Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Q&A: Vocabulary Building, Vegetable Oils, and One Meal a Day (OMAD)

Episode Date: November 20, 2020

I’ve churned through over 150,000 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 three questions: “How do you build your vocabulary?” “What do I think of highly processed oils?” “What’s your take on eating one meal a day?” 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://legionathletics.com/reason-to-read/ https://legionathletics.com/fish-oil/ Timestamps: 4:00 - How do you build your vocabulary? 17:59 - What do you think about highly processed oils? 26:26 - What are your thoughts on one meal a day? Mentioned on The Show: Shop Legion Supplements Here: https://legionathletics.com/shop/ --- Want free workout and meal plans? Download my science-based diet and training templates for men and women: https://legionathletics.com/text-sign-up/

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 Hello and welcome to Muscle for Life. I'm Mike Matthews. Thank you for joining me today for a Q&A where I answer questions that readers and followers ask me. If you want to ask me questions that I can answer for you and that may be chosen for future Q&A episodes, shoot me an email, mike at muscleforlife, just F-O-R-L-I-F-E dot com, and let me know what's on your mind. I get a lot of emails, so it may take me 7, 10, maybe even 14 days, or sometimes a little bit longer, to be honest, to get back with you, but you will hear back from me, and you will get an answer. And if it's a question that a lot of people are asking or have been asking for some time, or if it's something that just strikes my fancy and it's something
Starting point is 00:00:52 that I haven't already beaten to death on the podcast or the blog, then I may also choose it for an episode and answer it publicly. Another way to get questions to me is Instagram at muscle for life fitness. You can DM them to me, although that is harder for me to stay on top of. I do try, but the inbox is a little bit buggy and it just takes more time trying to do it, whether it's on my phone or the windows app, but there is a good chance you will still get a reply. Email is better. And I also do post, I think it's every few weeks or so, in my feed asking for people to give me questions, give me fodder for the next Q&A. So if you would rather do that, then just follow me on Instagram at Muscle for Life Fitness and send me a message or just wait for one of my Q&A posts. Okay. So in this episode, I'm going to answer three questions. How do you build your vocabulary? And I don't have a note of who this came from, but it is something I've
Starting point is 00:01:50 been asked many times over the years. So it has come from many people. And what do I think about highly processed oils? This comes from therealmike__vick over on Instagram. And what are your thoughts on one meal a day? And this comes from Woe Guitars on Instagram. Also, if you like what I am doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, definitely check out my sports nutrition company, Legion, which thanks to the support of many people like you is the leading brand of all natural sports supplements in the world. And we're on top because every ingredient and dose in every product is backed by peer-reviewed scientific research. Every formulation is 100% transparent. There are no proprietary blends, for example. And everything
Starting point is 00:02:38 is naturally sweetened and flavored. So that means no artificial sweeteners, no artificial food dyes, which may not be as dangerous as some people would have you believe, but there is good evidence to suggest that having many servings of artificial sweeteners in particular every day for long periods of time may not be the best for your health. So while you don't need pills, powders, and potions to get into great shape, and frankly, most of them are virtually useless, there are natural ingredients that can help you lose fat, build muscle, and get healthy faster. And you will find the best of them in Legion's products. To check out everything we have to offer, including protein powders and protein bars, pre-workout, post-workout supplements, fat burners,
Starting point is 00:03:25 multivitamins, joint support, and more, head over to www.buylegion.com, B-U-Y legion.com. And just to show how much I appreciate my podcast peeps, use the coupon code MFL at checkout, and you will save 20% on your entire first order. So again, if you appreciate my work, and if you want to see more of it, and if you also want all natural evidence-based supplements that work, please do consider supporting Legion so I can keep doing what I love, like producing more podcasts like this. Now, before I explicitly answer this question, I think it's worth talking quickly about vocabulary building in general and why I think it is a very high leverage activity that it can benefit us in many ways that we don't understand. And I've actually written and spoken
Starting point is 00:04:22 about this already. So I have an article over at legionathletics.com titled, The Number One Reason to Read Is Not What You Think. That's in parentheses. And I recorded a podcast based on that article. So if you want to go learn more about this point in particular, check out the article or check out the podcast. But the long story short is, I believe, and I make a case for this in the article, both with some research and some anecdotal evidence, that growing our vocabulary, just increasing the number of words that we understand, completely separate from learning ideas, just the words, just doing that is one of the simplest and most powerful ways to enrich our mind and to expand our mind
Starting point is 00:05:07 and improve the way that we understand others and the environment, the world that we live in, and improve our ability to think, particularly to think critically, to use logic, and improve our ability to make constructive decisions, make good decisions, which then, of course, helps us take more effective action and achieve our goals more effectively. And so, as you can imagine, I take my vocabulary building seriously. If I didn't, then I would be a hypocrite, of course. And I put a fair amount of effort and time into systematically increasing my vocabulary. Now, how do I do that? Well, it is pretty straightforward. I spend on average an hour to maybe an hour and a half per day reading, sometimes less on the weekends because my schedule is a little bit different on the weekdays. I wake
Starting point is 00:05:55 up at 5.30 or 6 and go to the bathroom, drink some water, eat a banana, and go into an infrared sauna that I have in my basement and I read. And I sit in there for an hour or so, 45 minutes to an hour reading. And then I go and do some cardio on an upright bike, just low, maybe you could call it moderate intensity cardio, 30 minutes or so. And I continue reading while I'm on the bike. And I find that easy to do because again, this isn't high intensity cardio. I'm not doing sprints And I find that easy to do because again, this isn't high intensity cardio. I'm not doing sprints. I could carry on a conversation while I'm doing the cardio. I might be out of breath a little bit, but I'm able to concentrate enough on my book to make it
Starting point is 00:06:37 productive. Now I read on my phone. I read on the Kindle app on my phone because as much as I like having a physical book and I appreciate the art that goes into creating books, the physical products themselves, you really can't beat the convenience of digital reading because in my phone, I have a book with me everywhere I go. And that allows me to sneak in little bouts of reading if I find myself waiting somewhere for something or just with a bouts of reading if I find myself waiting somewhere for something or just with a little bit of downtime where I can pay attention to my phone. But also, it allows me to quickly look up the definitions of words because the Kindle app allows you to just highlight a word and it will pull up the dictionary and it'll show you a little preview
Starting point is 00:07:23 of the definitions one or two, depending on how many words are in the definitions. And then you can flip quickly over to the dictionary if the little preview doesn't give you the definition you need. And I do that a lot. I'm always looking for words that I don't understand, meaning that I have no good definition for. Words where if you were to ask me, Mike, what's the definition of that word? I would just stumble around and I would ask for the context and try to kind of figure it out. That's not knowing a word by my standards. And I'm also looking for words that I don't fully understand. I'm looking for words where my definitions would be deficient in a meaningful way, where I might have part of the meaning, but I'm missing a big important part as well. And so as you can
Starting point is 00:08:06 imagine, I'm in the dictionary a lot. And when I find words that I don't understand at all, where I just don't have a good definition period or have no definition or some wrong definition or made up definition or some partly right definition, I take the time to find the definition that fits to the context and make sure that I understand it conceptually. I'm not trying to learn the definitions of words rotely, of course. I'm just trying to make sure that the concept makes sense. And then I make up a couple of sentences, how I might use those words if I were writing something. And I also try to make those sentences as vivid and striking as possible.
Starting point is 00:08:43 And sometimes they are just imaginary. Sometimes I'm just coming up with something that is larger than life. And other times I'm relating the words to striking events in my life, things that have happened to me or that I've seen happening to other people, or maybe things I've read about or saw in movies or whatever. And the reason I take those extra pains in my sentence making as opposed to just being lazy about it and making very boring formulaic sentences with bland nouns and verbs like person, thing, stuff, do, and so forth is research shows that the more striking imagery is, the more likely we are to remember it. And so my theory is by associating the meanings of words with colorful imagery,
Starting point is 00:09:35 with imagery that is more likely to be remembered, we are going to be more likely to remember the meanings of the words when we come across them later, the more likely we are to recall those definitions. I don't know of any research on that point in particular, but based on my understanding of the research that has been done on human memory, I think it is a reasonable hypothesis. And it doesn't take much more time or effort to consciously recall things that have happened that are related to the word that we're making sentences with or to exercise our imagination a little bit. And I think there is additional value in doing that regularly in working our creative muscle, so to speak, lest it atrophy. And so then after I'm done making some sentences with the definition of the word that fits the context. Once I've gotten to a point where I feel like I've got it, I'll look through the other definitions to see if there's
Starting point is 00:10:30 anything that stands out to me as particularly interesting or if there are other definitions that I wasn't aware of, other ways that the word is commonly used that I just didn't know. And I'll go through the same process with those definitions. And often I'll also look at the etymology so I can get a sense of where the word came from and how its meaning evolved over time. And then I go back to the text and keep reading. And it's also worth noting that I will often check my definitions of words. I'll come across words that I have an intuition that maybe I don't fully understand, or I'm just curious if I have the right definition for it. So I'll stop and I'll quickly formulate the best definition
Starting point is 00:11:12 I have, and then I'll check it against the dictionary. And if it is right or mostly right, then I will just keep reading. But if it's wrong or mostly wrong, or if it is missing some major key component, I'll go through the process that I just described. Now, doing all of that means that I'm not a fast reader. I don't get through books nearly as quickly as some people, not because I'm distracted and just can't focus or can't sit and read for long periods of time, but because I am in the dictionary a lot.
Starting point is 00:11:42 I am spending a lot of time checking words and making sentences and going through other definitions and etymologies and so forth. And I'm totally okay with that. I think that that is a trade-off well worth making because for me, reading is much more about quality than quantity, both in choosing what to read and actually reading. I am much more interested in reading the right stuff than a bunch of stuff and really understanding what I'm reading, really understanding what the author was trying to communicate to me, or at least coming to as close of that mind meld as I possibly can. And of course, the only way to get there is to understand, ideally, every single word exactly as the author intended those words to be understood.
Starting point is 00:12:35 And any author worth their salt is using words per their meanings in the dictionary and not just arbitrary meanings, maybe invented on the spot or meanings that they heard from others. No, dictionaries are the gold standard of semantics. We all agree to use words as they are defined in the dictionary. And if we did not have that agreement, language would become a confusing muddle and would eventually lose a lot of, or even most of its utility. Now that is the foundation of my vocabulary building activities, but that's not everything. There is another part. So what I do is I find words that I like and I find definitions that I like and I save them. I take a screenshot of them on my phone and I save them to Google Keep is specifically what I do.
Starting point is 00:13:25 And then once every 7, 10, or 14 days, I go through my Google Keep and I use the grab image text function on it to extract those words and those definitions from Google Keep to a Google spreadsheet. And in that spreadsheet, I have tabs for nouns, verbs, modifiers, and idioms, and phrases. And in each tab, the first column is the word and the second column is the definition. And then every month or so, three or four weeks, I export each tab as a CSV and I load it into a flashcard app on my phone called Anki, A-N-K-I, and then I do flashcards every day for all of these words. And I have now thousands of words in this Google spreadsheet and in the app. Now, Anki isn't just any flashcard app. It is what is known as an SRS app, and that's an acronym that stands for Spaced Repetition System. And this is an evidence-based
Starting point is 00:14:26 method of, I wouldn't say learning because that implies understanding, but memorizing information that works remarkably well. Just look into it online and you can learn all about it. But for the purposes of this discussion, just know that it is far more effective than traditional flashcard methodology. And so in Anki, I have two different decks, my words A, my words B. Now my words A shows me a word. That's when I'm doing my flashcards. I first see the word and then I have to recall the definition. Now my other deck, my words B is the reverse of that. So when I'm doing those cards, I see a definition and then I have to recall the word that goes with that definition. I do both of those decks every day. And on average, it's probably about 70 cards that I'm going through and it takes 20 or maybe
Starting point is 00:15:19 30 minutes. Sometimes it's fewer cards and a little bit of less time. Sometimes it's more cards and a little bit of more time, but I go through every day's cards every day. And again, that is particular to SRS. You have a certain number of cards that you are being given every day based on a pattern, based on how well you perform, how easily you can remember each card correctly. Now, one additional thing I do on top of all that is I consciously try to use these words that I like, especially the new ones that I learn in my writing. So I always have my My Words spreadsheet open when I'm writing, and I am often referring to it and searching by keyword for synonyms of ideas that I want to communicate. And I find that the more I can do that, the better I retain the meanings of those words. And I believe there's actually research on that point in particular. It is certainly
Starting point is 00:16:19 something that is anecdotally supported. Many, many writers over the course of many, that is anecdotally supported. Many, many writers over the course of many, many years have spoken about that in particular, that consciously trying to use words that you learn and use words that you like improves your ability to remember them and to access them easily and quickly when you need them. And so that's it. That's how I build and strengthen or reinforce my vocabulary. And one other activity I would love to make time for, but I just am not ready to do it because of all the other things that I have to do would be just reading the dictionary, would just be going through this process of making sentences with definitions of words, literally just entry by entry in the dictionary. If I could work through the entire dictionary, maybe not the full
Starting point is 00:17:06 Oxford dictionary, but a good college level dictionary in that way, I think it would pay tremendous dividends. I think that would be a very effective way to progressively overload my mind, so to speak. It probably wouldn't be very much fun, but it certainly would be enlightening and it could be more enjoyable if I recruited somebody to do it with me. But that'll be a hard sell. There's maybe one person I can think of who would do it with me. And so anyway, chances are one day when I stop taking on as many work projects as I can possibly handle, I will take on that project.
Starting point is 00:17:44 If you like what I'm doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, definitely check out my sports nutrition company, Legion, which thanks to the support of many people like you is the leading brand of all natural sports supplements in the world. Okay, let's move on to the next question. This one comes from TheRealMike underscore Vic, and it is, what are your thoughts on highly processed oils? Now, what does he mean by highly processed oils? Well, he is probably referring to vegetable oils, oils that are obtained from plants and plant materials like palm oil, peanut or ground nut oil, coconut oil, avocado oil, soybean oil, canola oil. That's one that many people are afraid of. Sunflower oil and others. Those are all generally classed as
Starting point is 00:18:32 processed or highly processed oils because, well, they are fairly processed. They have often been purified and refined and sometimes even chemically altered before they are sold to us. And the reason they go through this processing is many of these oils contain substances and trace amounts of components that make them taste bad or that make them less stable or make them appear less edible or smell bad. And these oils have become much more readily available. You now find them in a lot of different prepackaged foods in particular, like crackers and biscuits and cookies, pastries, pies, mayonnaise, margarine, and other foods. They're also used in cooking that has become popular. And so you have a lot of people consuming a lot more of these oils now than ever before.
Starting point is 00:19:25 And despite what many people would have you believe, that is not bad per se. These oils are not harmful, period. That's not true. However, they do contain a lot of a type of fat called an omega-6 fatty acid, which is just referring to the chemical structure of it. And they do not contain much of, or any of, in some cases, omega-3 fatty acids, which is a different type of chemical structure. And research shows that the standard Western diet contains as much as 20 times more omega-6 fatty acids than omega-3 fatty acids. And before these vegetable oils were everywhere, that ratio is more like one to one. And that led scientists to theorize that the ratio is what was important, not the
Starting point is 00:20:13 absolute intake of omega-6 fatty acids, but the ratio between omega-6 and omega-3 fatty acids. So in that way, somebody who was eating a lot of omega-6 fatty acids could be okay if they were also eating a lot of omega-3 fatty acids and somebody who was eating a lot of omega-6 fatty acids could be okay if they were also eating a lot of omega-3 fatty acids. And somebody who was eating maybe only a moderate amount of omega-6 fatty acids would be at risk of disease and dysfunction if they were eating little or, I mean, it'd be hard to eat no omega-3 fatty acids, but very little omega-3 fatty acids. That said, several systematic reviews have found that that is not true. That said, several systematic reviews have found that that is not true. In fact, in one study conducted by scientists at Maastricht University Medical Center, researchers found that when participants ate meals high in omega-6 fatty acids, they had lower levels of inflammatory markers than when they ate meals that were high in saturated fat. So what's going on here? What's
Starting point is 00:21:01 the key takeaway? Well, other studies suggest that the crux of the issue is actually just your omega-3 fatty acid intake. That if you are not getting enough omega-3 fatty acids in your diet, your risk of disease and disorder goes up. And if you are, it goes down regardless of your omega-6 fatty acid intake. And that is relevant to vegetable oils because they are very high in omega-6 fatty acids. And that's something that many people have used to vilify them and to just label them as unhealthy. Well, that's not true. So long as you are getting enough omega-3 fatty acids in your diet, vegetable oils are not going to give you trouble. That doesn't mean you have to use them. Of course, I prefer olive oil over vegetable oils, but you don't have to be afraid of them either. And what's the best way to make sure that you get enough omega-3 fatty acids in your diet? Well, the easiest and most effective way is just a fish oil supplement. You take it every day, a few pills, and you're covered. That's it.
Starting point is 00:21:59 You can get there with food as well. You can get enough omega-3 fatty acids with food, but in my experience, working with thousands of people over the years, most people don't want to eat the way that you need to eat to do that. They don't want to eat several servings of fatty fish every week or enough alpha-linolenic acid, ALA, which is the primary plant-based source of omega-3 fatty acids, and they would rather just take a fish oil supplement. And if you want to learn more about fish oil supplements and how to pick a good one, head over to legionathletics.com and search for fish oil, and you'll find that we sell
Starting point is 00:22:35 a fish oil supplement, which is very good, I promise. But you'll also find over at the blog an article, at least one, if not a couple of articles on fish oil and why not all fish oil supplements are the same, why there are significant differences between some of these supplements. And I believe I have also recorded a podcast or two on fish oil as well, sharing more or less the same information. So you could just listen to the podcast. If you'd rather hear me explain it to you, then read it yourself. Okay, coming back to vegetable oils, another reason why many people are told to stay away from them is that they oxidize very easily when you use them in cooking. And what that means is the fatty acids in the vegetable oils react with the oxygen in the air, and then that can become harmful when you eat them. And while some studies have shown
Starting point is 00:23:22 that consuming repeatedly heated vegetable oils may cause adverse health effects, so vegetable oil that has been heated up to very high temperatures again and again, multiple times, other studies have shown that there are no obvious consequences despite that, despite the increased levels of oxidation that occur when vegetable oil is heated up to high temperatures over and over. Now, what does that mean for us who would not use oils like that? We are not running a fast food joint. We would not be frying up a hundred batches of French fries every day. Well, one study that was published in 2015 concluded that the most up-to-date research, the current
Starting point is 00:24:04 weight of the evidence, suggests that vegetable oils are probably safe for cooking as long as they aren't exposed to very high temperatures for a long time or used again and again. One other false claim about vegetable oils that we should address quickly is that they contain dangerous trans fats. Now, while it's true that artificially produced trans fats are bad, research shows that they can contribute to all types of problems like heart disease, obesity, cancer, diabetes. I mean, really, we should just avoid these artificial trans fats. You won't find these molecules in the vegetable oils on the shelf of your grocery store, you will find them
Starting point is 00:24:45 in products that contain certain types of oils, very highly processed vegetable oils. And you'll find them listed under names like partially hydrogenated oil. Maybe you've seen that before, or mono and diglycerides of fatty acids. That's another way that food companies have listed these artificial trans fats. However, you should know that in recent years, the FDA has taken steps toward banning these artificial trans fats. As of January 1st, 2020, food manufacturers in America are no longer allowed to use partially hydrogenated oil in their food products, for example. And so anyway, the current scientific literature shows that we don't have anything to fear from vegetable oils. They are probably fine to eat and to cook with so long as we don't heat them to very high temperatures. And really what
Starting point is 00:25:35 that means is so long as we don't exceed their smoke point. And depending on the oil, that ranges from the low 200s Fahrenheit to the low 500s Fahrenheit. And the only reason that you would be heating the oil up that much is if you wanted to fry stuff. And so, yes, this is me advising you to not eat a bunch of fried food, which I probably didn't have to tell you. And if for whatever reason you'd rather just stay away from vegetable oils, if you'd rather lower your omega-6 intake, for example, or if you just really don't like them, then go with extra virgin olive oil. That's my go-to. I use it for cooking. I use it for salads. I use it for baking because I like the taste. And it's also lower in omega-6 fatty acids than vegetable oils. And it's very heat stable, which makes it really good for cooking. And research shows that it is associated with health benefits, including a reduced risk of cardiovascular disease. Okay, let's get to the next question
Starting point is 00:26:29 here, which comes from Woe Guitars. And it's actually a bit of a longer question, but really what he's asking is, what's your take on one meal a day, OMAD, O-M-A-D, as it is often referred to. And as the name suggests, it's an eating protocol where you eat one meal per day. It's one for every 24 hours and you usually have about an hour to eat it. So it can be a couple of smaller meals, but you got to eat all of your calories in one hour and then you spend the other 23 hours fasting. And this is just one of the popular regimens out there for fasting. Fasting is a big thing these days. It is the diet technique du jour, and there are many different iterations of it. You've probably heard of the 5-2 diet or the 16-8 or lean gains
Starting point is 00:27:21 approach. Eat, stop, eat was popular for a while. I'm not sure how popular it is now. Alternate day fasting is certainly still out there as is the warrior diet. And there are many purported reasons to fast and to have your diet revolve more around not eating than eating, but most of them are scientifically dubious. For example, claims of how fasting triggers a physiological process known as autophagy, which is a process that deals with the destruction of cells and that plays a crucial role in maintaining muscle mass and neutralizing some of the negative aspects of aging. And in fact, autophagy is really the primary mechanism behind the anti-aging effects of calorie restriction that have been seen in research. And there are many problems with many of the claims that fasting advocates and gurus make
Starting point is 00:28:18 about how fasting affects autophagy in the body. And I don't want to go off on a long tangent here because I've actually written and recorded content specifically on this. If you go to legionathletics.com and you search for autophagy spelled auto, A-U-T-O, phagy, P-H-A-G-Y, you'll find an article I wrote on this as well as a podcast. And the long story short is having healthy levels of autophagy in the body is good and fasting may contribute to that to some degree. But when you view it in the context of other things like exercise and sleep, it appears to be insignificant. In other words, so long as you are living healthily, so long as you are exercising regularly and maintaining a healthy body composition and getting enough sleep, it is very unlikely that following an intermittent fasting
Starting point is 00:29:11 diet of any kind is going to meaningfully impact autophagy levels in your body. Well, that applies to OMAD as well, of course, because it's an intermittent fasting diet. And other claims made about the benefits of intermittent fasting and OMAD are similarly dubious. For example, many people turn to OMAD to lose weight faster, and it may help you lose weight faster. It may not, but if it does, it will only do so because it's going to help you better control your calories. Some people do better with fewer meals. Some people experience less hunger and are able to stick to their diets easier if they eat one, two, or maybe three meals per day. Three, now you're getting to more traditional dieting, but one or two is certainly an intermittent fasting type of approach, depending on the timing if you're eating two.
Starting point is 00:30:00 And some people though, research shows, do better the other way around. Some people experience less hunger and find it easier to stick to their diet when they're eating more frequently. I would be one of those people. I could do intermittent fasting and I've done it here and there just by skipping breakfast basically, but I have generally lower levels of hunger and higher levels of fullness and satisfaction by eating every few hours. Now, I have been eating like that for a long time, and so my body's used to it, and it expects food every few hours. And so it's possible if I were to follow an IF protocol for long enough, my body would adapt, and the experience would be more or less the same. But with the little experiments I've done in the past, that has not been the case. I have stuck to intermittent fasting for,
Starting point is 00:30:50 it's been a while, but let's say four to six weeks at a time. And I never got used to it. What I really noticed was hunger. Normally I am rarely hungry. I have to go for a long time without eating before I really start to feel hunger. And in my normal day to day where I am eating these days, it's maintenance calories and I'm eating every few hours, I'm basically never hungry. But with intermittent fasting, there are points in the day where I am noticeably hungry. That's unusual for me. Now, some other purported benefits of intermittent fasting include lower levels of systemic inflammation and oxidative damage and higher levels of insulin sensitivity and growth hormone. And while there are studies out there to suggest that intermittent fasting protocols can produce those effects in the
Starting point is 00:31:32 body, what we don't know is how impactful is that really in healthy people? Because a lot of the research that has been done on IF has been with sedentary overweight people. And over the last couple of years, that has changed. There have been some IF studies that have come out that have been done with resistance-trained people, and we're particularly looking at body composition. But a lot of the research that is used to sell these protocols was done with unhealthy people. Now, in healthy people, the effect may still be present, but in the context of exercising, maintaining a healthy body composition, getting enough sleep, and so forth, chances are they are going to be insignificant. Because we know that those things, exercising
Starting point is 00:32:18 regularly and particularly training your muscles and having more muscle than average and having less fat than average and getting enough sleep have huge systemic effects and benefit our physiology and our psychology in many different ways. And based on my understanding of the IF literature, I would argue that so long as you're doing those things correctly, whether or not you follow an intermittent fasting diet will not matter. If you do, it may help a little bit in a few different ways that are basically meaningless in the scheme of things. And if you don't, if you'd rather just follow a traditional diet because you like it more, then you'll do just as well. And so in the end, the only reason I can
Starting point is 00:33:00 really think of if you are the type of person who listens to this podcast, meaning that you are already doing the most important things mostly right most of the time. If you like intermittent fasting, do it. And if you don't, don't. That's it. And that applies to OMAD as well, of course. Now, one other problem with OMAD for us body composition peoples, for us lifestyle bodybuilders, is eating all of our protein in one hour, in a one-hour feeding window every day is not ideal for muscle growth. We can gain muscle and strength that way. We don't have to eat several servings of protein per day, but a number of studies have shown that three to maybe five servings per day of about 30 grams of protein with a few hours
Starting point is 00:33:48 in between each is probably ideal over the long term. And if you want to learn more about that in particular, head over to legionathletics.com, search for protein timing, and you'll find an article that I wrote on protein timing. And I believe I have recorded a podcast on it as well, which you'll find in the search results too. And that's it for that question. And I believe I have recorded a podcast on it as well, which you'll find in the search results too. And that's it for that question. And that is it for this episode. Again, thank you for joining me. I hope you found this helpful and I have lots more to come. Of course, next week, I have a monologue on hyperventilating and strength training. Very interesting little technique you can use to
Starting point is 00:34:25 increase your strength safely, safely, as well as an interview with my mom, a success interview with my mom who used Thinner Neener Stronger to transform her physique. So that was fun to do. And the next installment of Says You, where I address things that people disagree with me on. address things that people disagree with me on. to me from in whichever app you're listening to me in, because that not only convinces people that they should check out the show, it also increases search visibility. And thus it helps more people find their way to me and learn how to get fitter, leaner, stronger, healthier, and happier as well. And of course, if you want to be notified when the next episode goes live, If you want to be notified when the next episode goes live, then simply subscribe to the podcast and you won't miss out on any new stuff. And if you didn't like something about the show, please do shoot me an email at
Starting point is 00:35:34 mike at muscleforlife.com, just muscle, F-O-R, life.com, and share your thoughts on how I can do this better. I read everything myself and I'm always looking for constructive feedback, even if it is criticism. I'm open to it. And of course, you can email me if you have positive feedback as well, or if you have questions really relating to anything that you think I could help you with, definitely send me an email. That is the best way to get ahold of me, mikeatmuscleforlife.com. And that's it. Thanks again for listening to this episode.
Starting point is 00:36:07 And I hope to hear from you soon.

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