Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Q&A Part 7: How TDEE Changes When Cutting & Health Effects of Bulk/Cut Approach

Episode Date: June 18, 2015

In this podcast I take two questions from readers and dive into how energy expenditure changes when you're cutting and what you need to do to keep the scale moving down and the health implications of cutting and bulking for long periods of time (28:36). Want to submit questions for me to answer? Go here: http://www.muscleforlife.com/ask-mike-anything/ ARTICLES RELATED TO THIS VIDEO: Why Rapid Weight Loss Is Superior to “Slow Cutting” (And How to Do It Right): http://www.muscleforlife.com/rapid-weight-loss/ Why and How I Use Fasted Cardio to Lose Fat as Quickly as Possible: http://www.muscleforlife.com/fasted-cardio/ The Definitive Guide to Reverse Dieting: http://www.muscleforlife.com/reverse-diet/ How to Accurately Measure Body Fat Percentage: http://www.muscleforlife.com/how-to-measure-body-fat-percentage/ 4 Strategies for Losing Stubborn Fat for Good: http://www.muscleforlife.com/the-truth-about-stubborn-fat-and-how-to-get-rid-of-it/ Want to get my best advice on how to gain muscle and strength and lose fat faster? Sign up for my free newsletter! Click here: https://www.muscleforlife.com/signup/

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

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That's muscleforlife.com forward slash audiobooks, and you'll see how to do this. So thanks again for taking the time to listen to my podcast. I hope you enjoy it, and let's get to the show. Hey, hey, this is Mike from MuscleForLife.com, and welcome to another episode of the podcast. Thanks for stopping by and taking some time to hang out with me. In this episode, I'm going to be doing a Q&A or I'm going to be doing another Q&A episode where I take a couple of questions off of my Google moderator page, which allows people to submit questions and then vote up or down on other questions that people have submitted, kind of like Reddit, but for questions. So then every few weeks I go through it and find what

are the new and popular questions that people want answered and talk about them. So today's questions, I have two that are a bit longer in their answers. That's why there's only two. But the first one is regarding when cutting, how does your energy expenditure change and how do you adjust for that? What are the factors that are involved? And then how do you, um, make sure that you continue to lose fat and can actually, you know, that you don't stall out and then not know what to do. And the other question is, uh, kind of a segue from that is, is it healthy to, to, to do like cycles of bulking and cutting where you're in a slight calorie surplus gaining fat, and then, you know then you flip to a slight deficit to lose fat, what are the long-term implications of that health-wise? Are there any? And if so, what do

you do about it? So let's get right in. The first question comes from Chris from the UK. And Chris says, when cutting and losing fat, the calculated TDE, total daily energy expenditure, changes downwards each week. Should my daily calories be adjusted downwards each week also? So the first part is how your energy expenditure changes. Yes, it's true. When you're in a calorie deficit, and even if you're doing everything right, if you are not over-exercising, you're not in too large of a deficit, so you're in a moderate deficit, I like to be, I'd say moderately aggressive with a 20 to 25% deficit because, uh, I've spoken about this before that I'm really not a fan of slow cutting as it's called, which is where, you know, you, you maybe you maintain a very slight deficit, maybe five or

10% and you know, you're going to be in that slight deficit for obviously quite a bit of time to, to lose, uh, at least, uh, if you have to lose a significant amount of fat, then it's going to take quite a while if you're in a 5% or 10% deficit, if you're looking at it on a daily or even weekly basis. I'm not a fan of that because there's just really no benefit to it other than if you really don't do well with a more aggressive, a larger deficit. And I, again, I can't say I've ever really actually run into out of the thousands of people that I've spoken with. I can't, nothing comes to mind where I've come across somebody who really can't deal well enough with a moderate, a deficit to have to do a very slight deficit. You know, obviously you might have to,

you might be a little bit more hungry or it might be a little bit less enjoyable to be in a 25% deficit than a 5% deficit. But what you're gaining in the larger deficit is one, if you are, if you're weightlifting or engaging in regular resistance training, especially if you're lifting heavy while you're in a deficit and if you're not doing too much cardio and you're weightlifting or engaging in regular resistance training, especially if you're lifting heavy while you're in a deficit, and if you're not doing too much cardio and you're eating enough protein, you're going to preserve your muscle. I've written about this. I'll link an article down below where I've written about this. There's one study in particular that performed with resistance-trained men that showed that you can, you can run that larger deficit. If you're lifting and you're eating a high protein diet and you will lose very little to no muscle,

um, and you'll just lose fat faster. So that's really the benefit of the larger deficit is when I'm in a calorie deficit, uh, my goal is to lose the fat as quickly as possible. So I can get out of a deficit and back into maintenance. Or if you're going to be moving into a surplus, you know, depending on what you want to do with your body, me, I'm, I'm in a maintenance kind of mode. So, uh, either I will eat around my maintenance calories, which are about 2,800 on a day-to-day basis, or I will overeat by, by a little bit on my training days and then be in a slight deficit two days a week, usually on my rest days, uh, to, to balance my intake for the week. Um, now if I were bulking, obviously I'd just be in a slight surplus every day.

But the point is when you're a deficit, you're not going to build any muscle to speak of unless you're brand new to training. Um, your workouts kind of get shitty, you know, at first for the first four weeks, three, four weeks, you probably shouldn't notice much of a difference. You probably continue making strength gains and it's like nothing has really changed. But, um, in my experience with my body and just with working with a lot of people, once you start getting into the five to six week range, uh, of being in a deficit, you start to notice it in your training. You, you're, you plateau off, you're not making any gains anymore. You're basically just going in the gym every week to do the exact same thing that you did last week in terms of sets and reps.

Your energy levels are a little bit lower in the gym. Um, and as you continue, you may actually lose a couple reps, uh, on, on your big lifts, which is normal. It doesn't mean you're losing muscle. It just is normal. I mean, when, when, when you're cutting your, your, your carb intake is going to be lower period because you know,, your fat intake, unless there's just really no reason to go high fat if you are weightlifting regularly. So really your carbs are what change the most. And when you take your carbs from, let's say 450 grams a day to 250 grams a day, that's going to affect your training. Even if it's just because your glycogen levels are going to be lower glycogen in your liver, glycogen in your muscles, and that's, you know, your body's fuel for that anaerobic power that it needs. And when glycogen

total body glycogen stores decline, decline, decline, uh, you, you notice that in the gym. So the point is that that's also why I'm, I'm a fan of, uh, supplementation when I'm cutting with stuff that's actually proven to work like caffeine and sinephrine. And well, the things you'll find in like my fat burners, Phoenix and a new one forge, basically forge, uh, Phoenix has, has several things, has a sinephrine and a couple other similar type of compounds that work synergistically with, to increase basal metabolic rate. Um, it has a four scolon, which is, uh, associated with, uh, increased, uh, just accelerated fat loss. Basically it has five HGP to help with cravings and stuff. So that's kind of like Phoenix is I took a chunk of, of, of molecules that have

good science or a variety of molecules that have good science that are going to help you. Primarily, they're going to just going to raise your metabolic rate. They're going to help you burn an extra, like one serving of Phoenix per day should be able to, and this is based on good research that you can go see for yourself over at Legion, L E G I N L E G I O N athletics.com and go look at Phoenix and you can see all the research, but one serving of Phoenix a day should increase your basal metabolic rate by about 150 to 200 calories. And, you know, that's significant. If it's seven days a week, that's almost an extra half pound of fat loss just from four pills in a day. And many people actually do two servings because the only stimulant in Phoenix is sinephrine,

which is a very mild stimulant. There's no caffeine. And I did that intentionally. I wanted it caffeine-free because I want to get my caffeine from pre-workout mainly. I don't want to get caffeine from just pills. I want to, you know, and a lot of people, if you drink coffee or whatever, you want to get your caffeine from coffee. When you're cutting, you don't want to have to give up half your coffee because these weight loss pills have caffeine in them. Um, anyway, so that's, that's Phoenix and then

forge the main ingredient in terms of fat loss is your him bean, which I also really like. I'm a fan of fasted training when I, uh, of fasted training when I'm cutting, mainly because the mechanisms and the hormones that are related to fat loss work best in a fasted state when insulin levels are low. So you can expect to lose a little bit more fat from your workouts that are done in a fasted state. But I think the real benefit is that any supplementation that affect those mechanisms and hormones is even more effective when you're in a fasted state. But I think the real benefit is that any supplementation that affect those mechanisms and hormones is even more effective when you're in a fasted state. So stuff like caffeine, stuff like sinephrine and the other ingredients in Phoenix and, and yohimbine, which is in forge are maximally effective in this state. And in fact, yohimbine doesn't even work. If your insulin

levels are elevated, if you eat a bunch of food and then take yohimbine, it's not going to do anything. Um, so that's why I recommend these things when, when people are cutting, use a moderate, uh, you know, but aggressive calorie deficit. If, if you have the budget for it, uh, you know, spend a hundred dollars on, on, on, or really, I mean less really, but you know, spend whatever 80 to a hundred dollars on these supplements and just lose that fat as quickly as possible. So you can get back to eating enough food to have good workouts basically. And especially if you're trying to build muscle, um, or if you're trying to try to build strength, because if you're in a deficit, even if it's a slight deficit, if you run that 5%,

10% deficit for four months, let's say to lose the fat you need to lose, you're not going to build much muscle, if any, when you're in that deficit, unless you're brand new. And again, you're going to run into the training issues. Maybe it takes two months for those training issues to hit you, but you're going to deal with it eventually. Um, so I'm much more a fan of being aggressive and cutting that in half. And so if I'm already not going to build muscle and strength, I'd rather just get it over with in two months, lose all the fat that I need to lose, and then reverse diet if I need to. Basically, just get my calories back into a range where I can start making gains again. So that's kind of a tangent, but just something I

wanted to reiterate. I've written about it and spoken about it before, but it's an important point, so I wanted to say it again in case you haven't come across it. So getting back to the question, let's talk about now how things change. So when you're in a deficit, your basal metabolic rate does slow down over time. It's not as pronounced as many people think. You're not damaging your metabolism. If you look at something like the Minnesota starvation study or the starvation experiment from World War II, you have guys that were eating like 1,600, 1,700, max 1,800 calories. It actually might have been lower. It's been a while since I read that paper.

It may have been as low as 1,500 calories a day actually doing hard labor for like eight hours a day. And these guys were starving themselves basically. And this was research done, um, to basically see how to best deal with these prisoners of war that have been starved down to nothing for years. How do you bring them back into a normal metabolism? How do you start refeeding them the way that the body needs to be fed? How do you get the body working correctly again, basically. So even in that case where you had guys starved down to like, you know, four or 5% body fat, just burn no muscle. Like, I mean, they looked like some of these guys looked like Auschwitz fucking people. Um, you know, how in, in those extreme conditions, the metabolic slowdown was still the, the largest was like 15 or 20% or something like that in terms of how much quote unquote

damage was done to their metabolisms. So the takeaway from that is, yes, your metabolism does inherently slow down when you are restricting your calories, but it's not that significant. You're looking at maybe a slowdown of a couple hundred calories per day in terms of burning. So my basal metabolic rate is about 2,200 calories. So if I were to go diet now for 10 weeks, let's say, and by the end of that, maybe I'm burning 1,900 calories, 1,800 calories or something like that. You know, basal metabolic rate is the amount of energy you burn with your body at rest. So yes, that matters, but it's not a huge,

at rest. So yes, that matters, but it's not a huge, huge problem. That said, though, it is something that you need to adjust for. Now, the changes that matter more are actually more related to how much energy your body's expending or burning every day, because that changes actually quite a bit more than your basal metabolic rate. And one of the reasons for that is, and this is research has shown that when you're in a calorie deficit, you naturally engage in less spontaneous activity. So you're moving around and you're fidgeting and you get up to do this, you get up to that, you bob your leg. Those are all like spontaneous energy, burning activities that you do subconsciously, subconsciously didn't really think about it. And some people are very, uh, they, they naturally engage in a lot of these types of activities and you can actually burn a lot of calories. Research has shown that,

uh, in the extreme, when you look at somebody with a very low spontaneous activity level versus very high, it can be as much as a 2000 calorie day difference in terms of burning. Now that's obviously you're looking at two ends of the spectrum. If you go down the middle, if I remember correctly, uh, and some of the papers I had read that you you're looking at on average, maybe about a 300 to 400 calorie swing in when you look at where most people are in terms of a distribution and how, how much energy they're burning and spontaneous activity. But even that, that's quite a bit. I mean, if somebody is burning 400 calories more per day, just by fidgeting and doing things that they didn't really think about than somebody else,

you extrapolate that over a week and you're looking at like two thirds of a pound of fat that would be lost by that activity. So when you're in a calorie deficit though, that activity just naturally, your body wants to preserve or conserve energy. by that activity. So when you're in a calorie deficit though, that activity just naturally, your body wants to preserve or conserve energy. So it, uh, it, you just engage in less of that. Um, so there's that, uh, that's one thing you have to take into, into, into account that you are naturally just going to be moving less and burning less energy. There is that your body actually burns less energy during exercise when you're in calorie deficit. And there's also research showing that. So you're not burning as much energy during your workouts. And also there's

something to consider called the thermic effect of food, which is the energy costs of metabolizing food, of digesting and breaking down and absorbing food. And like for instance, one gram of carbohydrate, it costs about a quarter of the energy contained in that, in that gram of food or carbohydrate to process it, just for example. So the thermic effect of food goes down when you're in a calorie deficit because you're eating less food. So when you're eating more food, your body's just burning more energy, having to process all that food. You restrict that food intake. Obviously your body's burning less energy. And as you restrict your, as you, as you bring your calories down over time, when you're cutting, which you have to do, and we'll talk about in a minute that of course gets less and less.

So those are the factors you're kind of dealing with when you're cutting and that affect your total, uh, total daily energy expenditure, your TDE. Um, and in terms of, um, cutting of cutting your calories, so you start cutting, right? So let's say that you're burning about 3,000 calories a day, your weight's steady, that's more or less what you eat. And you're going to start out at 2,400 calories a day, or maybe 2,300 calories a day to start losing weight. So you do that and four weeks go by and your waist is shrinking, which is a good sign. Uh, your weight is going down, which is of course a good sign. Um, your caliper readings, if you're doing that, which I would recommend that you do. And I'll, I'll link an article down below on body fat percentage,

measuring body fat percentage and why, how I do it and why I recommend you do it. And, um, because, because those are the, the, I do recommend that just to another little tangent that'll be helpful to you is when you're dieting to lose fat, unless you are an experienced dieter, then obviously you either know these things or it's just not necessary. You just go by the mirror. But if you're kind of new and you want to make sure that you're doing it right, um, weigh yourself every day and then take an average weight every seven to 10 days. Don't, uh, don't do one weekly weigh in because you could just have a bad way and you could be holding more water from maybe you didn't, maybe you had more sodium than usual the day before, more potassium the day before, and then you're holding more water. Um, so weigh yourself every day and then average that every seven to 10 days. And you go

off that average. You want to see that average going down, take your waist measurement at the navel because that's the one, the basically the single most reliable indicator of fat loss is that your waist is shrinking. Um, and yes, it shrinks slower than, you know, you're going to lose fat, uh, quicker, you know, in certain areas of your body than others because certain fat is stubborn in a sense. Uh, and that's maybe the subject for another podcast, but I mean, I've written about it as well. So I'll link in our article down below, but, um, basically certain fat cells respond better to your body's chemicals that it makes to mobilize and burn fat than others. Certain fat cells, they just, those chemicals, uh, they're resistant to them, I guess you could say. Um, so, but if your waist is shrinking, that's a reliable indicator.

And then calipering is a good idea as well. Being consistent, of course, in how you're measuring, it will give you a consistent reading in millimeters. And if you keep an eye on those things, your average weight, your waist circumference at the navel, and your caliper readings, then you will have the whole picture and you'll be able to really know what's happening. you will have the whole picture and you'll be able to really know what's happening. So then if your average weight is not changing, but your waist is shrinking and your caliper readings are improving, then you are either gaining muscle and losing fat at the same time, or you are gaining water weight and glycogen, which in certain ways you could would, would register as gaining muscle, but that's not really muscle obviously uh but

basically what you're looking at is you've lost fat so you know but that weight that you would see on the scale has been replaced with something either muscle or just water and collection um so you know that's that's that's kind of on on on the on the the measuring side of things and in regards to how do you adjust? So basically you start, let's say you start at 2,300 calories back to the other example, and you go for four weeks, let's say, and your, your, uh, your measurements are improving your, so you don't change anything. If you're losing a half a pound to a pound of fat a week, which is what you want, or if you're seeing a steady improvements in your measurements and your waist and in your caliper readings, then you don't need to change anything. You just keep on

doing what you're doing. If however, you go for two or three weeks and nothing changes in your measurements, your weight hasn't gone down or your, your waist, uh, you know, uh, measurement or your caliper readings haven't changed, then you need to change something. And you need to either move more or eat less. Really, those are your only options. In terms of moving more, you can only do that so much before it becomes counterproductive because putting your body in a calorie deficit is already stressful as it is. You start adding a ton of exercise on it and it becomes very stressful. So personally, what I've found with my body and just

working with a lot of people, I cap out at five hours of weightlifting and two hours of high intensity interval cardio per week when I'm in a calorie deficit. I don't do any more than that. And that's usually in the end when I'm trying to squeeze out the last bits. I actually try to keep it closer to four hours of weightlifting and about an hour and a half of cardio per week. Um, but it's somewhere, it's somewhere in there. And some people I've found just in working with people can get away with more because their bodies just deal really well with, uh, with the, the, the stress of it, I guess. And some people's bodies don't. Um, So I would say to play it safe, cap your exercise out there.

And if, I mean, if you have the feeling, there is a bit of like, you start to know your body the more you get into this and the more you do these things and manipulate your exercise and manipulate your diet. And you can just kind of get ideas about things.

You just know, you know what I mean? Sometimes you'll feel your body, both sides, you'll be like, I'm doing too much. I just can feel it. And you can just kind of get ideas about things. You just know, you know what I mean? Sometimes you'll feel your body, both sides. It'd be like, I'm doing too much. I just can feel it. I feel a bit fatigued and I don't want to be in the gym. I'm not enjoying my workouts. Maybe you need to cut it back a little bit, or you just know, like, I feel great. I really feel like I could do a bit more. So you add a little bit. Um, so I always first want to move more rather than eat less. So, um, when I'm cutting, I just start out at max, you know, I start out at four to five hours of weightlifting, one and a half to two hours of cardio per week. And I start with all the supplements that I've talked about and I just go as hard as I can right from the beginning.

Let's go, let's just lose, let's get rid of this fat as quickly as possible basically. Um, but if some people don't like to do that or some people can't schedule wise, like they, they only for the first month, they're only going to be able to exercise three hours per week, and then they're going to have some time free up so they can add some exercise and you know, that's fine. Um, but once you have your movement maxed out, so you can't exercise any more than you're exercising without causing issues and you're still not, you know, losing weight or improving on your, uh, measurements for two or three weeks, then it's time to eat less. And there's, you know, you can, you can expect if you want to get really lean, if you're a guy wanting to get under, under 10% body fat and you are above, uh, I would say if you're 15%

or if you're, if you're above 13% and you want to get below 10%, you're probably going to have to reduce your calorie intake at some point. You're not going to be able to just do it with your initial deficit plus exercise. Things will just get so slow that it becomes counterproductive again where it becomes a slow-cutting thing where you're going to be now waiting for two months to lose what you could have lost in three weeks or four weeks if you would have just been a bit more aggressive in reducing your intake. And if you're a girl, I would say if you want to get under 20% and you're anywhere 23% and up, it's going to be the same thing. You're going to have to reduce your food intake from that

initial deficit at some point. So in terms of how to do I, I like to do it very simply. So, um, I have my initial deficit. I go and I find that with my body that lasts about six weeks, it's about six weeks where I can, I steadily lose, I steadily lose, and then things just get slower. And, uh, and you know, I, I just start seeing very minor changes. Maybe I'll lose a quarter of a pound in a week and see a very slight change in the mirror. And then what I do is I cut my calories by my daily intake by a hundred. I just removed 25 grams of carbs because my fat intake when I'm cutting is, is pretty much, it's just at about 0.3 grams per pound of lean mass or 0.2 to 0.25 grams per pound, uh, you know, of body weight. Um, so, so, and that's totally fine for health

reasons. There's no reason to be going above that really, unless you just enjoy it. So my cat, my fat doesn't intake doesn't change. My protein intake doesn't change. It's about one to 1.2 grams per pound. Um, and yes, that's a little bit on the high end, but that's based on research done with, um, athletes in particular and lean athletes. And the leaner you get, the, the, the more you can benefit from a bit higher protein intake in terms of preserving muscle. Um, so it's my carbs that change. So I cut 25 grams of carbs for my daily intake. And I do that for seven to 10 days. And then I do it again and I do it again and so forth until I'm done cutting. And, uh, for me, what, what I find is when I do that, it, then it, each time I cut, it just keeps

my, my, my weight loss at about 0.5 to one pound a week, which is exactly where I want to be, you know, in terms of losing fat. And, uh, I lose very little muscle. If any, if I lose any muscle, I can't tell, I can't see it in the mirror and I can't see it in the gym because by the end of my cuts, which I generally cut for about 10 to 12 weeks, I usually have lost a few reps in the gym, but nothing major.

And then once I start reverse dieting, which is basically the reverse of cutting my calories like that, I start adding food back in slowly and steadily. That strength comes right back. So if I have lost any muscle, it's so negligible you can't even – it's irrelevant. So that's the way that I like to do it. And you can only cut your calories so much. I don't like to go much below my BMR.

So again, this is because I just know my body and I've done it enough. And this is part of the process for you is learning your body and learning your ranges and in terms of calorie intake. And, you know, you may not need to reduce your calorie intake for eight weeks. I've, I've emailed people with that. They just seem to have very resilient metabolisms and very resilient. You know, they're they just they don't have the they have less of a reduction in energy expenditure than I do. So and I've even I've I've spoken with people that don't have to reduce intake at all that, you know, the lucky ones that they just start with their deficit and they just, you know, they just stick to their deficit, their initial deficit number for whatever it is, 10 weeks, 12 weeks, and then they're done. And they just bring their, their calories back up and they're good to go. So that might be you as well. But if you do have to reduce, um, that's a, that's a safe way to do it is once things are

getting too slow, you're, you're losing too little, too little is changing over the course of two or three weeks, reduce your daily carbon take by 25 grams, and then see over the next week, what does that do for you? And then if you, uh, you can, I, the reason why I, I, I'm cutting my calories each week is that's also just because I've kind of done it enough. And I know my body that, uh, just because I've kind of done it enough and I know my body that, uh, if I do that, you know, um, well, I just, I guess I have to explain the whole thing to make it make sense. So like my body fat right now is probably about 8%, give or take maybe a nine, it kind of fluctuates car hard to tell. Once you start getting into that sub 10%, you, you kind of go by readings, uh, you know, more than like, I know my caliper readings

and I, and, but it's going to be give or takes 8%. Now, if I wanted to cut down to 6%, let's say I want to get really lean for a photo shoot or something, I just know that takes about 10 weeks. So I'm going to go six weeks at my initial deficit and then four weeks of reducing, and then I'm going to be done. But if I had more fat to lose, then again, I would have to, let's say I were at 15% and I wanted to get down to, to where I'm at now, 8%. That's going to be a bit longer. I'll probably take 12. Well, let's see if I needed to lose 50. Yeah. If I need to lose, yeah. I'd probably take about 12 weeks, maybe, maybe as maybe in as much as 14 weeks. Um, and in that case, I wouldn't just go

for six weeks and start cutting my calories because I wouldn't have to. The point is once you start seeing, once you're at that point where that initial deficit isn't cutting it anymore, you're on the clock in a sense of how long you can go before it's time to reverse diet, your metabolism back up. and then if you need to lose more fat go back into a deficit and then for my body i've found that that's a four to six week clock there so once i'm at that point um you know so if i started my cut around 2400 calories and i get to that point where 2400 calories just not doing anything anymore then i know that i have basically i have about four to five hundred calories of reduction that I can make, which puts me a bit below my BMR, but it would

just be for the last week or two. And then I would reverse diet back up. Um, so that's, that's kind of how I play it. And I just, just cause I know my body and that's something that you can use as a rule of thumb. But again, you're going to want to see how long can you go for with that initial deficit, you know, before it stops producing any results. And once you're at that point, then you just know that you are going to have to eat less. If you're moving as much as you can, if you're doing as much exercise as you, you know, healthily can, and you kind of are like, so let's say you did that a hundred calorie cut, uh, and then it gets you, it buys you two more weeks of, you know, some changes on, uh, enough of a change on the scale to, to, to make a difference. And then now you have to cut again, maybe that only gets you a week or whatever. So

the point is you're on that clock. You have to reduce your intake. And I do recommend that you stop, uh, at your BMR or slightly below it. I, I I'll go as much as 10% below my BMR for my last week or two. I'm not going to sustain that intake for a long period of time. But, uh, if I'm, if I'm, if I have that last week or two and it's like, well, let's just squeeze the last, you know, if I can squeeze one more pound of fat out of that. Okay, cool. And there's no negative side effects to it. So that is, that's the whole answer. And, you know, I think I've covered everything, but, you know, obviously, if you have any other specific questions, you can, you can comment here on the video or you can, you know, comment in the blog post or whatever. And, you know, I'll respond, which now takes me

to this other question, which is from Jenny from Louisiana. And she asks, or she says, What does the research show regarding the long-term health effects of bulking and cutting? Is it detrimental from a health standpoint to do many bulk cut cycles, even if done properly? Good question. And good segue from the first to this one in that there are no negative health effects. There's even a few studies that I've seen that show that straight yo-yo dieting, which is like where you starve the shit out of yourself and then binge the shit out of yourself over and over, doesn't

impair your metabolic health. Your metabolism is actually still fine, which is good news for people that have done that because one of the mainstream, one of the mainstream pitches to sell you things is that if you've yo-yo dieted, you've caused metabolic damage and you have to do this special thing or take this supplement or read this book or whatever to fix your metabolic damage. And that's just not true. What you're seeing with very overweight people, one of the reasons why, and this is kind of a mystery to them and to other people, how can someone be so overweight, but they eat so little? So people assume, oh, they must have damaged their metabolism, metabolism, you know, from their yo-yo dieting. Cause a lot of overweight people have tried to yo-yo diet, uh, and you know, in unsuccessfully, uh, and they

think, oh, the yo-yo dieting must have, you know, screwed up their metabolism. No, it's that the average overweight person or very overweight person, they're not, they don't burn shit for energy. They don't, they don't exercise regularly, or if they do, it's very, very low intensity. Maybe they just walk for 15 minutes and research shows that like, of course you're not going to burn much energy just walking for 15 minutes anyway, but your body becomes more efficient to that low intensity or with that low intensity exercise. So over time, it actually burns less and less energy doing that walking. Um, so the point is it doesn't cost much energy to be fat. If you, especially if you just sit at a desk all day and

then go home and sit on the couch, you're, what you're looking at is your basal metabolic rate, which is, uh, a major factor in the, in, in, in the basal metabolic rate. I mean, the primary factor is actually your big organs, like your brain, liver, and stuff. But after that, it's the amount of muscle mass you have. So if you don't have much muscle, then, and you're not very, you know, you don't exercise regularly, it doesn't matter how overweight you are. Fat is not a metabolically active tissue. It doesn't cost energy really to be fat. And that's really what you're seeing. So you're seeing someone that has very little muscle. They look very large, but their basal metabolic rate is quite low and their

daily energy expenditure is quite low. And they eat very calorie dense foods. Even if they're healthy foods, they can still be very calorie dense, like very fatty type of foods, for instance, oils and nuts and avocado. And, you know, go to Whole Foods and see what some of these people put into their salads. I mean, you're looking at like 1200 calorie salads because of the cheese and nuts and avocado and the creamy dressing. Oh, but it's a salad. It's healthy. Yeah, well, whatever. It's a fucking 1200 calorie salad. And that, that, that salad alone, that 1200 calories could be 75% of their total daily energy expenditure right there. Um, then you add in some caloric beverages throughout the day. Maybe it's some soda,

maybe it's some juice, maybe it's some milk, and then you add in a big dinner and they can be in a surplus. They could be gaining weight just from, you know, eating two meals a day with a couple of snacks. And that's really what you're looking at. Uh, you're looking at people that they, they just eat more energy than they burn and they, you know, need to turn that around and they need to get active so that in, and, and be smarter with their food intake. Um, so they can burn energy, more energy than they, than they, than they eat. Um, so back to the question here, um, there now, of course, yo-yo dieting, there are being overweight is very unhealthy. So there are a lot of negative health effects from yo-yo from the fact that yo-yo dieters are often overweight, but the yo-yo dieting itself is actually not causing problems necessarily.

And so now applying that to, you know, maybe people more like us that are, uh, more working on our fitness, you don't have, you don't have to be like super fit obviously, but you're exercising regularly and you're, you're either, you know, um, dieting to lose weight, or maybe you're already at your ideal weight. So you're just kind of maintaining, um, bulking and cutting. There are no negative health effects associated with gaining and losing fat, especially when you manage it properly. And my general recommendations on that for men is that you kind of hang out in the 10 to 15, maybe 16, 17%. If you want to stretch it, body fat range, uh, for women, I would say 20 to 26, 27. Um, meaning that as, as a guy, if you are bulking, uh, then I would recommend that you cut it off at about 16, 17% body fat, because at that point, your insulin sensitivity starts

going to shit and you're just going to get less and less out of your training. You're much better off than flipping to an aggressive fat loss type of routine, getting rid of that fat that you gained, preserving the muscle, getting back to about 10% body fat and repeating that until you have the size that you want until you basically feel a little bit big at 10%, like uncomfortably big that, that that's me. Like if I, if I were to go gain, you know, I don't know, five, six, seven pounds of fat. I just, I don't like how my body looks and feels. I feel too big. Uh, like my clothes don't fit me right. And it's just kind of the look. I don't want to have a bodybuilder look. Um, I want to have a more athletic, uh, fitness model type of

look. And for me, that's about the size that I have now. I could, I could use a little bit more shoulders and calves. Uh, but even, even my upper legs, I mean, I already kind of like certain genes, forget about it. I can't even get them over my quads. And, um, so whatever, there are a little like things to consider like that. If you, if you are not just trying to maximize size. Um, so when you're doing that though, when you're managing, there's nothing wrong with gaining some fat and losing fat, nothing wrong with it at all. No negative health effects whatsoever. And especially if you are managing it in those body fat ranges, you're maintaining your insulin sensitivity.

There's just no reason, something you can do for your entire life if you wanted to. However, I think the, it's worth noting that like the, the, the, the big picture in my opinion is you do that for however long it takes for, for, for most guys that want to go from like normal to a fitness model type of physique, it's going to take two to three years of bulking and cutting and doing it right. Not screwing around in your diet for long periods of time. Not missing training for long periods of time. Pushing yourself in every workout, really being focused and really tracking your numbers. Progressive overload. You're, you're really working on getting stronger over time, trying to work up

those reps, work up that weight. Um, it's not that it's hard. It just takes, uh, it takes a bit of work and it takes some focus. You don't, you can't just go in the gym and, you know, do, you know, you could have gotten three more reps, but you know, whatever, you just racked the weight anyway. And then in your diet and like, oh yeah, you should have, you know, you should attract those three days of intake because you have no clue. You just ate whatever you felt like. Um, I understand that that maybe can feel kind of enjoyable in the moment, but just know that you're kind of sacrificing your longterm gains. If you do stuff like that. Um, if you really want to make sure that you get the results that you're looking for,

you need to really be on point with your diet, meaning that you need to know your numbers, where they need to be. You need to be hitting those numbers within small margins of error there, but you need to be right where you need to be, basically. In your workouts, you have to push yourself hard in your workouts. You have to be mentally focused, mentally there. You have to make sure you're sleeping enough so your body can recover and also so you have that energy and you have that focus for your workouts.

And you have to really hit every set with that goal of beating what you did the previous week. That's your goal of every workout is to do at least a little bit better. And if you think about it, if you just did 1% better in every workout, for instance, then think then think of the, the, the percent of what you'll have achieved after a year after 365 days, right? Um, where obviously it's not 365 workouts, but you get the point. Um, so you do that, you get, you get the, the size that you want, the overall proportions and you know, the, the look that you want, and then you maintain it. And that's kind of where I'm at now, where I have the size and the look that I want. And so I'm really not trying to gain much more size. I do like training hard. I like training heavy. Unfortunately, there's a catch 22 there

because as a natural weightlifter, the most important thing is that you are getting stronger over time. If you want to be building your muscles, you want to be building your strength. When you add drugs into the mix, then it changes. In fact, a lot of guys on drugs that are well-informed and open about it and have spent years as a natural weightlifter before getting on drugs, we'll talk about how when they were natural, they had to emphasize that heavy compound weightlifting to really make gains. When they got on drugs, the heavy compound stuff, one, it became dangerous because their muscles were getting very strong, but their tendons and ligaments were not because that's not how the drugs work. They improve muscle strength and performance, but not tendon and ligament strength and performance. strength and performance. So, you know, that's where you can get some pretty nasty injuries because maybe your muscles, you feel like you can squat, you know, whatever, 550 pounds,

or you can bench 450 or bench 400 or whatever. But the, the supporting structures in your joints and the, everything that supports the muscles and that the muscles, you know, uh, attached to and move can't actually handle that weight. And you don't know that until it's too late. You don't know that until, you know, you're trying to push all that weight and you feel something go in your shoulder and you're like, well, and then that's it. Um, so that's why, you know, guys that are on drugs that try to do a lot of that heavy weightlifting, um, you'll, you'll, you'll run into a lot of injured shoulders, injured knees, uh, injured backs, uh, injured

backs, uh, from heavy deadlifting, from heavy squatting or whatever. And guys on drugs that know better what they're doing, uh, they're much more, it's not that they don't lift heavy, but they, they do it sparingly. And a lot of their training now is high rep stuff. And, um, and anyways, you'll, you'll, you'll find that if, uh, like I know that that guy, rich Piana, for instance, has talked about that. He's very open about his drug use. And he's talked just about this actually specific thing that when he was natural, heavy compound weightlifting was, was the key to building that base, that foundation of muscle. And then when he got on drugs,

he found that one, it was dangerous and two, his body responded better to just doing massive amounts of reps. You know, every set 50 reps, stuff like that. And I've spoken with quite a few other guys just privately that, you know, are on drugs and have had that same experience. So as a natural weightlifter, though, you're going to have to emphasize that heavy compound lifting. So anyways, coming back to me, I like training heavy and I like getting stronger, but if I keep on doing that, that means that I'm going to have to be in a slight surplus with my calories. I'm going to have to, you know, if I want to keep on getting stronger, then I will inevitably get bigger. And, um, I kind of don't want to, I don't want to be like five years later because I probably, natural looking looking at where

I'm at with my numbers and stuff I probably could gain maybe another 10 pounds naturally and it comes slow because at this point two three pounds of gain a year is really all I can hope for so you know over the next four years I could probably be 10 pounds heavier but I wouldn't really want to be 10 pounds heavier that's's, I mean, think about it. When you think about muscle and pounds, think about a steak, think about a 16 ounce steak, a pound of muscle. Now, 10 of those, you know what I mean? That's, that's quite a bit. Like I would, uh, I would be pretty, pretty big.

And, um, so what I don't want is I kind of don't want that to creep up on me over the years just because I continue to do, you know, what I know would work. Um, but I kind of don't want five years from now to like right now, uh, I'm about, I'm six, two is my height. And, uh, I weigh about a hundred, like in the morning, uh, you know, no food mirror, I weigh about one 90 to one 91. Um, and my weight's always been a little bit low. It's kind of strange actually. Um, because it's not that I don't have any legs or, you know, I don't know, maybe I have like light bones or something. I do have small bones. That's for sure. Uh, like I have a, I think a six and a half inch wrist, for instance, and my ankles are tiny. It's just,

I don't know my body type, but I wouldn't want, you know, let's say three, four, five years from now to be, uh, this body fat percentage and being like 205. Um, it's just not the look that I want. So anyways, you get to that point though, where you have the body you want, and then you decide, you know, for maintenance, you, you have also options. I just like heavy weightlifting. So that's what I continue to do. But I know people that have used a lot of heavy compound weightlifting, like my bigger, leaner, stronger program, or for women, thinner, stronger to kind of build that body they wanted. And then they go and do things that they find are fun. Like some guys get into CrossFit and they start doing CrossFit type of workouts, or they, you know, they taper down on

their heavy weightlifting. They do two or three heavy weightlifting workouts a week. And they do a bunch of body weight stuff because they always wanted to be able to do a bunch of cool body weight stuff. Um, or they just work out less period, which gives you more time to live and do other things where, you know, I could maintain my physique on two or three workouts a week. I don't do that because I kind of enjoy working out and that there are other benefits for me. I just, you know, it's good for my mind and it's a good way to start my day. Um, but you get that flexibility, uh, and you know, it doesn good for my mind and it's a good way to start my day. Um, but you get that flexibility, uh, and you know, it doesn't take nearly as much to, to maintain the muscle and

physique that you've built as opposed to getting there. Um, so I guess that's kind of the long answer on that one. Um, and I'm going to cut it off here. I hope you found this podcast helpful. Um, and again, please do go to muscle for life.com forward slash ask hyphen Mike hyphen anything, submit your questions, go vote up on other people's questions that you like, vote down the ones that you don't like. And so when I come back around to the next Q and a, uh, you know, I have a new batch of fresh questions to address. Um, and also, um, speaking of Q and A's also also I do a live Q&A over at legionathletics.com

forward slash Q&A which I think, hold on, let me just make sure that's the right URL we do that I do that once a month at the end of every month and I just take live questions we do it using Ustream

and yeah, that's it. Legion, L-E-G-I-O-N, athletics.com, forward slash Q-A. You can sign up for the June one, which is going to be June 24th. And for an hour, hour and a half, we just live chat. Jeremy goes through all the questions and he shoots over ones to me. And, you know, we just, we talk about whatever the people want to talk about. It doesn't have to be health and fitness. Some people ask me business questions.

Some people ask me personal questions, whatever. I don't care. I'll answer anything. So yeah, I'm going to sign off here. Thanks again and see you on the next podcast.