Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Reader Q&A Part 5: Whole Body Recovery, Cardio and Muscle Preservation, Macro "Flexibility"

Episode Date: December 30, 2014

In this podcast I answer reader questions about muscle vs. tendon and ligament recovery, how to preserve muscle when doing a lot of cardio, how much you can "fudge" your diet numbers, and more! Want to submit questions for me to answer? Go here: http://www.muscleforlife.com/ask-mike-anything/ View my holiday deals: http://legionsupplements.com/ ARTICLES RELATED TO THIS PODCAST: Debunking the Myth of Weightlifting and Joint Problems: http://www.muscleforlife.com/weightlifting-joint-problems/ Cardio and Muscle Growth: Friends or Foes? http://www.muscleforlife.com/cardio-and-muscle-growth-friends-or-foes/ The Definitive Guide to Effective Meal Planning: http://www.muscleforlife.com/healthy-meal-planning-tips/ Why High-Intensity Interval Training is Best For Weight Loss: http://www.muscleforlife.com/high-intensity-interval-training-and-weight-loss/ The Best Way to Gain Muscle Without Getting Fat: http://www.muscleforlife.com/the-best-way-to-gain-muscle-not-fat/ How Much Protein is Needed to Build Muscle: http://www.muscleforlife.com/how-much-protein-build-muscle/ 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 my books. Seriously, though, it actually is. I make my living as a writer, so as long as I keep selling books, I can keep writing articles over at Muscle for Life and Legion and recording podcasts and videos like this and all that fun stuff. Now, I have several books, but the place to start is Bigger Leaner Stronger if you're a guy and Thinner Leaner Stronger if you're a girl. Now, these books, they basically teach you everything you need to know about dieting, training, and supplementation to build

muscle, lose fat, and look and feel great without having to give up all the foods you love or grind away in the gym every day doing workouts that you hate. Now you can find my books everywhere. You can buy books online like Amazon, Audible, iBooks, Google Play, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and so forth. And if you're into audiobooks like me, you can actually get one of my books for free, one of my audiobooks for free with a 30-day free trial of Audible. To do that, go to muscleforlife.com forward slash audiobooks. That's www.muscleforlife.com forward slash audiobooks. And you can see how to do this. Now also, if you like my work in general, then I really think you're going to like what I'm doing with my supplement company, Legion.

Now, as you probably know, I'm not a fan of the supplement industry. I mean, I've wasted who knows how many thousands of dollars over the years on worthless supplements that really do nothing. And I've always had trouble finding products that I actually thought were worth buying and recommending. And well, basically I had been complaining about this for years and I decided to finally do something about it and start making my own products. And not just any products, but really the exact products that I myself have always wanted. So a few of the things that make my supplements unique are one, they're a hundred percent naturally sweetened and flavored. Two, all ingredients are backed by peer-reviewed scientific research that you can verify for yourself because on our website, we explain why we've chosen each ingredient and we also cite

all supporting studies so you can go dive in and check it out for yourself. Three, all ingredients are also included at clinically effective dosages, which are the exact dosages used in the studies proving their effectiveness. This is important, of course, because while something like creatine is proven to help improve strength and help you build muscle faster, if you don't take enough, then you're not going to see the benefits that are seen in scientific research. And four, there are no proprietary blends, which means that you know exactly what you're buying. All our formulations are 100% transparent, both with the ingredients and the dosages. So you can learn more

about my supplements at www.legionathletics.com. And if you like what you see and you want to buy something, use the coupon code podcast, P O D C A S T, and you'll save 10% on your order. All right. Thanks again for taking the time to listen to my podcast and let's get to the show. Hey, this is Mike Matthews from MuscleLife.com. Thanks for stopping by the podcast. In this episode, I'm going to do, I think this is the fourth Q&A. I'm running a Google moderator over on MFL, and every week I get quite a few new questions, and people then vote on which questions they would like me to answer,

and I pick the most popular ones and answer the questions. So in this podcast, I'm going to be talking about the difference between muscle recovery and muscle development and tendon and ligament recovery and development. Going to be talking about how to balance if you need to do a bunch of cardio basically, but you also want to still lift weights and make gains, we'll talk about how to do that. And I'm going to be talking about when you're – really, I guess it doesn't really matter whether you're cutting or bulking or maintaining. How close do you need to be with your macros and what should you do if you go over one or more or all on one day? And then how do you kind of compensate for that depending on what you're trying to do and the final question is going to be regarding protein how much protein

you need to be eating to build muscle if you're in a surplus or eating around maintenance and maintain muscle if you're cutting and also before i, I just want to let you know that my supplement company, Legion Athletics, we're running a big December sale over at Legion, L-E-G-I-O-N, supplements.com, 20% off everything. And then every day, we're kind of like a 12 days of Christmas, you know, advent calendar kind of thing where every day we do a new deal or gift or giveaway or something cool. So we're going to be running that from today. And it's Wednesday the 10th and we're going to be running it through the 22nd, which I guess is called super Saturday. Um, and another one of those days where people just have a reason to buy a bunch of stuff, I guess. Uh, so yeah, so check that out. If, uh, if you're interested in

a hundred percent naturally sweetened supplements, um, that don't have a bunch of artificial junk, no fillers, no artificial food dyes or other unnecessary chemicals, all ingredients are backed by sound science that you can go review for yourself. Like with my articles and how I write, I cite everything in relation to the ingredients, why they're there, what the proven benefits are. And also I use all ingredients. I include them at clinically effective dosages, meaning that these are the actual dosages found in the studies proving or demonstrating the benefits. Because one of the common scams that supplement companies run is they'll take a molecule that has been proven to improve performance, let's say, let's say like beta-alanine, and we all know, we've all heard that, but what a lot of people don't know is how much beta-alanine you need to take to actually expect any sort of improvement in your performance.

sort of improvement in your performance. And for instance, there's a meta-analysis that we referenced that shows that the average dosage used in studies demonstrating benefits is about five grams, a little bit less than five grams, 4.8, I think it is. So in our pre-workout pulse, or my pre-workout, whatever, pulse, I use 4.8 grams of beta-alanine. So no proprietary blends as well. So with my products, you know what you're getting. Look on the label. That's what you're getting. Review the science and see why everything's there.

Basically, I'm just kind of have developed the supplements that I myself personally have always wanted. And other people think that's cool too. All right. So let's get to the podcast here. First question comes from Katie from Indiana. He says, Mike or she, uh, we always hear about muscle groups, recovering and growing any literature on how well the body can repair and strengthen things like joints, tendons, et cetera. Fear of injuring these is what stops me

from pushing myself harder at times. Um, this is a good point. This is something actually be worthwhile writing an article on, but, um, first I haven't seen any research that specifically on the adaptations that occur in tendons and ligaments. Uh, it may be out there. And if, uh, as, as the listener, if you know of any good research on this, actually, you know, if you could shoot it my way, um, just email it to me or shoot, you know, hit me up on Facebook or Twitter or whatever. Uh, and let me know. I've seen research done, uh, with power lifters in particular that showed that, um, heavy, heavy squatting, heavy, heavy, heavy deadlifting, uh, doesn't place, uh, too much strain on joints. Like I think it was the knee in particular in the lower back. If, if, if you use proper form, the amount of force and amount of pressure applied on the joints

and on the tendons and ligaments is, uh, well within the, uh, acceptable ranges and it's not dangerous. So that, uh, is good to know because if I remember correctly, in one of the studies, they also were accounting for drug use and a fair amount of the subjects of the study were on drugs. So one of the issues that guys run into when they're on drugs is that their muscles can progress in strength and size much quicker than the tendons and ligaments can keep up, uh, to keep everything stable. And that's one of the reasons why, uh, guys on drugs often hurt their, their joints. They often, you know, we'll, we'll get a shoulder injury because they're, uh, I mean, like there's this guy, he comes to my gym now and then, um, he was on a lot of drugs at one point. I think he's, he's cut it back cause Cause he's like 30 pounds lighter now, but, um, he was having me spot him, uh, with four Oh five on the seated military press. And I mean, I'm standing above him. Like, dude, if you don't like, I can't save you. If you,

if you can't get this, there's not much I can do. I'm standing over him, you know, like this and there's 400 plus pounds sitting on a bar, not much I'm going to be able to do. And, uh, so he gets it to the bottom and he's just stuck. Now, fortunately he was strong enough. I mean, he probably, his, his normal weight was probably three 15, which is ridiculous on that press. But so he was strong enough where, you know, I only had to take maybe 80 pounds off the bar and then he, we could get it back up. But, um, doing stuff like that, putting, you know, the, the amount of strain and the amount of overload that he was putting on his joints, it's risky. And, uh, guys will get overzealous and they'll get hurt because, uh, their muscles, they, they feel like I could add more weight, add more weight, add more weight until something, you know, uh, uh, a tendon, uh, tears or until ligament tears or something like

that. So coming back to the question, the good news is I've never seen a natural weight lifter that is being smart about it. Uh, you know, using progressive overload correctly, not sacrificing form to try to move up and wait. Uh, I've never seen anybody. I mean, I don't even know if I ever even know anybody that really has incurred any serious injury. Um, the people that get hurt one for one already had previous injuries that, you know, they weren't being smart about. So they, you know, they hurt their shoulder years ago, never really did any sort of rehab or mobility or anything, and then try to jump back into heavy weightlifting and then re-hurt it. That will happen.

Or just getting kind of sloppy with form on a deadlift or a squat or some sort of heavy press where they just make kind of a rookie mistake. Maybe on the pressing, they get their elbows way out here and end up hurting something or on the deadlift, they get their back really rounded or they do the, you know, where you get down and then people, a lot of people will shoot their hips up like this and then try to almost good morning, the weight up like that, um, puts a ton of shearing force on the lower back. Uh, you know, you can pull a muscle that way or cause an injury that way. So if you are not ego lifting and you're keeping your form in, which means occasionally, I mean, I recommend

that you have somebody video you. I do it. I've been, I started to post these videos on Instagram just because people like to see it, but I'll do that every so often. Just almost kind of do a form reset. Get myself on video. See how I'm looking. Because, you know, when you're – I find it especially with deadlifting and squatting because it's just the sheer amount of weight that I'm moving. I, you know, and this is anybody. Sometimes you tend to lose what you think you're doing is not quite what you're doing. you know, and this is anybody, sometimes you tend to lose what you think you're doing is not quite what you're doing. You might think that you're keeping your spine in a good, you know, 30,

45 degree, kind of just maintaining that all the way up on your pulling. And, but then you see yourself on video and then you see that you actually do shoot your hips and you do that whole thing and you won't necessarily notice it until maybe you get hurt. So if you are smart about it though, and put yourself on camera now and then, and just, just, you know, even if that means that you have to, you, it might seem like you're making slower gains. You're not because when you start cheating form, you're also reducing the effectiveness of the exercise in most cases. So if you're keeping all that stuff in and you're pushing yourself hard in your workouts, I don't see any reason why you have to worry about injuring joints, um, uh, or, or tendons or ligaments. Um, in fact, I'm going to post an article down below that I, where I,

where I talk about the myth that weightlifting is bad for your joints. Um, you'll probably find that helpful if you have concerns about that so the bottom line is learn the movements how to do them properly and push yourself and you'll be fine, just keep your form in and work, I also recommend that you don't start really trying to move heavy weights, I wouldn't do a bunch of,

uh, I wouldn't regularly do, let's say two or three or even one rep work. If I were, I wouldn't recommend that to somebody new to weightlifting. Um, because that's also, you know, can, can lead to an injury just because you're unfamiliar with, uh, the, the movement already. And now you're adding a bunch of weight and it can be easy to just do a little something wrong. And then there you go. Now, now you may, even if it's not a serious injury, a muscle strain alone can, you know, uh, I've strained my back deadlifting, actually just warming up, just kind of being sloppy. And it was a mild strain, but I wasn't able to deadlift for another three weeks. And that was just like, I w it was just two 25. I was being lazy with it. I was just like,

yeah, whatever, two 25. And then I was like, eh, it doesn't feel so good. So, you know, even mild muscle strains can be a pain in the ass. So yeah, I guess that pretty much answers that question. So I'll move on to the next. Okay. So next question here is from Braden and he is in Okinawa, Japan. He says, for those who are active duty in the military and obligated to participate in physical fitness tests that include running, do you have any recommendations on how to not lose hard-earned muscle gains

despite workouts that exceed 30 minutes of cardio? Good question. I also get emailed about this by a fair amount of people. A lot of them are in the military and a lot of them are in the military and a lot of them are like, you know, sometimes triathletes or they want to do like obstacle course stuff or marathons. And basically what it boils down to is there is a point where if you're doing, there is a point where cardio is going to impair your muscle gains and going, and, and going to affect your,

your workouts in the gym. Uh, and if you really took it too far, you know, there is a point where you would lose muscle. Um, but it's a bit, that's, that's harder to, to do than, than, than a lot of guys think. I mean, cause the traditional bodybuilder think is that cardio, any cardio is just going to get in the way of muscle growth. And that's not necessarily true. I'll link an article down below that I wrote on this subject that kind of goes over the pros and cons of cardio in relation to muscle growth, because there are actually some pros. It's not just all cons, but to, um, to prevent any sort of muscle loss and to try to, you know, keep on making gains in the gym when you have to do quite a bit of cardio, what I've found, and I found this mostly with,'ve found this mostly with people that want to run marathons or

half marathons because their cardio has to, maybe it starts out moderate, but then as it starts to pick up, as they get closer to the race, they really are doing a lot. And usually what we have to do is just dial back the weekly volume on the workouts. So while they may be able to start with, let's say five days of weightlifting and three days of, of cardio where it's maybe like three to five mile runs as the cardio ramps up, we do have to work the workouts back. So, um, with marathon runners are people that, you know, have always wanted to run a marathon. So they're going to train to do it.

We, what has seemed to work well is in the end of, at the end of the training, when they're doing a lot of cardio is they're lifting three times a week. They're doing something like a push, pull legs, still pushing, still, you know, working with heavy weight. You don't have to do, there's no reason to start doing high rep stuff. In fact, the heavy weight lifting is going to help you preserve muscle more than a high rep type routine would. So you'd see that like a chest and tris, back and bys, legs and shoulders.

It kind of just depends on what the person prefers. And we're sticking to trying to work in about nine to 12 heavy sets. This isn't the case for guys. It'd be usually in the four to six heavy sets. Uh, this isn't the case of, of, uh, for guys, it'd be usually in the four to six rep range for girls. It's usually in the, in the eight, 10 rep range, maybe with some four, four to six rep worked in. So nine to 12 heavy sets per week per major muscle group is how we set it up. Um, and you know, the arms usually get less of course, because those are the least important when you're doing a lot of heavy pushing and pulling, arms training isn't worthless. It definitely can help, but it's just the least important.

Your arms are, you can maintain your current arm size and a lot of your arm strength just by doing heavy pushing and pulling alone. Now, when you add some arm training on top of it, you definitely make some more gains. But if we're going to reduce volume somewhere to fit into that schedule, we're going to reduce it from arms and everything else. We try to keep around 9 to 12 sets per week. And also there are little things like before you go out running, you should definitely, we're doing a longer cardio session, you should definitely have 30 to 40 grams of protein. Um, you know, protein powder

is simple for this, like whey protein. And then afterward, it's good to have the same amount. So, you know, if you're going to go run five miles, have some protein before, have some protein after, um, and carbohydrates, uh, it doesn't, it's going to help your performance, but that's, it's not really going to, uh, affect if you're going to have carbs, it'd be, um, well, I guess there could be, there could be an argument depending on how much cardio you did. If you're doing some higher intensity stuff that was depleting glycogen stores, then having some carbs after it could be a good idea. Um, but it's not necessary. And, um, in terms of diet, it's very important that you don't, if, when, if you really want to preserve muscle and you're

going to be doing a lot of cardio or you have to just do a lot of cardio as a standard thing, ideally you're not going to be in a calorie deficit because that is going to make it worse. When I'm working with people that run marathons, even if they're currently trying to lose weight and then they're going to be really ramping up their exercise. I normally try to talk them into just working up, working their calories back up to around maintenance for, for where they're going to be each week. And each week that maintenance gets a little bit higher because they're having to, uh, taper their, their, or I guess it'd be like, you know, tapering would be down, but they have to increase the amount of cardio they're doing, which means they have to

eat more. So usually what these guys and girls are doing is every week, uh, they're reworking at the beginning of the week. They're looking at how much exercise they're going to be doing, calculating their, uh, total daily energy expenditure, more or less, you know, you're not, it's never going to be a hundred percent, but we want to keep them right around maintenance. Um, which I'll, I'll link an article down below if you're not familiar how to do this and how to turn it into a meal plan. And then, you know, that goes up. And by the time they're getting to the race, they're eating quite a bit more than when they started. But, you know, their body composition is more or less the same. They're not gaining fat.

So I definitely, especially as the cardio really starts to get intense, I would not be in a calorie deficit. And, um, yeah, I mean, those are really just the main things, making sure you eat enough, having some protein before and after making sure that you are in the gym, pushing yourself, lifting heavy, still trying to make gains. Um, and then one other thing, just, uh, it's worth noting is that don't, don't be afraid of cardio. I mean, I know if you check out the article I wrote, you'll get more information on this. But don't think that just because you go for a 45-minute run, now you're going to lose a bunch of muscle.

Because that's just not the case. I mean, me personally, I don't – I do – my standard kind of week is I do three sessions of high-intensity interval cardio. I do it for about 25 minutes. I do recumbent biking. That's just kind of my maintenance. I just like it actually. It feels good. I do it at the end of the day after work I've been sitting, you know, even though I do get up and I stretch and stuff, it's just nice to get off the computer and just kind of go bike for a little bit. And I've been doing that for a long time and yeah, it's not, it's not that much cardio. It's,

you know, let's say 70, 75 minutes a week. Um, but it is higher intensity and that doesn't get in the way of my progress in the gym at all. In fact, I personally don't really notice it. I don't really start noticing a decline in my performance in the gym until I, I started noticing it at like, if I'm in a calorie deficit at about five of those sessions a week. So when I start getting my cardio up to the two hours a week mark, uh, high intensity plus calorie deficit, plus five days of lifting, that's when I actually start to feel it a little bit in the gym. I get weaker. I don't have the energy. I just start getting a little bit into an overtrained state. Um, but if I were, if I just were to be in a calorie surplus or eating maintenance, I'll bet you,

I mean, I haven't done that before because it wouldn't really make sense for me to do five cardio sessions a week if I'm going to be in a maintenance mode or a bulking mode. But I'll bet you that alone would mitigate that effect where I could do that two hours of cardio a week and really not notice anything in the gym in terms of impaired performance. But part of this is just going to be learning your body and kind of just following these guidelines. There isn't just a rigid structure I can recommend, but it is going to be as cardio goes up, your weightlifting frequency and volume, they're kind of just tied into each other, comes down, but you have to push heavy and you got to make sure that you're eating enough and don't try to be in a calorie deficit when you're doing a lot, a lot of exercise. It's just going to make

the muscle loss. It's going to lead to some muscle loss for sure. All right, so let's move on to the next question here. Chris from Houston, Texas says, hi Mike. I find it impossible to hit exactly 223 grams of protein every day. Some days I go over under by 10, 20 grams. Is this acceptable? What's a reasonable amount of over under to be of your macros? This question would apply to fats and carbs as well. Good question. So one, totally fine.

10, 20 grams over under your protein intake is not a big deal at all. That's totally fine. When I'm dieting, really whether I'm cutting or bulking, I try to be within a hundred calories of my target. And when I'm cutting, and especially if I, uh, I mean, when I, when I'm cutting, I am normally cutting to get quite lean six to 7% or so. Um, I I'm really within probably 50 calories just because if I were to overeat, if I were to just flat out eat 100 calories more than how much energy I'm expending every day, depending on what macronutrient that is, that could actually have a little bit of an effect. Because as you get leaner, when you're going from, let's say, 8% down to 6%, you're going to lose probably on average about a half a pound of fat a week. And that's easy to mess up. So, you know, if you're overeating seven days a week by 100 calories a

day, 700 calories, you may only lose, you know, I don't know, two thirds of, or sorry, you may only lose like, you know, 30.3 pounds. You might, whatever that would be in grams, I guess it'd be like, I think a pound is like 207 grams. So like you might only lose 50, 60 grams instead of, you know, double that of what you're looking or more or less double. So when I'm maintaining, I try to be within about 100 calories, maybe 150.

When I'm bulking, same thing, because although bulking, you feel like you have a license now to eat everything, that can lead to other problems. I'll link an article down below where I talk about how that kind of works and the proper way to juggle bulks and cuts so you don't gain fat too quickly on your bulks and then take too long on your cuts. That's really the worst way to go about it. Um, so if you are, if you just stick to within those numbers, then you'll be totally fine. Um, and if you do happen to go quite over, you know, let's say whatever, who cares? Something tastes really good and you want to eat a bit more of it. So you do, let's say that you're 50 carbs

over your, uh, your, you know, normal day, what you're targeting for of it. So you do, let's say that you're 50 carbs over your, uh, your, you know, normal day, what you're targeting for the day. If you're cutting and you really care, I mean, realize that the worst you can do is you just lose a little bit less fat that day. You know, if 50, 50 carbs over may, or depending on your body and you know, your size and what you're doing that may or may not, uh, counteract the fat you would have lost that day. Maybe, maybe it doesn't, you know, completely zero it out. It might just like, instead of losing, uh, you know, I don't know, 10, 15 grams of fat that day, you might lose half that or something like that.

So if, you know, you can look at it that way and just go, all right, whatever today, I lost a little bit less fat and then just carry on the next day. Or if you really want, if it's not that big of a, you know, if it's a 50 carb, 200 calorie difference, you could subtract that from the next day's numbers and, you know, lose a bit more fat that day. But don't do that if you go way over. If you really just kind of lose control and overeat by like 1,000 calories, don't try to then subtract a thousand calories from the next day. You're, it's just not worth it. You're going to feel miserable. And, uh, you know, you could go

a bit under, you could, you could, let's say go two or three, 300 calories under and, um, you know, whatever you lose a little bit less fat over those, those next couple of days. And then you just get back on track. Uh, so yeah, that's basically, and if you're going to go over on anything, I recommend that I could say, I recommend you go over on protein, but that's not very fun. I don't get very many people emailing me saying, I just can't stop eating protein. I don't know what it is. If you're going to go over on something, it's best to go over on carbs because your body has quite a few things it can do with carbohydrate other than store it as body fat. Whereas dietary fat is just stored very efficiently

as body fat. That's one of the primary functions that serves in the body among other things. So, you know, you can, and I've, I've noticed this before. I stay pretty lean year round. I'm probably about 7% right now. Some are, you know, seven, seven and a half, something like that. It's kind of hard to tell at the calipers and you start getting to a certain point. Um, and if I go out, like I went out Saturday to a restaurant and I didn't really, I mean, I guess it makes sense. I wasn't thinking too much. Usually when I go out to eat, I just kind of order what I want to order. And you know, there's only so much damage you can do in one meal. I don't eat until I'm like about to explode. I just eat, uh, for me, you know, I guess, well, this is the point. The calories can

be deceptive because it depends on the food that you eat. If I'm eating, if I'm gonna eat a big bowl of pasta, for instance, you know, I could eat probably about 200 to 250 grams of carbs and pasta. And that would be my like cheat meal basically. And that's satisfying for me. I can eat more. I can eat quite a bit of food if I want to, but that's a good amount. And in terms of calories, that's not that bad. 250 carbs, 1,000 calories. Let's say the recipe has 30, 40 fat in it. And if I add some protein, in the end, the worst I can do is a 2,000 calorie dinner and I can save up calories. Let's say I come into that dinner only having eaten 1,500 calories. So I end my day at, you know, whatever, 3,500, 4,000 calories.

Really not a big deal. But so I go to this restaurant and I order like some beef carpaccio. I order some calamari. I order a steak. I order macaroni and cheese, which is getting to my point. And carrot cake, right? So I eat all this shit. And, uh, I was curious just cause I was like, I wonder, I have no idea what these, what these macros are.

I usually don't eat this much fatty stuff. I'm going to a restaurant. I usually, you know, try to stick the carbier things or, uh, maybe just leave out the Mac and cheese or something like that. So I go and look online and, uh, the Mac and cheese has like 80 grams of fat alone. Holy shit. And, you know, 60, 70 carb and like 30 protein. Steak, you know, they cook it in butter. I mean, it's probably another 40 grams of fat in the steak. The carpaccio is pretty lean, so probably maybe 10 grams of fat there.

And then the calamari were battered and fried. So, you know, I've got to figure out another 30 fat there. the calamari were battered and fried. So, you know, I got to figure out a 30 fat there. So, um, that I actually, uh, the next day, the next two days or so, I actually noticed that I was a little bit fatter. I was like, wow, that's, that's pretty good. One meal. And I can see it in the mirror. I mean, obviously there's a ton of sodium too. So I'm holding water and, uh, you know, so my point is if you're going to go over, it's, it's, it's not that it's like fine. Okay. So what I did is I've just cut my calories back for, you know, today's Wednesday. Uh, and I ate that meal on Saturday night. I think it was Friday, Friday, Saturday. Anyway.

So the next few days I've just been cutting. Basically I just dropped my calories to my normal where I would just start my cut about 2,500 calories a day. And now I look exactly the same as I do, you know, with that. Maybe I gained, let's say a half a pound of fat or something from that meal. It's gone now. Okay, fine. I can just go back to my normal thing. So, and I would say it's worth it. You know, I don't do that very often. I don't, uh, well, I mean, I always have cheat meals and stuff, but I don't normally eat like a couple hundred grams of fat in one meal just because it's not necessary. But I did it, and now I'm back to normal. So you can always look at it that way too. If you're going to splurge on a bunch of fatty foods, then just know like, okay, fine.

So it takes a few days to undo that, and then you're back on track. If I were cutting, though, I wouldn't have done that just because when I'm cutting, I wanna get it over as quickly as possible, essentially. I wanna get out of the deficit and back at maintenance or back into a surplus so I can have good workouts and continue building strength, continue building muscle. So I wouldn't go out and eat a couple hundred grams of fat in a meal because it sets me back.

If I were cutting, that half a pound that I've gained and now lost could have been a half a pound that I just lost. I never gained the first part. It could be a half a pound closer to my goal. Whereas if I were cutting right now, I'm now back to where I was before I ate that meal. But maintaining, you can have fun with this kind of stuff. And, you know, so if you're going to go over, I do recommend trying to go over on carbs.

Try to keep your fats moderate. And just as a corollary to the fats-blurging story, I've done some very high-carb cheat. I mean, I don't do cheat days, but a cheat meal where by the end of the day, you know, probably like 500, 600 carbs, in a surplus for sure for the day. And, and we kept my fats kind of moderate, didn't go crazy with the fats. And there's definitely a difference once again, because the, the, uh, the body, depending on like where your glycogen stores are at, if your glycogen stores are topped out, then, you know, you don't have any, any sort of wiggle room there. But if your body can super compensate with glycogen, you mean, meaning they can stuff even more in the, in the muscles and the liver, there's a fair chunk of those carbs gone, just used up.

And then your body is using some of the carbs for just glucose, for energy, to just operate, stay alive. And then what's left over to convert it into fat is just the process. It's called de novo levagenesis. It's just – it's not very energy efficient. For every gram of carbohydrate, it costs about 25% of the energy just to convert it into body fat. So yes, you can gain fat by eating carbs. But if you're going to be in a large calorie surplus or a sizable calorie surplus, it is best to do with carbohydrates. Okay. So let's get to the next question here. This is from CH. I don't know where they're from in the world,

but that's, that's the, those are their initials, I guess. This person says, I know that you recommend an individual who's trying to gain muscle and lifts regularly or habitually should consume one gram protein per pound of body weight. Can consuming up to two gram a pound be detrimental to one's health? You know, it kind of, it depends on if you, if you have healthy kidneys, no, two grams per pound is probably not going to cause any health issues. Maybe if you did it over long periods of time and also did other things that would stress your, your kidneys. But I mean, I ate two grams per pound for years and years and years and always drank a lot of water. And I've always just been generally pretty healthy person, never had any issues. But the point here though, is there's no reason to do that. You're not going to gain

anything by eating two grams of protein per pound. And by the way, it'll be pretty expensive. It's just when you're in a, when you are maintaining or when you're in a surplus, you do not need to be eating more than one gram per pound. I'll link an article down below where I kind of go over the science of this and explain why. And you could probably even get away with 0.8 grams per pound of body weight if you wanted to. As a good, easy, general rule of thumb, I do just recommend one gram per pound of body weight. It's not hard to do. That's a few servings of meat a day, throw in some dairy, throw in some eggs, swap things out, whatever you want, throw in some protein powder. It's very easy to get there. Like for me, I have a couple scoops of protein. I have like three scoops of protein a day just because it's convenient. And I do a

shake after I work out and it tastes good. I do two scoops in that and one scoop later, I have, you know, four or five ounces of chicken at lunch. I have five or six ounces of meat at dinner. And I usually have some sort of slower burning protein later at night before bed. Like I like, I usually rotate between like Greek yogurt or cottage cheese are kind of my two go-tos. And, you know, there, there is, I eat about 200 grams of protein a day and it's, it's very easy. I can eat much more if I needed to, but I don't have to.

And if you're cutting, I recommend that you raise your protein intake a little bit higher, especially if you're lean, especially if you are, as a guy, if you're in the 10% range, or if a girl, if you're in like the 19%, 20% range and you want to get really lean, then 1.2 grams per pound is the standard, is what I recommend. But going any higher than that is just unnecessary. So save yourself the money. And, you know, also, I mean, eating two grams per pound, eating 400 grams of protein a day, yeah, I could do it. But I would be real sick of everything that I had to eat.

And I've done it in the past. I mean, I used to, you know, do three scoops of protein. That was one shake. I would do a couple of those shakes a day. And my lunch was mad. I had a ton of probably like 12 ounces of meat. And then my dinner would have the same thing. And I was always full and just like, I don't know.

I was happy when I finally learned that I don't have to do that anymore. So save yourself the money and save yourself the just gross feeling of always being stuffed and keep your protein around one gram per pound. You'll be good. All right. So those are today's questions. If you want to submit your own questions or you want to vote on other people's questions on what you think I should answer next, please do hit up my Google moderator page, which I'll link down below, and you'll see how it works. It's very simple. You can write your own questions, and then it also just has like a window that cycles through questions that you can give them a check mark or an X mark and check as you like it and X as you don't like it. And I will, you know, so I swing back around to it every couple weeks or so just to let more votes accumulate and let new questions kind of rise to the top and do another Q&A.

All right. Thanks again. I hope you enjoyed it, and I'll see you next time. Hey, it's Mike again. I hope you liked the podcast. If you did, go ahead and subscribe. I put out new episodes every week or two where I talk about all kinds of things related to health and fitness and general wellness. all kinds of things related to health and fitness and general wellness. Also head over to my website at www.muscleforlife.com where you'll find not only past episodes of the podcast, but you'll

also find a bunch of different articles that I've written. I release a new one almost every day, actually. I release kind of four to six new articles a week. And you can also find my books and everything else that I'm involved in over at muscleforlife.com. All right. Thanks again. Bye.