know though that that's an effective way to slowly lose weight. You're not going to lose fat rapidly with that approach

Starting point is 00:23:53 just because the weekly calorie deficit that's required to lose even a pound of fat per week is about 3,500, maybe even about 4,000 calories. And chances are, unless you're a big dude or a very active woman, you are not going to be in a call it 1,500 to 2,000 calorie deficit on those two days. It's going to be, it's going to be a smaller deficit. It's going to be a thousand, maybe 1,500, maybe at most, you know, 17, 1800 calorie deficit. But that means that you can lose anywhere from probably one third to two thirds, maybe a pound of fat per week using that five to approach. So Sakeeb one asks, are there any differences in health between high carb slash fat diets when in a deficit? Well, I would argue that high fat, low carb loses on one and possibly two important points. The first is cortisol levels

Starting point is 00:24:46 are generally higher when carbs are low and high cortisol makes cutting harder. It makes life harder. And then two high fat, low carb cutting can result in poor nutrition depending on food choices because of how little fruit and vegetables can fit into your diet. If you only have 50 grams of carbs per day, you are simply not going to be able to eat a few servings of fruit and four or five, six servings of vegetables every day. You're just not going to be able to do it. When calories are restricted, it's even easier to develop nutritional insufficiencies. It would take a lot of calorie restriction to develop full-blown deficiencies, but it's easier to develop nutritional deficiencies when calories are restricted because you're eating less food. Sychandra246 asks, is it okay to train heavy weights while

Starting point is 00:25:36 preparing for long distance runs? Yes, yes it is, but you are going to have to manage your volume properly. And by volume, let's just say hard sets, sets taken close to muscular failure, strength training here. And the reason that is important is the volume of your hard sets is really what drains us. That's really what causes systemic fatigue. That's what makes training most difficult to recover from, not the load per se. Many people get that mixed up. They think that it's the heavy weights that are the hardest to recover from, not the lighter weights, but more sets. So like, for example, many people would think that three sets of five with, let's say, you

Starting point is 00:26:24 know, one or two good reps left, so pretty close to muscular failure on the back squat, they would say the three sets of five is harder to recover from than, let's say, four, five, six sets of eight or 10 or maybe even 12 reps. Now, an experienced weightlifter wouldn't say that because anybody who has done that, anybody who has done six sets of 10 on the barbell squat close to failure knows that that is so much harder, so much harder in every way, physically and psychologically and emotionally than the three sets of five. Now, the three sets of five is harder on the joints. That's true. So people with joint issues or who just want to

Starting point is 00:27:02 reduce joint stress for a period will reduce the load and they will just increase the reps per set and they'll find that their joints feel better, but they are putting a lot more stress on their body as a whole, joints excluded. The amount of systemic stress is much higher with the additional sets, even if it's lighter weight. Okay, last question comes from Sam J. Smith, 25, and he asks, who is the best world leader to have lived in history? Well, that I've read enough about to have an opinion on, I would say number one is probably Caesar Augustus. Number two would be William the Conqueror. Number three, Cyrus the Great.

Starting point is 00:27:47 Number four, George Washington. Number five, Julius Caesar. And number six, Alexander the Great. Even though he was a terrible administrator, but his military exploits are legendary, obviously. And he's just one of my favorite characters in history. So I got to put him on the list. Well, I hope you liked this episode. I hope you found it helpful. And if you did subscribe to the show, because it makes sure that you don't miss new episodes. And it also

Starting point is 00:28:16 helps me because it increases the rankings of the show a little bit, which of course then makes it a little bit more easily found by other people who may like it just as much as you. And if you didn't like something about this episode or about the show in general, or if you have ideas or suggestions or just feedback to share, shoot me an email, mike at muscleforlife.com, muscleforlife.com, and let me know what I could do better or just what your thoughts are about maybe what you'd like to see me do in the future. I read everything myself. I'm always looking for new ideas and constructive feedback. So thanks again for listening to this episode and I hope to hear from you soon.

Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Q&A: Diet Soda, Specialization Routines, Thoughts on 5:2 Diet, Carb Tolerance, and More

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