Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Q&A: New Book Release, Clean Bulking, Sleep Hacks, Supersets & More

Episode Date: September 11, 2024

In this episode, I discuss how to improve barbell row strength, strategies for supersetting, my new book release, and lots more. As always, these questions come directly from my Instagram followers, who take advantage of my weekly Q&As in my stories. If you have a question you're dying to have answered, make sure you follow me on Instagram (@muscleforlifefitness) and look out for the Q&A posts. Your question might just make it into a podcast episode! If you like this type of episode, let me know. Send me an email ([e-mail]) or direct message me on Instagram. And if you don’t like it, let me know that too or how you think it could be better. **** --- Timestamps: (4:12) When is the next book coming out? (06:30) Tips for improving barbell row strength? (07:35) Is lifting 5 times per week better than 4 for results? (08:34) Is the deadlift primarily a back or leg exercise? (10:21) Should cardio be cut out during a clean bulk? (11:40) Thoughts on mouth taping and jaw exercisers? (13:00) Is rucking effective for cardio and muscle strength? (14:32) Are supersets with opposing muscle groups beneficial? (19:10) Top tips for improving sleep quality? (26:48) How does the hip thrust complement deadlift performance? (27:12) Strategies for politely ending gym conversations between sets? (29:16) Is daily red meat consumption harmful? (30:12) After a deload week, should I return to heavier weights or maintain? (30:38) Is the absence of a burning sensation during heavy lifts detrimental to hypertrophy? (32:05) Is additional cardio necessary if I already log thousands of steps at work? (32:53) Why recommend bulking before cutting for skinny-fat individuals? --- Mentioned on the Show: Stronger Than Yesterday The Shredded Chef Lunar Progressive Overload Training Whey+ Legion Diet Quiz

Hello, hello, I'm Mike Matthews. This is Muscle for Life and it is Q&A time. Thank you for joining me today for another Q&A episode where I answer a bunch of questions that people have asked me over on Instagram. So what I do is every couple of weeks in my stories, put up a story with a question sticker asking for questions, get a bunch of questions, go through them, and pick ones that are topical or interesting, or that I haven't already answered a billion times before, answer them briefly there on Instagram,

and then bring everything over here to the podcast where I can answer in more detail. And so if you wanna ask me your questions, just follow me on Instagram, at Most For Life Fitness, watch my stories, mostly memes these days with the occasional workout footage and look for the ask me anything post every couple of weeks or story every couple of weeks, submit your questions and I do review all of them.

I can only answer so many of course, but I do look at all of them. But first, if you like what I'm doing here on the podcast and want 125 of my favorite quick, easy and delicious fitness friendly recipes, you want to get a copy of my flexible dieting cookbook, The Shredded Chef. Because here's the deal, you don't need to follow a bland, boring bodybuilder diet to get into the best shape of your life. You can eat delicious home-cooked meals you love without living in the kitchen, struggling with hard-to-prepare recipes,

or overspending on expensive ingredients. And the Shredded Chef is the shortcut because it has 13 delicious and easy-to-make breakfast recipes like BLT Eggs Benedict, huevos rancheros, high protein banana oat cakes, and more it has 11 mouth-watering salads and dressings like a spicy santa fe taco salad, grilled mediterranean salad with sun-dried tomato vinaigrette, creamy jalapeno cilantro dressing, and more. It also has 14 low calorie snacks that you'll actually want to eat like blueberry coconut pancake batter smoothie, maple walnut protein muffins, peanut

butter protein swirl brownies and more. There are also 16 succulent beef and pork recipes for savory lunches and dinners like beef stroganoff, one of my personal favorites, beef lo mein, parmesan crusted pork chops and more. And then there are 18 tasty poultry dishes that you will love again and again, like curry chicken, Mexican meatloaf, which is killer, polo fajitas and more. There are eight flavorful seafood recipes like creamy fettuccine with scallops,

graham cracker crusted tilapia, seared cod with no cook mustard, caper sauce and more. There are 11 appetizing side dishes like crispy squash fries. Squash fries are so good. If you've never had them before, you're in for a treat. Sweet potato chips, roasted garlic, twice baked potato and more.

And finally, there are 10 delectable and macro-friendly desserts that you can enjoy guilt-free like peach cobbler, maple raisin bread pudding, triple berry crisp, and more. I also give for all of those recipes, cook time, prep time, servings, calories, protein, carbs, and fat, which makes meal planning a breeze.

And I even went further and put all of that information into a spreadsheet which makes it even easier to build out your meal plan and you can get that as a free download when you get the book part of the free bonus material. And so all of that is why the Shredded Chef has sold well over 300,000 copies, has received over 3,300 four- and five-star reviews on Amazon, and has helped that I know of thousands of people build their best body ever. And you can find it on all major online retailers, wherever you like to buy books, Amazon, iTunes, Kobo, Google Play, BN.com, even Audible. There is an

audiobook, and yes, some people do buy cookbooks as audio books. Who knew? And you can also find the Shredded Chef in select Barnes and Noble stores. Okay, let's start with a question from Akshay Chawla. They ask when is the next book coming in a couple of months? Actually, you can preorder it over on Amazon. I haven't announced this yet because the product page is still kind of messed up. It's not ready to be officially announced, but you can find it already over on Amazon. It's called Stronger Than Yesterday. So if you search for Stronger Than Yesterday Matthews, it it'll come up and it is a daily reader format. So it is a bunch of short chapters with the idea of reading at least one per day. And it contains about 50% motivational slash inspirational

content and about 50% educational content. And the educational content is split between various topics like diet, exercise, general health, supplementation, and so forth. So I really tried to create a good balance of different types of content as you move through the book. Also, one additional filter that I applied, so to speak, is beginner intermediate advanced. So with both the motivational slash inspirational and the educational content. I also labeled chapters for beginners, intermediate, fitness folk and advanced gym rats. And I did that to make sure that the book has material,

not just for men and women, not just for people who are more into strength training than cardiovascular training or vice versa, but also for people who are brand new, people who are experienced, people who are veterans. And so yeah, that's the ad hoc elevator pitch for the book. Again, you can preorder it over on Amazon stronger than yesterday. And I will be officially announcing it probably in the next month or so I'm not going to do a big book launch because I don't really want to.

I have too many other things I'm doing right now. But of course, I am going to do a proper launch of sorts. And I'm really looking forward to getting feedback on this book because I like the format. It was fun to produce. And so if it does well, I would probably start on the next one right away because the format lends itself to basically unlimited books so long as you can keep on coming up with good material. Okay, next question comes from CAA1997. Tips on how to get stronger at the barbell row.

A few tips. One is make it the first or the second exercise of your pull workouts. Another is to do at least six sets of barbell rowing per week. And I would recommend doing it at least twice per week. So instead of doing six sets in one workout, doing let's say three in one and three in another, or four in one and two in another.

And finally, I would recommend making two or three of those sets pause sets, where you pause at the top of each rep for a couple of seconds and those tips by the way they work well for basically all exercises except maybe the deadlift six heavy sets per week would be too much for most people but maybe you could do three or four heavy sets then you could do let's say two or three lighter sets where you are focusing on speed. You are you are focusing on exploding. That would be a better approach for the deadlift rather than just six hard sets per week. Okay, Chad Smith 686 asks, will I get better results

from lifting five times per week instead of four. Not unless you're an experienced weightlifter and you are trying to progress in multiple major exercises or muscle groups. And even then, five times per week is not going to be 25% better than four times. It'll be marginally better, assuming you are programming your training well enough to capitalize on the extra day. Now, if you are new to strength training, or if you are okay with focusing on and progressing on maybe one or two major exercises or major muscle groups, then three strength training workouts per week can work well and four and five times per week is better, but only marginally better because your body is so responsive to training when you are new.

Champagne B asks, is the deadlift a back or leg workout? Why do them on back day? Well, it's really a posterior chain exercise. So that means that it trains or primarily trains everything on the back side of your body, including your back muscles. And also, just so you know, the hamstrings and the glutes are the driving forces of deadlift, not the back per se, certainly not the lower back, which is a stabilizing force. And it's important to understand that because if deadlifting is hurting your lower back or giving you a big lower back pump, if that's really what you are noticing the most, you're probably doing it wrong and you need to reassess your form. A common mistake that

people make that leads to that issue is when they're at the bottom of the deadlift, their shins are angled too far forward. They're not getting their shins close enough to perpendicular to the ground. They're not getting their hips high enough. They're not feeling a lot of tension in their hamstrings before they pull, which is what you should feel. The bottom position on a deadlift is is not a squat, it's not knees, approaching toes or knees over toes and hips low, again is shins as close to perpendicular to the ground as you can get them now depending on your anatomy, you may not be able to get to perfectly

perpendicular, I can't, for example, but you should be close to perpendicular should be let's say closer to perpendicular than 45 degrees relative to to the ground and again that means that your hips are a bit higher and your hamstrings are engaged and not loose. Okay, so Dan Cole 23 asks, when doing a clean bulk, should you cut out cardio? No, no, I think it's smarter to keep the cardio in. I mean, it's good for your body, your health, your metabolism. It also enables you to eat more food, which may benefit your performance and your hypertrophy. Now that can also be a bad thing if you naturally have a small appetite. It can make it actually harder for you to eat enough food. So there's some individual variety there to take into account. But the cardio also probably is going

to help mitigate fat gain, at least to some degree due to some metabolic effects, not energy balance per se. And of course, that's good when you're clean bulking because you want to minimize fat gain and maximize muscle gain, which allows you to maintain that small surplus for a longer period of time, which allows you to gain more muscle and strength while you're clean bulking. And lastly, keeping cardio in when you're clean bulking helps you maintain the habit. And that is going to make the subsequent cut that you're going to have to do at some point easier, because at that point, all you need to do is change your diet rather than change

your diet and start doing cardio again. Hayd Sauce asks, thoughts on mouth taping, thoughts on jaw exercises. So mouth taping thoughts on jaw exercises. So mouth taping, I like it. It's an effective way to prevent mouth breathing when you sleep and thereby mitigate or even resolve mild sleep apnea. There's research that shows that simply doing that can, again, greatly mitigate or even resolve mild sleep apnea and that's common by the way among weightlifters even weightlifters who are in great

shape great body composition because of the hypertrophy of neck muscles many people don't know that but if you're if you're fairly jacked there's a fair chance that you have at least mild sleep apnea because of your neck muscles. And again, mouth taping is a simple way to mitigate or even eliminate that. Now, jaw exercisers, they will make your jaw muscles stronger, but it's probably not going to change the appearance of your face, which is why most people buy those things. And research shows that jaw exercising can lead to jaw pain and jaw discomfort. So I don't recommend it.

The best way to tone your face is to just lose fat. Get to the body composition that gives you the facial structure you're looking for. Okay, the next question comes from indexerror, and they ask, is rucking a good cardio while also building muscle and strength? Yeah, absolutely. Rocking is going to burn more calories. That's good. It's going to train creating whole body tension, which is useful for lifting, it improves performance on basically every lift, like the more you can tense your entire body, particularly your torso, the better you're gonna perform.

Rucking also improves your ability to just exert whole body physical effort, also referred to as general physical preparedness, GPP. The better your GPP is, generally speaking, the better your performance is going to be in basically all athletic endeavors, including weightlifting. And finally, if you have tiny calves like me, and if you care, unlike me,

at this point I've accepted my fate, then rucking can help because it makes the calves work harder. It's like simulating being fat. And if you've spent any amount of time in gyms and you've seen guys with huge calves and you've asked them how they got their huge calves, you know that basically every single time,

it's simply that they are fat or they were fat and they've never trained calves. They they never even done a single set of calves and yet there they are. Josh D Cowell asks thoughts on supersetting with opposite muscle groups i.e. chest and back. This is mostly viable this is a workable training technique so long as you rest let's say 60 ish, no more than 90, but say 60 to 90 seconds in between each superset. However, I will say that chest and back has always been an exception to that for me at least, especially with difficult exercises like the bench press and the barbell row. If I superset those exercises, even with 60 to 90 seconds of rest in between

each set, my performance noticeably declines. It is noticeably worse compared to using normal rest periods of let's say about two and a half minutes to two and a half minutes. And I will very much notice it at 60 seconds versus two, two and a half minutes. And 90 seconds is better, but still noticeably worse than two, two and a half minutes. And really on a, on compound exercises, compound free weight exercises like the bench press and barbell row, I'm going to rest two and a half minutes, maybe not three minutes. That's not necessary, but it's probably going to be two minutes, 32 minutes, 45. And again, my performance is, is noticeably better than if I try to do any sort of superset.

Now if I were doing, let's say, a couple of machines, if I were doing a PEC deck and some sort of row machine, or maybe some sort of cable row, then that might work. I might be able to perform more or less just as well on each of those exercises, only resting 60 seconds as if I took longer rest periods. But again, the big compound exercises for various muscle groups don't work well for me with supersetting. That's probably going gonna be generally true. However, supersetting a compound and an isolation exercise, that usually isn't a problem. And of course, as I just mentioned, isolation and isolation is usually even less of a problem.

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Kinger214 asks, Top tips to improve sleep? Okay, starting with a little bit of context. So I sleep fine, generally. Not great, but fine. I don't sleep through the night. I'm going to wake up probably at least once or twice. I'm going to have to go pee. I can fall back asleep. That's generally the case. And then there are exceptions where I wake up a lot. I wake up five, six times at night for no particular reason, but generally it's okay.

However, going back, uh, many years for a long time, I had no idea what a sleep difficulty was. I slept basically through the night, every night. For many years, I slept maybe about six or six and a half hours. That was just my natural, I would wake up, I'd go to sleep, I'd fall asleep very quickly, or I'd go to bed, fall asleep very quickly, and I would sleep six, six and a half hours, and then I would just naturally wake up.

Alarm, no alarm, didn't matter and just be good to go. However, about six or seven years ago, I started to wake up at night. I no longer slept through the night and I've gone through periods of better and worse sleep. So I've tried a lot of things. I've tried basically everything except sleep drugs because those drugs are bad

and there's no reason to even bother. There's a body of research, for example, that shows that a number of those drugs actually factually, statistically are no better than placebos. And they come with a long list of health risks that I don't want to incur. And so I've not tried drugs, but I've tried everything else natural I guess you could say and so what has worked best for me cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia that helped me quite a bit not watching TV up to the point of going to bed typically I can watch some TV at night but it's not much it's probably 45 to 60 minutes at most and I

turn it off 30 to 60 minutes before going to bed and I don't replace it with some other bright screen if I am going to replace it with a screen it's gonna be my phone but it's to read on my phone and I have the brightness all the way down I also have the light temperature shift, whatever they call it, where it is a warmer light rather than a harsher blue light. And I read in the Kindle app on my phone. That's how I basically do all of my reading. And so I have it set to have a black background with white text rather than the white background with black text because it's even less light. When I have the brightness on my phone all the

way down, the text is basically gray and the background is black and it's perfectly legible, but it's just a minimal amount of light. Oh, and one other tip for watching TV that just jumped to mind that I got from a cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia course that I did is to sit far away from the TV. Because if you're sitting, I forget the distance if you're sitting, I want to say it's within six to 10 feet of it, the effects are going to be more significant, the negative effects are going to be more significant than if you're sitting further than that. So if you can sit further away from the TV, that's going to be better. Okay, so moving on to the next tips on my list here are taking

magnesium at night. So I take Legion's sucursomal magnesium. You can learn about that over at bylegion.com slash magnesium. And so I take one pill of that plus one pill of magnesium L3N8 specifically for its brain related benefits. And Legion doesn't sell that yet, but we're looking into it. It may be on the roster of upcoming products. We're just looking into the viability. It's easy enough to source and to sell, but we just want to make sure that the market meets our criteria for justifying the effort and the expense. And so currently I'm buying it from Now Foods. And then of course, there's melatonin,

which can be particularly helpful if you have trouble falling asleep. Research shows that it generally doesn't help you stay asleep. It's not going to help you reduce your awakenings, but it can help you fall asleep faster. And falling asleep is basically never my issue. Staying asleep is my issue. So I found that taking melatonin before I go to bed doesn't really make a noticeable difference one way or another however, interestingly

I found that if I take it at some point in the middle of the night like after my first awakening That seems to help reduce further awakenings, which is interesting and it's again something I've noticed which is interesting and it's again something I've noticed it's not something that is clearly indicated in the literature though on melatonin and lastly one final comment on supplements not that supplements are the answer they're supplementary by definition but good supplements can help they can help you improve your health they can help you gain muscle and strength faster they can help you improve your body composition and so forth. And so in the case of sleep, I have a sleep supplement called lunar, which you can find over at by Legion that's builegion.com slash lunar. And we recently reformulated it and also changed

it from a powder to a chewable tablet that tastes really good. We're getting a lot of feedback from people saying that it tastes like Smarties like the candy. But of course it has no sugar. It's naturally sweetened, naturally flavored. And the formulation is glycine, L-theanine, GABA and melatonin. And you can learn about the first three if you're not familiar with them and what they have to do with sleeping better. Again over at bylegion.com slash lunar but I bring it up because this new formulation is working really well for me. I am consistently sleeping better when I am taking this new lunar than when I'm not taking it and the two things that I notice the most are I'm sleepier so I take it about an hour or 45 minutes before bed and when I take it I'm not taking it. And the two things that I noticed the most are I'm sleepier. So I take it about an hour or 45 minutes before bed. And when I take it, I'm generally sleepier

by the time I go to bed, which is good. I'm more relaxed. That means I can fall asleep faster and I have fewer awakenings at night. So I sleep not through the night, but I'll wake up maybe once or twice. I have to pee and I can fall right back asleep and I'll feel more rested the following day. And that was not the case for me personally with the previous formulation of Lunar. A lot of people really liked it and it helped a lot of people sleep better. Of course there was good science to support every ingredient and every dose but for whatever reason for me personally I didn't notice much of a difference.

And that's going to be the case with any natural supplement, by the way. Some people respond really well to certain supplements and some people just don't respond well to them. They don't respond poorly. It doesn't harm them, but they don't see the same benefits as other people. And so that was the case with the previous lunar. But this new lunar, again, for me, really makes a noticeable difference. So I'm personally excited that we made that change because I wasn't expecting that given my experience,

not just with the previous lunar formulation, but with basically every natural supplement that you can take related to sleep. I've tried them all. Okay, Lyndon Sepp asks, does the hip thrust help your deadlift? Yeah, yeah, it can. Especially the top half of the deadlift, which is where your glutes and your spinal erectors and your hips are most engaged. Those are the muscle groups that are driving the lockout. So if you are struggling with your lockout, then yeah, strengthening your glutes can help. Luke M 81 asks how to get out of those long in between set conversations with people in the gym? Well, first I have to make a confession because I've definitely been that guy way more often

than I've been the guy that guy won't stop talking to. And so if I've done that to anybody listening, I'm sorry, I know how annoying it is. And I've reformed, I've gotten better. So I'm going to answer the question from both sides. So if I'm the guy that guy won't stop talking to, then I just politely cut in and I say that I'm short on time and I have to do my next set and they always understand it's never a problem. Now, if I find that I am being that guy and I'm taking too much of somebody's time, then I just cut myself off.

I just stopped talking and say, anyway, I don't want to mess up your workout. It was good to see you and leave it at that. And people appreciate that because then they don't have to feel uncomfortable cutting me off. And I've also gotten better about being friendly and being social and acknowledging people that I see regularly because I go to the gym on the same days at the same times without getting overly chatty. So saying, Hey, how's it going? Quick check in and then letting both of us just go to our workouts. Oh, and a final comment specifically for women, especially women who are even remotely attractive. If you don't want to be interrupted in your workouts, unfortunately, two things headphones on at all times, even if you're not listening

to anything at the moment, your headphones stay on and you have to avoid eye contact. That's even more important. And so when you finish a set and you're going to look around, you can look around, but you can't look around at eye level. You have to look around a bit lower. You have to look more at the ground. And I know that sounds ridiculous, but it works. What can I say? Life is unfair. Mike Detrain asks, is it harmful to eat red meat daily? Not per se, assuming it's not highly processed kind of junk meat. And so long as you also keep your saturated fat intake at or below about 10% of your total daily calories, because there is a downright massive body of evidence that clearly shows a relationship between saturated fat intake and LDL cholesterol

levels and LDL cholesterol levels and heart disease. And so again, if we're talking about meat that you buy and prepare yourself, not pre-packaged, not fast food, not cured and processed meat, and we're also watching our saturated fat and keeping it relatively low, then there's no science based reason to not eat meat every day. Reroute Mind the Therapy asks, if I deload for one week, do I come back to heavier weights or lower weights or the same?

Generally, you just wanna pick up exactly where you left off when you are deloading. You don't make any changes. Of course, unless your training weights feel really heavy on the week back, then you would have to reduce them or if they feel really light, then great, you get to add some weight. Sienna Giannelli asks, sometimes when I lift heavy, I don't feel the burning sensation. Is this not good for hypertrophy? Yes. So the reason you're not feeling that muscle burning is because lower rep ranges, they produce less acidity, and they produce fewer hydrogen ions

in your muscles, then higher rep training. And those two things are what drive that burning feeling what create that burning feeling. Now, while that burning feeling can make it feel like you are training harder, like you are training your muscles harder, it's actually not an important factor. It's not a driving factor of hypertrophy, mechanical tension is. And so this is why you can gain muscle more or less equally effectively with let's say four to six or five to seven or six to eight reps per set as you can with 10 to 12 or 12 to 15 or even 15 to 20. So long as you're taking all of those sets close to or to the point of muscular failure and so long as you are achieving progressive overload, which is best achieved by progressively lifting heavier weights over time.

Now, if you wanna learn more about all of what I just talked about, head over to legionathletics.com, search for progressive overload and look for an article I wrote on progressive overload that breaks it all down in more detail and helps you apply it in your training. Supercontra89 asks, should I do cardio even though I log thousands of steps at work? Well, if you want to further benefit your health, particularly your cardiovascular health, then yes. Now doing a lot of walking, that's great, but it's not the same as doing a lot of walking

plus doing a couple hours of moderate intensity cardio per week, plus maybe even 30 to 60 minutes of high intensity cardio per week. And research has shown this by the way, that physical activity at work does not seem to confer the same health benefits as physical activity at work does not seem to confer the same health benefits as physical activity with exercise. And again, this research was specifically on cardiovascular exercise. Vishal Rathod nine asks, why you insist skinny fat people to bulk before cut? Have you

changed your stance in years? I don't insist that skinny fat people bulk before cut. In fact, generally, the opposite tends to work best. Skinny fat people tend to derive the most satisfaction from finally losing their gut, for example, while also improving their muscularity. And they can do that because newbies can effectively recomp. They can achieve body recomposition. They can gain muscle and lose fat at the same time.

Now that requires a calorie deficit, of course, that requires quote unquote cutting, but while they're cutting, they're also going to be gaining muscle and strength. And so after a few months of that, they can achieve a pretty striking transformation. Again, they can finally lose the gut and bring their body fat level down to something closer

to what they feel is ideal, and they can add muscle. And they perceive that also as muscle definition because they've brought body fat down, they've added muscle, and they can look a lot better. In my experience, people who start out skinny fat, again, that is a lot more enjoyable. That first three months doing it that way, six months doing it that way is more enjoyable

than starting in a calorie surplus, which is going to help them gain muscle and strength a bit faster, maybe not twice as fast, but they are going to gain more muscle and strength a bit faster, maybe not twice as fast, but they are going to gain more muscle and strength in that first three, six months in a slight calorie surplus versus the deficit. However, they're also going to gain body fat. So again, in the case of the gut, the gut is going to get bigger. Everything else is going to get bigger, bigger muscles, but the

gut is going to get bigger. bigger muscles, but the gut is going to get bigger. And in my experience, again, working with many, many skinny fat people over the over the years, if they do that for three to six months, they may appreciate the muscle and strength that they've gained, but they really do not appreciate the extra body fat. And so usually, though, if they do it the other way, three to six months calorie deficit, gaining muscle and strength, they now have the body composition that they want. They have added muscle to all the right places

on their body. And then from there, they can start their first lean bulk and continue gaining muscle and strength at a rapid pace for let's say the next six to nine months, followed by another cut down to what is usually just abs, whether it's a man or a woman, men maybe want a little bit more stomach definition than women, but it's usually just cutting down to where you have abs, whatever degree of abs that you want. That then represents a significant body transformation and it's a tried and true path, I think, for most people. Now, of course, there are the occasional skinny fat people who just want to get bigger.

They just want to better fill out their clothes. And they aren't really concerned with seeing their abs. And in that case, then actually, yeah, I would recommend then starting out assuming that body fat levels aren't too high. But usually if somebody is skinny fat, their body fat is not that high. It's just maybe a little bit higher than optimal and they have very little muscle. But in that case, then yeah, I would recommend starting with not a calorie surplus. I don't think that's necessary. I would recommend starting with maintenance calories, because if you just eat around maintenance, and if you're new to training, your body's going to respond even better than if you're in a

calorie deficit and shifting into a consistent calorie surplus is not going to make that big of a difference if you're new compared to maintenance calories. How many calories should you eat to reach your fitness goals faster? What about your macros? What types of food should you eat? And how many meals should you eat every day? Well, I created a free 60 second diet quiz

that'll answer those questions for you and others, including how much alcohol you should drink, whether you should eat more fatty fish to get enough omega three fatty acids, what supplements are worth taking and why and more. To take the quiz and get your free personalized diet plan, go to muscleforlife.show slash diet quiz muscle for life dot show slash diet quiz. Muscleforlife.show.dietquiz. Now answer the questions and learn what you need to do in the kitchen to lose fat, build muscle and get healthy. 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 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 muscle for life.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.