Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Q&A: Monthly Fat Loss Targets, Sleep and Muscle Building, Adjusting Meal Plans for Fat Loss, and More . . .

Episode Date: March 8, 2019

I’ve churned through over 100,000 emails, social media comments and messages, and blog comments in the last 6 years. And that means I’ve fielded a ton of questions. As you can imagine, some questi...ons pop up more often than others, and I thought it might be helpful to take a little time every month to choose a few and record and share my answers. So, in this round, I answer the following five questions: 1. What do you do when resting between sets in the gym? 2. Can I still gain muscle and strength while training for long-distance running and, if so, how should I set up my training? 3. How much fat can you lose in the first 30 days of a cut if you’re doing everything right? 4. Do you need to adjust your meal plan while losing fat, or can you stick to the same plan from start to finish? 5. How many hours of sleep should you get to maximize muscle growth? If you have a question you’d like me to answer, leave a comment below or if you want a faster response, send an email to mike@muscleforlife.com. Recommended reading for this episode: https://www.muscleforlife.com/how-long-to-rest-between-sets/ https://www.muscleforlife.com/cardio-or-weights-first/ https://www.muscleforlife.com/cardio-workouts/ https://www.muscleforlife.com/not-losing-weight/ https://www.muscleforlife.com/how-to-sleep-better/ 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/

Transcript
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Starting point is 00:00:00 Hello, hello. I am Michael Matthews and this is the Muscle for Life podcast. Welcome, welcome. This episode is a Q&A. So I have churned through well over 100,000 emails, social media comments, and messages, and blog comments in the last six to seven years. And that means that I have fielded a ton of questions. And as you can imagine, some of them pop up than others. And so I thought it would be helpful to take a little time every month and choose a few and then record and share my answers for everyone to enjoy. So in this round, I answer five questions. One, what do you do when resting between sets in the gym? Two, can I still gain muscle and strength while training for long distance running? And if so, how should I set up my training? Three,
Starting point is 00:00:58 how much fat can you lose in the first 30 days of a cut if you are doing everything right? Four, do you need to adjust your meal plan while losing fat or can you just stick to the same plan from start to finish? And five, how many hours of sleep should you get to maximize muscle growth? And so those are the questions. Now, if you have a question that you would like me to answer, feel free to shoot me an email at mikeatmus muscleforlife.com or shoot me a DM on Instagram or drop it into the comments of one of my articles. And I will get back to you. I will give you the answer. But if it is something that many other people are also asking, I may just choose it for the next Q&A. This is where I would normally plug a sponsor to pay the bills, but I'm not big on promoting
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Starting point is 00:03:47 Let's get to the show. Hey, Mike Matthews here from Us For Life and Legion Athletics. Welcome to another video podcast. And this one is a Q&A. So that means that I have chosen some questions that people have asked me via email and Instagram DM mostly, and I'm going to answer them here on the podcast. Now, of course, I have tried to choose questions that I think everybody can benefit from, or at least many other people would find interesting. And so let's get to the first one, which is what do you do during the three minute rest period between sets? Now, if you are wondering why three minutes of rest in between sets, and here we're
Starting point is 00:04:34 talking about resistance training sets and particularly hard sets, working sets, heavy muscle building sets. And the reason for three minutes is that's generally a sweet spot for getting fully ready for your next heavy set that allows your heart rate to come down. It allows your breathing to normalize. It allows your muscles to recover from the hard set that you just did. And it allows you to give maximum effort on your next hard set, which is really what we are going for in our resistance training workouts. Specifically, what I like to do personally, and this is based on research, this is based on what is in the scientific literature, and also having a lot of experience myself training and having worked with a lot of people over the years is on my four to six rep or heavier
Starting point is 00:05:28 work. So sometimes I do some two to three rep stuff as well. I am usually resting about three minutes, sometimes a bit longer, depending on how I'm feeling in between each hard set. And if I'm doing some higher rep stuff, six to eight rep, eight to 10, or even 10 to 12, And if I'm doing some higher rep stuff, 6 to 8 rep, 8 to 10, or even 10 to 12, I'll rest somewhere closer to 2 minutes or 2 and a half minutes because I find those sets are a bit easier to recover from and what else I have to say on the matter, Google muscle for life, how long to rest, and you will find an article that I wrote on it. So then to the question of what to do during those two, three, four minute rest periods in between your hard sets, what you don't want to do is do some more exercise. You don't want to be doing cardio or doing some higher rep, maybe pump work for another muscle group. If you are doing, let's say some hard
Starting point is 00:06:34 sets of squats or deadlifts or overhead presses or any, any exercise that you really need to progress on, you want to rest. You want your heart rate to come down. You want your breathing to normalize. You want to feel like you are recuperating and gathering the physical and even mental energy to really hit that next hard set of squats or deadlifts or whatever it is that you're doing. And remember, our goal in our resistance training workouts is to get stronger. It's to get in our volume, to have high quality workouts, high quality sets, high quality reps, but ultimately it's to get stronger. And that requires a lot of exertion. It requires a lot of effort to gain those extra reps, which in time turn into extra weight. And if you are spending your rest periods
Starting point is 00:07:22 between your sets doing cardio or doing things that are otherwise physically demanding, it is going to slow down your progress on your weightlifting, on your progression, on those exercises. And so what I do personally these days is usually I'm just talking to the guy that I work out with, a friend of mine, or if there's someone else in the gym who's a friend of mine or someone that I know from the gym who I just like to talk to and he happens to be around me, then sometimes I'll be talking in between sets. I do keep an eye on my rest though to make sure that those rest periods don't stretch out to five, six, seven minutes because that gets just counterproductive. If however, the guy that I
Starting point is 00:08:05 work out with, if he is busy doing his set or sometimes our training gets out of sync. So I might be squatting on a day that he's bench pressing. So we're just kind of in different areas of the gym for most of our workouts. I will work on my German. So I'm learning German and specifically I'm using a flashcard system and SRS spaced repetition system, SRS flashcard system. I might've gotten the acronym wrong for learning vocabulary. So building my vocabulary, learning German words and learning how the grammar works, learning the rules. And so I'll just go through flashcards. And by the end of a workout, it could be 20 or 30 minutes or so of flashcards, is good progress and i've been doing that for some time now and
Starting point is 00:08:49 it's a good way to multitask so to speak or what are the trendy productivity people say layering your tasks right or layering your work so that's that's what i do these days in the past when i was not doing flashcards i I would just read. I would pull up my Kindle app. So I'd just sit down. Let's say I'm benching, do my set, rack the weight, sit up and just sit on the bench and then pull up my Kindle app on my phone and just read. And yeah, it's a little bit annoying because I'm only reading for two or three minutes.
Starting point is 00:09:20 You're not really getting into the flow. You're not getting into the process and then go back and do your next set. But that way I did get through probably an average of maybe an additional 20 pages per day when I was doing it that way. And that was some time ago when I didn't have anybody to work out with and I wasn't learning German. So I didn't have any flashcards or anything else to do. What I avoid though is getting into email, getting into social media, especially DMs where I can take time to respond to people because I don't want to get my attention too much out of what I'm doing in the moment. Instead, I want to remain focused on my workout. I don't want to
Starting point is 00:10:04 get into a response that's going to take five minutes to write out on my phone and have that then stretch my rest periods out too long or just feel kind of annoyed because I'm half done responding. Then I'm doing my set and jumping back. So I usually leave any sort of work-related thing or anything that might get me more involved mentally, I leave that for outside of the gym. I don't do that in between sets. Hey, quickly, before we carry on, if you are liking my podcast, would you please help spread the word about it? Because no amount of marketing or advertising gimmicks can match the power of word of mouth. So if you are enjoying this episode and you think of someone else who might enjoy it as well, please do tell them about it. It really helps me. And if you are going to post about it on
Starting point is 00:10:57 social media, definitely tag me so I can say thank you. You can find me on Instagram at Muscle for Life Fitness, Twitter at Muscle for Life, and Facebook at Muscle for Life Fitness. All right, the next question, can I still make gains if I enjoy long distance running? What's the best way to structure long distance running around my workout routine? So the answer is yes, you absolutely can still progress in your resistance training when you are also doing long distance running. However, you absolutely can still progress in your resistance training when you are also doing long distance running. However, you should know that there is an interference effect. It has been demonstrated in multiple studies. It is really an established fact at this point
Starting point is 00:11:35 that the adaptations that occur in your body really at a cellular level when you do cardio are very different than the ones that occur when you lift weights or train your muscles with resistance training. And so the more cardio you do in general, the less you're going to progress in your resistance training. You should know that. It doesn't mean you can't make progress, but there is that interference effect. And then there's also just the fact of general fatigue. The more cardio you do in general, the more generally fatigued your body is going to be, which means the less energy you're going to have to give to your resistance training workouts. effect. So one is limit your cardio to as much as you need to do. Try to do as little as possible, basically. That's the first thing. The second thing is it's best if you do your cardio workouts separate to your resistance training workouts and that you separate those workouts by,
Starting point is 00:12:43 I would say at least four to five, maybe six hours. Better would be even longer. Really the best would be on different days altogether. So let's say you lifted weights three to four times per week and you ran, let's say two to three days per week, or did your cardio two to three days per week, ideally those would be on the other days. So maybe it's like four days of weightlifting and then you have two days off weightlifting where you do your cardio and then you have one rest day on the seventh day. That would be a good setup. Now, if you can't do that for whatever reason, if you can't separate your cardio and weightlifting or resistance training workouts by at least several hours, do your cardio after your
Starting point is 00:13:22 resistance training. That is going to make for better progress in your resistance training workouts. Now, if you want to learn more about that in particular and why, Google muscle for life, cardio or weights first, and you should find an article that I wrote on it along with a podcast embedded in the article. So you could listen to the podcast or read the article. Another tip is avoid running if you can. If you love running or you have to run, that's fine. But if you are not married to running, do something else. Biking and rowing are probably your best choices because research shows the interference effect is smaller, probably because they mimic weightlifting movements. but swimming is another better than
Starting point is 00:14:07 running choice and the best choice of all would be walking so if you want to do cardio just for the purposes of burning more energy and reaping the health benefits because it does probably give some cardiovascular benefits that we don't necessarily get from weightlifting even though we know weightlifting is good for our heart health, it is probably smart to include a little bit of cardiovascular work in our general routines. And if that's why you're doing it, just walk instead of anything else. That's going to have the least interference effect. And if you walk enough, you can still burn a fair amount of energy. And if you want to learn more about that specifically, Google muscle for life, easiest cardio, and you'll find an article I wrote on the easiest type of cardio you can do, which is walking and why it is actually pretty beneficial.
Starting point is 00:14:56 Okay. The next question, how much fat can you lose in the first 30 days of a cut? If you are doing everything right, uh, I. eating in a moderately aggressive calorie deficit, training fasted with yohim bean twice a day, taking phoenix, etc. Good question. And this one depends on where you are at more than anything else. So to keep it simple, if you have a lot of fat to lose, so if you're a guy, let's say over 20% body fat or a girl over 30% body fat, I would say two to three pounds of fat loss per week for the first little bit, maybe the first couple of weeks is achievable for most people. And then it slows down from there. And it's probably possible to lose a bit more than that per week, at least for the
Starting point is 00:15:45 first little bit, the first few weeks, if you are very, very overweight, obese, and are maintaining a very large calorie deficit. But I would have to actually look in the literature to find some good examples of that. I feel very comfortable saying that for the average person who's quite overweight, who has a lot of fat to lose, two to three pounds of fat loss per week, at least for the first several weeks, is achievable. Now, if you are starting out a bit leaner, if you're a guy at 15%, let's say, or you're a girl at 25%, you just got to bring that down a bit, somewhere between one and two, I would say skewed more toward two pounds of fat loss per week, at least for the first little bit, is reasonable. That's a reasonable target to shoot for. And if you are starting out lean, wanting to get very lean, so if you're a guy at, let's say,
Starting point is 00:16:37 10% or a girl at 20% and now you're going for the shredded look, then something closer to about one pound of fat loss per week is going to be more realistic and it is going to go down from there. Now, remember, I'm talking about fat loss here, not weight loss. You can lose more weight in the beginning, especially when you first start cutting, because for most people, this means eating a lot less carbohydrate, which results in the body flushing out water, flushing out glycogen. So you can see some pretty rapid weight loss in the beginning. You might be able to lose, let's say you're a guy at 10%. You might lose two or three pounds in your first week of cutting, but you didn't lose two or three pounds of fat. Okay. The next question, do I have to keep adjusting my meal
Starting point is 00:17:22 plan when I'm losing my body fat or do I keep it the same until I reach my goal? It's a good question. And the answer is really simple. Don't fix it if it ain't broken, right? So when you start your cut, you have estimated your total daily energy expenditure, at least your average TDEE, and you have worked out a calorie deficit that's probably somewhere around 20 or 25%. You've worked out your macros, you get going, things are rolling along nicely. You are weighing yourself every day, taking average every seven to 10 days. You are also measuring your waist at least a few times a week to keep an eye on that as well. And the weight, the average body weight and the waist measurements are going down.
Starting point is 00:18:08 Okay, great. Don't change anything until you get stuck. If your average body weight and your waist measurement has not changed in a couple weeks, you are now stuck. And there are a number of different reasons why this can occur. But at bottom, what is going on here is you are no longer in a large enough calorie deficit to continue losing fat. And so there are a number of things you need to look into. And there are a number of strategies you can use to get the needle moving again.
Starting point is 00:18:39 And I don't want this video to turn into a marathon. So I'm going to defer to an article I wrote. So if you want to learn more about that, just Google muscle for life, not losing weight, and you will find a long thorough article that I wrote on what to do when you are no longer losing weight. And I also just like to add that it is perfectly normal to get stuck when you are no longer losing weight. And I also just like to add that it is perfectly normal to get stuck when you are cutting for any period of time. If you're just doing like a mini cut, so let's say you've been lean bulking for a while and it's been three or four months and you just want to drop a little bit of body fat. So you figure you'll go into a deficit for three, four weeks and get back to your lean bulk. You probably won't have to adjust anything. But if you are going to be cutting for an extended period of time, eight, 10, 12 plus weeks,
Starting point is 00:19:30 eventually you are going to have to reduce the amount of food that you eat. It is almost inevitable for most people. And the reason being is you can only exercise so much. You only have so much time to do it. And even if you have unlimited time, you only can do so much before it starts to cause significant issues with your body. And once you've maxed that out, which is again, the first thing I generally recommend, and I talk about it in the article that I just referenced, is before you eat less food, can we exercise more? That's the first question. And if it's no, okay, then we have to eat less food. And it's normal to reach that point when you were cutting for a long period of time. It doesn't mean anything's wrong with your metabolism or wrong at all.
Starting point is 00:20:18 So for me personally, I haven't really gone through lean bulk and cutting phases in a while. I've pretty much just maintained 195, we'll say a range of 191 to two to 198, usually around 195, somewhere around 10% body fat. I've cut for little periods to get maybe closer to eight or 9% and maybe quote unquote, let myself go a little bit to get as high as 11 or 12% maybe, but generally for the last several years now, I've been about 195 pounds and about 10% body fat. However, the last time that I cut and got quite lean for a photo shoot, so it was a few years ago, I got down to maybe 7% or so, give or take. I started that cut around 25 or 2,600 calories because at the time, my average daily energy expenditure was somewhere around 3,000 calories because I was lifting
Starting point is 00:21:13 weights five or six hours a week and doing about two hours of high intensity interval training. And so that intake of 25 or 2,600 calories, if I remember correctly correctly kept me losing fat steadily for about four to five weeks at which point i had to drop my intake i dropped it by about 100 to 150 calories rode that out for another couple weeks dropped it again rode that out for a couple weeks believe i dropped it one final time which really brought it to my bmr somewhere around 21 2200 calories and rode that out i might even went a little bit lower 2000 no 2200 calories and rode that out. I might've even been a little bit lower, 2000, no lower than 1900 and rode that out for a final week or two and then called it quits. Was happy with how I looked, did the photo shoot. Okie dokie. And the next question,
Starting point is 00:21:56 the final question, how much sleep is sufficient to build muscle? Four hours, six hours, eight hours, or 10 hours? Well, the simple answer here is getting enough sleep is hugely important for muscle growth and strength gain, and particularly for intermediate and advanced weightlifters whose bodies are not hyper responsive to resistance training anymore, and who can't just use newbie gains to overpower dietary mistakes, sleep mistakes, and so forth. And there are several reasons for that. One is a very obvious reason, acute performance. So if you sleep, let's say four, five, six hours, and you're kind of dragging ass in
Starting point is 00:22:38 the morning and you get into the gym and you're going to do some heavy squats, you are going to get less work done in that workout than if you had slept what you needed to sleep, which for most people is seven to nine hours, seven to eight hours is kind of the generally recommended amount of sleep for most people. And so of course, less effective workouts make for less muscle and strength gain over time. So that's a very obvious way that sleep is going to impact your ability to build muscle and gain strength. Another factor is hormones. So the more sleep deprived you are in general, the more catabolic your hormone profile is going to be. And this can actually get so bad that it can lead to muscle loss. That has been shown in scientific research.
Starting point is 00:23:25 If you deprive yourself of enough sleep, I believe it was, I reviewed the study semi-recently, so the details are a little bit fuzzy, but I believe it was three to four hours of sleep for no more than a week. It was like five to seven days actually started to cause muscle loss. And so that is completely counterproductive, of course. And the reason why muscle loss occurred was not limited to just what happened hormonally, which mostly just came down to lower levels of anabolic hormones like testosterone and growth hormone and higher levels of catabolic hormones like cortisol. Another reason though, why these guys lost muscle was related to cellular signaling and other aspects of the body's muscle building machinery,
Starting point is 00:24:13 so to speak. So that machinery just does not work well when the body is sleep deprived. And so what happens then is your body's ability to synthesize new muscle proteins just gets outpaced by the amount of muscle protein breakdown that is occurring. Now, I know that the sleep deprivation was rather extreme in this case. Again, I believe it was like three to four hours of sleep per night, several nights in a row. And most of us would not try to get into the gym after several nights of three to four hours of sleep. I could see one night. I've done that before, that's for sure. But two, three, four, five nights, no way. I'm just skipping. But that doesn't mean that the same types of negative
Starting point is 00:24:56 effects in the body are simply not occurring at less severe levels of sleep deprivation or sleep restriction. So let's say you need eight hours of sleep to feel good, to have your body firing on all cylinders, to have a lot of energy in your workouts, to feel like you're recovering from your workouts and so forth. And you are getting on average six hours of sleep per night. Now that is going to be enough for you to get through your days, especially with caffeine and to get through your workouts. And maybe even make up some of that sleep on the weekends, which research shows you can accomplish. You can make up lost sleep to some degree. And of course, then you're going to feel even better on the weekends, but that situation is
Starting point is 00:25:42 going to result in impaired muscle and strength gain. It is probably not going to be extreme enough to cause muscle loss and cause the body to just go to pieces, but you are going to gain muscle and strength slower. So my best advice is to really prioritize getting off sleep. And that's really what it comes down to for most people is prioritizing. And it means getting to bed early enough. And for most people that is being in bed eight hours, because that's really what it comes down to for most people is prioritizing and it means getting to bed early enough and for most people that is being in bed eight hours because that's a good place to start because most people need seven to eight hours of sleep to do well and to have no symptoms of sleep deprivation or sleep restriction and you know this is something that i've experienced and had to accept and adjust for because years ago i used to go to bed at 1145. I'd fall asleep very quickly, five or 10 minutes.
Starting point is 00:26:30 I would not wake up at all, usually to pee or anything else. I would just close my eyes and I'd be out and I'd open my eyes and it would be 615 or 620. My alarm was 6.30, sometimes it was 6.45, but I'd always wake up around 6.20 to 6.30, sometimes as early as 6.15. And so on average, I was probably getting about six and a half hours of sleep per night, but that was all I needed. Again, I'd fall asleep immediately, I'd be out, and I would just wake up and I'd feel good to go, fully awake, refreshed. I was able to progress in my training. And I did this for years, progress in my training, work all day, work at night. At that time, I was working most nights up until the point of going to bed. So I would leave the office at maybe 5.30, walk home because it was close to where I lived,
Starting point is 00:27:20 make myself some food, spend a little bit of time with my wife, be back on the computer to work. I was also doing cardio usually most days. I was doing some cardio at least three or four days a week, which I would do around, I think seven to 7.30 or so was cardio time. I would have pulse before that as well and forge. Then I would work probably from eight until 11.30, get ready for bed, fall asleep instantly, perfect sleep, wake up for my alarm, rinse and repeat. It was amazing. And I was able to make good progress in my workouts and in my life. I made hay while the sun shined for sure. Got a lot of work done that that was like really in the beginning when I was probably working on average 70 plus hour weeks building up muscle for life and writing books and building up legion and
Starting point is 00:28:06 so forth. And my life was easier then though. I had fewer responsibilities. I had less pressure. I had less stress and things are different now. I have two kids now, for example, whereas back then I had no kids and then one kid. And although Lennox wasn't my son, Lennox wasn't a great sleeper, Sarah was sleeping with him and I was just sleeping on the couch and we were cool with that. And she was cool with, you know, if, if Lennox kept her up or woke her up multiple times at night, she could always take a nap with him later because again, she was just taking care of Lennox. And so I would get good sleep usually sometimes because we were living in a smaller condo at the time. Sometimes if Lennox was crying and I wake me up, but it wasn't a big deal, go back to sleep. So now with two kids,
Starting point is 00:28:57 Lennox is six turning seven this year and he's fine. But now we have a girl who's one and three quarters and she's just a bad sleeper. And Sarah can only, I mean, you can only get so many nights of bad sleep for your body just can't take it. So now we alternate and the nights that I'm sleeping with Romy are usually not great. Usually I'm getting woken up. I mean, just the last time I slept with her a few days ago, I think I woke up like six times. I could barely get through a sleep cycle or two without getting woken up. And before that was even an issue, because there was a period when Romy was sleeping well, there was just a lot of extra stress. There was work-related shit that was going on that was just weighing on me, even though I didn't let
Starting point is 00:29:46 it impact my routine. I still just showed up every day, kept on putting in the work, but stress is stress, right? And other financial stresses, even just having a bigger everything, it's bigger. The stakes are higher now. The payroll is bigger. There are more people that are counting on that money. There's more sales, but also that means that when there are problems, you're losing more money and blah, blah, blah. And don't take any of that as complaining. I'm not complaining at all. And I have voluntarily taken all of this on and I enjoy the game, but it is more stressful. And I do believe that that has impacted my sleep and how that might not change ever. I don't know. I mean, from, from what I know from speaking with a lot of people, a lot of very successful people who
Starting point is 00:30:40 have built much larger companies than, than my companies. companies, yeah, that really doesn't change. Everything is always on fire is how it feels. And you're always just picking the fires that need to be extinguished the most. Now, of course, you can mitigate that to some degree by building good systems and building companies that run on extraordinarily good systems that don't require extraordinarily good people, which I've put a lot of work into a lot of that type of work into my businesses and other people that work with me have done the same, but you never really get there. What you want, what you see in your mind in terms of organizational efficiency and things that should
Starting point is 00:31:25 be getting done or should be getting done better, that never changes. And it comes with a cost. It has a psychic cost. And so anyways, I'm just rambling at this point, but my point is, whereas previously I was able to get less sleep and also just have really slim margins for error with my sleep. Going to bed at 11.45 and having an alarm at 6.30, for example, or even 6.45, you better not wake up. You better get plenty of deep sleep, which I also tracked using, I believe I used that Cora ring at the time. And I was getting plenty of deep sleep. believe I used that Cora ring at the time and I was getting plenty of deep sleep. It was like, on average, I think it was three to four hours a night on like six and a half hours,
Starting point is 00:32:15 max seven hours in bed, which is very good. Now, however, I am in bed for eight hours. So I go to bed at 10 on most days, sometimes a little bit earlier. And my alarm is six. And I rarely deviate from that because I just had to accept reality that I need a bit more time in bed. Ultimately, am I getting more sleep? It's hard to say because I'm generally waking up one, two. Well, if I'm not with Romy and she's not trolling me, I'm waking up one, two, maybe three times per night. And occasionally I'll have a night, a really bad night's sleep for no good reason where I'm waking up one, two, maybe three times per night. And occasionally I'll have a night, a really bad night's sleep for no good reason where I'm waking up six times. And so I have to plan for that.
Starting point is 00:32:52 I have to account for that in my sleep. And it's kind of, it was annoying at first because I felt like I was losing close to two hours of every day. But it is what it is. And I tried to make things work on less sleep. I tried to make things work on five or six hours of sleep on average. And it just didn't go well. It didn't go well. And that was, I think it was like last winter when I was trying to make that work. And I got sick several times. My workouts sucked. It was just no fun.
Starting point is 00:33:26 So I was like, well, I'm going in the opposite direction. And again, it's a matter of priorities. And let's also not forget that getting enough sleep makes everything better. Not just your workouts, not just your muscle building. Those are really the least important things. Everything in your body works better when you're getting enough sleep. And there's nothing you can do, unfortunately, to make up for chronic sleep deprivation. If you miss some sleep here and there, it's not a big deal. But if you miss it too often,
Starting point is 00:33:59 everything in your body is negatively impacted and really every aspect of your life is negatively impacted. And so it's super important. Prioritize sleep. There's the biggest health hack out there. Get enough sleep. The biggest productivity hack out there. The best intelligence hack out there. Consistently get enough sleep. Don't deprive yourself during the week and then try to sleep binge on the weekends. That doesn't work. Again, the research, at least the most recent research that I read shows that you can make up for some of what you are losing when you don't get enough sleep by catching up, but not everything. It's just not the same. Hey there, it is Mike again. I hope you enjoyed this episode and found it interesting and helpful. And if you did, and don't mind doing me a favor and want to help me make
Starting point is 00:34:52 this the most popular health and fitness podcast on the internet, then please leave a quick review of it on iTunes or wherever you're listening from. This not only convinces people that they should check the show out, it also increases its search visibility and thus helps more people find their way to me and learn how to build their best bodies ever too. And of course, if you want to be notified when the next episode goes live, then just subscribe to the podcast and you won't miss out on any of the new goodies. of the new goodies. Lastly, if you didn't like something about the show, then definitely shoot me an email at mike at muscleforlife.com and share your thoughts on how you think it could be better. I read everything myself and I'm always looking for constructive feedback, so please do reach out. All right, that's it. Thanks again for listening to this episode and I hope to hear from you soon. And lastly, this episode is brought to you by me. Seriously though,
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