Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Says You! Ideal Calorie Deficit, Carbs and Your Brain and Blood Sugar, and Wealth Inequality

Episode Date: August 7, 2020

I’ve written and recorded a lot of evidence-based content over the years on just about everything you can imagine related to building muscle, losing fat, and getting healthy. I’ve also worked with thousands of men and women of all ages and circumstances and helped them get into the best shape of their lives. That doesn’t mean you should blindly swallow everything I say, though, because let’s face it—nobody is always right about everything. And especially in fields like diet and exercise, which are constantly evolving thanks to the efforts of honest and hardworking researchers and thought leaders. This is why I’m always happy to hear from people who disagree with me, especially when they have good arguments and evidence to back up their assertions. Sometimes I can’t get on board with their positions, but sometimes I end up learning something, and either way, I always appreciate the discussion. That gave me the idea for this series of podcast episodes: publicly addressing things people disagree with me on and sharing my perspective. Think of it like a spicier version of a Q&A. So, here’s what I’m doing: Every couple of weeks, I’m asking my Instagram followers what they disagree with me on, and then picking a few of the more common or interesting contentions to address here on the podcast. And in this episode, I’ll be tackling the following . . . 4:33 - “Some women have a hard time sticking to an aggressive deficit and do better with a smaller one.” 21:33 - “Eating high amounts of carbs is not healthy for brain function and insulin.” 37:07 - “While the poor have it well today, wealth equality is still a massive issue” --- Mentioned on The Show: Shop Legion Supplements Here: https://legionathletics.com/shop/ 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.legionathletics.com/signup/

Hello, and welcome to Muscle for Life. I'm your host, Mike Matthews. Thank you for joining me today. Now, I've written and recorded a lot of evidence-based stuff over the years on just about everything you can imagine relating to building muscle, losing fat, and getting healthy. I've also worked with thousands and thousands of men and women of all ages and circumstances and helped them get into the best shape of their life. But that does not mean you should just blindly swallow everything I say, because let's face it, nobody is always right about everything. And especially in fields like diet and exercise, which are always evolving thanks to the efforts of honest and hardworking researchers and thought leaders. And that's why I'm always happy to hear

from people who disagree with me, especially when they have good arguments and evidence to back up their assertions. Sometimes I can't quite get on board with their positions, but sometimes I end up learning something. And either way, I always appreciate the discussion. And that gave me the idea for this series of podcast episodes, which I call Says You, where I publicly address things that people disagree with me on, and I share my perspective. It's kind of like a spicier Q&A. So what I do is every couple of weeks, I ask people who follow me on Instagram, at Muscle for Life Fitness, please follow me, what they disagree with me on. And then I pick a few of the more common or interesting contentions to address here on the podcast. So if there's something that you disagree

with me on, and it could be related to diet, exercise, supplementation, business, lifestyle, I don't care, anything, go follow me on Instagram at MuscleForLifeFitness and look for my says you story that I put up every couple of weeks where I solicit content for these episodes, or just shoot me an email, mike at muscleforlife.com. All right, so here is what I'll be tackling in today's episode. First up from Devin Peterson Fit, Instagram handle. Some women have a hard time sticking to an aggressive deficit and do better with a smaller one. The second is from Will Cooley, another Instagram handle. Eating high amounts of carbs is not healthy for brain function and

insulin. And finally, we have from Cotabota. While the poor have it well today, wealth inequality slash hoarding is a massive issue. 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 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 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, 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. Okay, let's start with the first one, which is from Devin Peterson Fit. Some women have a hard time sticking to an aggressive deficit and do better with a smaller one. And this is true. Some people do prefer a smaller calorie deficit. So my general recommendation is an aggressive but not reckless calorie deficit, something around 20%, maybe as high as 25% or as low as 15%, but somewhere in that range. And again, most people seem to do best right around 20%. And they also do have to ensure though that they're eating enough protein, that they're eating plenty of nutritious foods, that they are getting the majority of their calories from nutritious foods. And that means relatively unprocessed stuff that we cook and we prepare ourselves,

or that doesn't even need to be cooked or prepared in the case of fruit, for example. But that also means vegetables and whole grains and legumes. I've worked with many women over the years who have made the mistake. Many men have made this mistake as well. But as this point was specifically regarding women, I'll just talk to my experience with many women who will make the mistake of using an aggressive calorie deficit, something like 20%, but then using too many of their calories for not necessarily junk food, but you could just say indulgences, stuff that isn't very nutritious, that is pretty calorie dense. Obviously, it's going to be tasty and that doesn't provide much fiber. So for example, chocolate is a common go-to that I've

run into with women where maybe they have 1200 to 1500 calories per day and they're eating three, four, 500 calories per day of just chocolate in some cases. Sometimes it's chocolate plus maybe one other favorite treat. And yes, you can do that and lose weight. And if you also eat enough protein, you can preserve muscle too. You can make that work, but chances are you are going to be very hungry often, and that's going to turn the volume up on cravings, which then can lead to eating even more stuff that you really shouldn't be eating any more of given how much you are already eating. Because as you probably know, my general recommendation is don't use any more than 20% of your daily calories for treats. You don't have to get up to 20% if you don't want to, but that really should be the ceiling. It should not be 30, 40, or even 50%

of your daily calories. Again, not so much from a health perspective, because if you're cutting for, let's say, two months, is it healthy to not eat enough nutrient-dense foods? No, it's not a good idea. Can you get away with it so long as you get back to something sensible when you're done cutting? Yes, you can. It's more about the experience. By eating a lot of nutritious foods when you're cutting and also drinking plenty of water, you are going to have a much better experience. You are going to be a lot less hungry, a lot less irritable. You are not going to struggle with cravings nearly as much as you would otherwise. And you will be able to sustain a larger calorie deficit, which of course greatly speeds up fat loss. The difference between a 10% calorie deficit and a 20% calorie deficit is big. You're going to lose fat twice as quickly

with the 20% deficit. And if you do it right, the experience of being in a 20% deficit doesn't have to be that much different than a 10% deficit. It is not twice as grueling if you do it right. And doing it right includes some of the things I already talked about, the high protein intake and the eating plenty of nutritious foods. foods, but there are a few other things as well, such as meal regularity, I guess you could say, or meal pattern, meaning when do you eat day to day? Are you eating more or less at the same time every day or does it change day to day? And what I've found and what the coaches who work with all of Legion's clients have found is most people tend to do best when they eat at more or less the same times every day. You don't have to eat the same exact foods at the same times every day, although that can work well too, but it's just that point of having food at more or less the same times every day. And what I have found and what my coaches have found is that people tend to be able to comply with their

diet. They tend to do best following their diet when they eat this way. Whereas if the meal pattern is irregular, if they are eating at random times throughout the day, day to day, and it's usually because they are busy and on the run, or they just like to eat that way. They prefer to eat when they get hungry and they prefer to eat what they feel like eating at the time. And they can track their calories and macros with my fitness pal, for example, and make sure that by the end of the day, their macros and calories are where they need to be. Yes, that's fine. That can work. But generally speaking, those people do have a harder time sticking to their calories, sticking to their macros, and struggling with hunger and cravings.

And there are some physiological theories out there as to why that might be. One of them is that your body, you could think of it as it calibrates its appetite to the meal times when they become regular. So your body starts to expect food at certain times if it normally gets food at those times. And that process can happen fairly quickly. Again, this is the theory. And so, for example, you could be in a situation where your body has gotten used to getting food around, let's say, 4 p.m. And again, this might have only been for several days, maybe a week. You've been eating around 4 p.m.

Other mealtimes might have been random, but for whatever reason, around 4 p.m. you've been eating and your body now is expecting food around 4 p.m. And leading up to that, as we approach 4 p.m., it starts to produce insulin. It starts to get ready for food. And if you don't eat, then you get hungry and you then are more likely to break your diet. And if you repeat that several times throughout the day, and if that's like a regular occurrence, of course, that just makes the whole process of dieting more difficult. Now, again, that is a theory and there is a little bit of evidence for it, but it is certainly not established as a clearly understood physiological phenomenon. Nevertheless, though, practically

speaking, again, just to repeat myself here, practically speaking, there is something to be said for a regular meal pattern. For whatever reason, that does tend to, from what I've seen, reduce hunger and cravings and improve compliance and just make dieting more enjoyable and more easy for most people. Another easy win is making sure that you have protein with each of your meals. And this one is simple. It just makes you fuller. It improves satiety, the feeling of fullness when you have some protein mixed in with whatever else you're eating with some carbs or with some fat. Whereas if you have a meal that is just primarily fat, that is going to be very unfilling. If you have a meal that is primarily carbs, that's going to be more filling than just fat. And if you combine them,

that's going to be more filling still. But if you really want to supercharge the satiety of your meals, you want to include protein. And as far as how much protein in each meal, let's say 30 grams, give or take 10 grams, depending on your gender mostly and how much protein you are eating every day based on your body weight or your body composition. So if you're a woman and you are eating 100 grams of protein per day, then you might eat five servings of 20 grams, or you might want to eat four servings of 25 or three and a half servings of 30. Whereas if you're a dude and you need to eat 200 grams of protein per day, then 20 grams in one sitting is not moving the needle

much. You probably are going to want to eat double that in each sitting just so you don't have to eat protein eight to 10 times a day. There's also probably something to be said for the muscle protein synthesis response to the meal. So if you have a woman who doesn't weigh very much, maybe she weighs in the low 100s, she is probably going to maximally raise muscle protein synthesis rates somewhere between 20 and 30 grams of protein in one sitting. Whereas a guy who weighs 200 plus pounds will probably see a bit more of a response with a bit more protein, something up around 40 grams. It's a minor point, but it's worth mentioning. All right. Another tip for making a larger calorie deficit work is something I did mention in passing, and that is just drinking enough water. And this is going to help you just stay fuller. It's going to help stave off hunger. And it's also good for your

body in many other ways. It's good for your overall health and wellbeing. And this is real simple. Something around three quarters of a gallon every day is going to be enough for most people. If you sweat a lot, if you're doing a lot of exercise, or maybe you work outside and you sweat a lot, then you may need more. But for most people, three quarters of a gallon to a gallon per day is enough. And this is easy to do if you just keep a water flask at hand. That's what I do. I have a water flask here. It is metal. And let's see, it is about a liter.

And I fill it up in the morning and I sip on it when I get thirsty and I refill it when it is empty. And by the end of the day, I've gone through probably four or five flasks. So something around a gallon, a little bit more than a gallon, which is appropriate because I am sweating a bit. I'm doing some cardio in the morning, 30, 35 minutes of low slash moderate intensity biking on an upright bike. And I do tend to sweat a fair amount. And then I'm doing a resistance training workout later, usually around 7 p.m. or so. So I drink a bit more water to compensate for what I'm losing through sweating. Another major factor in successful fat loss,

regardless of the size of the deficit really, but especially if you are going to use a larger deficit, is sleep, getting enough high quality sleep. And this is something that I've mentioned many times in many episodes, but it is worth repeating because of how important it is for every aspect really of your health, wellbeing, performance, getting enough sleep is crucially important. For most people, that means seven to nine hours. And that doesn't just mean being in bed for that time or even being asleep for that time. It means seven to nine hours of good quality sleep. And if you struggle to sleep well, head over to legionathletics.com,

search for sleep, and you'll find some articles that I and other people on my content team have written sharing good evidence-based ways to improve your sleep. And just to share my own personal experience, a year or so ago, I was having trouble sleeping. I was waking up several times at night and this had been going on for about a year on and off. And ultimately what helped most was creating a relaxation routine that I do at the end of the night to help me get tired, to help me get sleepy. And I've spoken about this now a couple of times in past episodes, so I won't go over it again here and bore you with details you have probably already heard if you are a regular around here. But if you want to learn more about that in particular, head over to legionathletics.com and search for relax,

and you'll find an article I wrote where I talk about different evidence-based ways to relax. And for me, it is no TV, no computer, nothing that is too stimulating. I can read. That is fine. I can spend time with my wife. That's fine. So long as there isn't a stimulating conversation, like if we're going to argue about something, then I would prefer not to do it at 9 p.m. I would prefer to save that for the following morning, maybe, when we're both in a better mood. And listening to calming music helps as well. So classical music calms me down and helps me get sleepy. And lastly, there are a couple of supplements that have helped me with just

calming down to just have a natural sedative effect that is safe and not addictive. And those are L-theanine, magnesium, glycine, lavender, and valerian root. And I've tried some other strategies as well that do have evidence of effectiveness, but just didn't do it for me. For example, taking a hot bath is stimulating to me. It doesn't make me sleepy. It wakes me up. So that didn't work. Aromatherapy, some people, for example, they like the smell of lavender. And I tried it and I didn't really notice a difference. And so stopped bothering with it. And meditation was another dud for me. I really don't like that term because all we're talking about is breathing exercises. Like, can you just sit there for 15 minutes and not freak out? Can you just breathe, control your thoughts, put your attention on your

breath 10 or 15 minutes? And I don't have a problem doing that. So when I've tried to use that to just improve my sleep, it didn't really do much. I didn't notice that to be any more calming than any of the other things that I've mentioned, like reading, for example. Reading is just as calming for me as a breathing exercise. Again, because when I hear meditation, I think of like the Buddhist monk in his temple for eight hours a day trying to merge with the universe, right? Not sitting there for 10 minutes and breathing. So the reading though, I find it just as calming as the breathing exercise, but I get to make progress in my reading. So I will take that. Anyway, that's enough on the sleep stuff. Again, if you want to learn more about that, just head over to legionathletics.com, search

for sleep, and you will find a couple of articles on how to sleep better. And if you want to learn more about how to relax better, then just search for relax, and you will find an article that I wrote on evidence-based methods of relaxation. All right. Well, that's it really for my reply to Devin Peterson Fit. And just to summarize, if you struggle with a larger deficit or just any deficit at all, there are a few things you can do to make the process a lot more enjoyable. And the most effective methods that I've found are to eat plenty of nutritious foods. So that's going to mean a lot of vegetables,

a lot of fruit, a lot of whole grains, legumes, lean protein, healthy fats. And the power of that is that many of those foods, vegetables in particular, they provide a lot of volume, which provides the feeling of fullness for not very many calories. And then they also, of course, give your body plenty of nutrients, which is important when you are, well, it's always important, but it's even more important when you are restricting calories, right? Because now you're eating less food. Another tip is to eat around the same time every day. This can help manage hunger and it also can help cut back on snacking. So when you start to feel hungry, if you know that you have a meal coming

in 30, 45 minutes and you know what it is and it's going to be good, you are going to be less likely to just find something to nibble on than if you just eat whenever you feel like eating. And of course you can make the latter approach work, but it is more difficult. It's more difficult for anybody, no matter how disciplined you are or how into your fitness you are. It is more difficult to control your calories and macros when you are going to be eating when you feel like you want to eat, which isn't always a physiological thing. Many times we eat because of psychological or emotional reasons, right? emotional reasons, right? The tip that I shared is to incorporate protein into, I would say, every meal if possible, because it's not only going to help ensure you eat enough protein every day, it's also going to just generally increase your level of fullness. So don't make the mistake,

many people do make this mistake, don't eat, let's say, six times, five or six times a day, and then eat most of your protein in, let's say, just your, five or six times a day, and then eat most of your protein in, let's say, just your dinner or maybe your dinner and then your after dinner snack, your pre-bed protein snack. If you distributed that protein more evenly throughout the day, you will definitely have an easier time of it. Drink enough water, three quarters to a gallon per day. Drink when you eat as well.

That can increase the satiety, the fullness effect of the meal. And make sure you're getting enough sleep and try to relax at the end of the day so you can also better manage stress. Okay, let's move on to the next point here from Will Cooley, and that is eating high amounts of carbs is not healthy for brain function and insulin. So this is something that I've been hearing for a long time. And usually the idea is that carbs are bad for the brain because when you eat a lot of carbs, it makes you drowsy and foggy and so forth. And so some people say that eating the carbs is decreasing brain function or is even bad for your brain. And there are many problems with this theory. So the main reason that we experience energy swings, or maybe you don't, and I often don't, but why some people experience

energy swings when they eat a lot of carbs is because of something known as reactive hypoglycemia. And this refers to a situation where you eat a lot of carbs and then your body produces so much insulin in response to that, that afterward your blood sugar levels dip lower than normal. So hypoglycemia, and then you kind of feel like Jeb Bush, right? Low energy. And that though does not mean that eating carbs is bad for your brain function, even if you're experiencing it as a cognitive decline. So for one thing, if you are relatively lean and if you're active, you probably don't even know what I'm talking about, unless maybe you used to experience it before you were fit, because fit people do not experience reactive hypoglycemia unless maybe you go and you eat a thousand grams of carbs in a meal

or something completely absurd. People who have diabetes, however, definitely do experience this. So that also would include type 1 diabetes depending on how you're managing your insulin. If you are a fit person with type 1 diabetes and you mismanage your insulin based on what you're eating, then you have experienced this. But those of us who don't have any health conditions generally don't experience this at all unless we really go for it. We have to really work to experience reactive hypoglycemia. And the primary reason for this is our insulin sensitivity is high. Our body is very sensitive to insulin's effects, especially if we are combining cardio and resistance training. And I posted a podcast on this semi-recently,

it probably went up in the last couple of weeks, on answering the question, should you do cardio if you are lifting weights? And the answer is yes. And that's approximately the title. So if you want to learn all about that, just go listen to that podcast. But regardless, even if you're not doing cardio, if you're just lifting weights and you are maintaining a pretty lean body composition, you are going to deal very well with carbs because your body's, and we're talking about at a cellular level, your body is very sensitive to insulin's effects. And that means that your body doesn't have to produce as much insulin to process the food that you eat. And you can find good evidence of this in studies that have been

conducted on endurance athletes who eat large amounts of carbohydrate before they train or before a race. And if carbs are just bad for your brain and bad for your energy levels, bad for your pancreas, you would expect that eating a lot of carbs before they go train or before they go race would really screw up their performance, right? And instead, in reality, what happens is the opposite. So for example, a study conducted by scientists at Florida State University looked at 15 studies and 27 groups of participants that involved eating various amounts of carbs in the hour preceding a workout. So we're talking about 15 to 60 minutes before a workout.

And the average dose of carbs was about one gram per kilogram, which is a fair amount. I mean, that's a little bit under a hundred grams for a 200 pound guy, you know, four bananas or three cups of cooked oatmeal, two or three slices of sandwich bread, a decent amount of carbs. And the result of the carb loading was that out of these 27 groups, 16 showed no difference in performance, 10 showed improved performance, and only one showed a decrease in performance. Another study on the matter worth mentioning was conducted by Dr. Asker Ukendrup, who is considered one of the best researchers on sports nutrition out there and who is also a highly accomplished endurance athlete himself. And in his study, which was also a review study of many other

studies, he concluded more or less the same thing. So the weight of the evidence is clear right now that eating a bunch of carbs doesn't have to decrease your mental or physical performance. Now, something to keep in mind though, is these studies were conducted on active people who are in better shape than most people. What about those people? What about normal everyday people? What about Joey Bag of Donuts and Sally Six Pack? Are carbs bad for their brain function? Sedentary, you know, overweight people? Is it possible that some people just don't do well when they eat carbs? Well, an answer can be found in a study that was conducted by scientists at Stanford University Medical School, which divided 609 young and middle-aged obese, and thus likely sedentary, men and women into two groups.

One group followed a high-carb, low-fat diet. The other group followed a low-, low fat diet. The other group followed a low carb, high fat diet. And everyone was coached to eat a lot of whole nutritious foods and to minimize their intake of sugar, trans fats, and other highly processed foods. So good, flexible dieting principles, basically. They were also instructed on how to set up their diets in a way that would keep them in a calorie deficit throughout the study. And what the researchers found is that insulin sensitivity levels, which they measured throughout the study, did not make a difference in how much fat the people lost while following either a high or low carb diet or, and here's the important part for this discussion, what their insulin levels

were like before and after the study. That is, even when obese sedentary people ate a lot of carbs, they didn't have extremely high insulin levels. In fact, their insulin levels dropped significantly, a little more than the people eating a very low-carb diet, ironically. And while this study wasn't on brain function, it does show that even inactive obese people can eat a lot of carbs without their insulin levels going haywire. And one of the reasons why this happened in this study, one of the reasons, not the only reason, but one of the reasons is that

when you are in a calorie deficit, insulin sensitivity improves and also losing weight, losing fat improves insulin sensitivity. And that is a good sign. That is healthy. You want to have high insulin sensitivity. Anyway, if you want to learn more about this study and how it relates to DNA-based dieting, because there is another dimension to that study that the researchers were looking at as it relates to genetics. And if that plays a role in how people respond to high carb, low fat, and vice versa, head over to legionathletics.com, search for DNA diet, and you'll find an article that is a research review. And it's titled, Are DNA-Based Diets the Best Way to Lose Weight. Now, we could just leave this one here and say, as far as brain function goes, and as far as insulin production goes, and even insulin sensitivity levels go, you don't really have to worry much about how much carbohydrate you're

eating. You can simply regulate your carbohydrate intake on your need for energy-dense foods, because that is primarily what carbs are for, for providing the body with energy. So if you are not an active person, you don't need to be eating a lot of carbs. If you are an active person, you can benefit from carbs. But I do want to address one other aspect of this point brought up by Will, and that is that not all carbs are equal because if you eat, let's say a bunch of highly processed carbs, you know, stuff that has a lot of added sugars, sucrose, high fructose corn syrup, just junk food, quote unquote, you probably will experience some energy swings, especially if you are sedentary and if you are overweight. But even in that case, you can't blame the added

sugars entirely because people who eat like that also tend to eat way too many calories and they don't eat very many nutritious foods. So they often have nutritional deficiencies and insufficiencies. And so I would say that it's not carbohydrate per se that is the problem, but yes, if your diet is packed full of low quality foods that have very little in the way of nutrition, so you're not eating much fruit, you're not eating very many vegetables, you're not eating much in the way of whole grains and legumes, and instead you're eating highly processed stuff, usually it's going to be packaged stuff, very calorie dense, very tasty, then you may experience some problems with brain function. You may feel brain fog and you may have energy highs and energy lows,

but you have to, again, distinguish very clearly between the quote-unquote healthy stuff, the nutritious stuff, and the not-so-nutritious stuff. Because the nutritious stuff gives your body a lot of different nutrients it needs to flourish. It needs to support its brain function. Like, for example, vitamin D, very important. Magnesium, very important. Various antioxidants that you get from fruits and vegetables, in particular, very important. Magnesium, very important. Various antioxidants that you get from fruits and vegetables in particular, very important. And a kicker here is our primary dietary sources of these vital nutrients are carbs, are fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes. So if you cut all of that out of your diet and you follow a very low carb diet, like a ketogenic diet, a true ketogenic diet, right? So, well, a true ketogenic diet, right? So while a true ketogenic

diet really would be low protein as well as low carb and very high fat, these days it's more like a high protein version of a keto diet. But let's say you're doing that and you are eating probably no more than 30-ish grams of carbs per day, you're not getting very much in the way of nutrition. That is enough to eat just barely enough vegetables every day. You're not going to be eating fruit and whole grains and legumes in addition to that. And that is not a good way to eat for the long term. Now, if eating like that helps you lose fat because it helps you stick to your calories and your macros because you love carbs and you have a hard time controlling yourself and it's better to just cut them out completely. Okay, that's fine. You could do it for a period. But to eat

like that for the long term is almost certainly going to cause problems unless you supplement on top of it. And even then, you can't get all of the nutrients from supplements that you get from foods. You can maybe prevent some of the bigger problems from occurring. But I would not agree that a diet devoid of nutritious plant-based foods or at least entire categories of nutritious plant-based foods is okay so long as you are also taking a multivitamin and a greens supplement. And I'm saying that as somebody who sells multivitamins and a greens supplement. Legion has a multivitamin for men and women, different formulations, and we have a greens supplement. But I would not recommend, and it's actually on the sales pages in the educational portion of the sales pages

where I explain this, I would not recommend that somebody eat a poor diet and make up for it with pills and powders because it doesn't quite work. It's better than no pills and powders, I suppose, but I would rather that people get both sides of this correct. Eat a nutritious diet, eat a quote-unquote healthy diet, and add the supplements to plug any nutritional holes and to give your body stuff that you are either not going to get from food. So our greens supplement contains spirulina, for example, and you are not going to get spirulina unless you buy it and you eat it and it doesn't taste very good. so you're probably not doing that, or to get stuff that you can get from food, but you can't practically get in high enough amounts to get the benefits that we want.

Creatine is a good example. There's creatine in a steak, for example, but if you want to get to five grams of creatine per day, you're going to be following the carnivore diet essentially, and I don't recommend that. And if you're wondering why I don't recommend that, I have recorded a podcast on this and I've written an article on this. So you can pick whichever one you want. The article is over at legionathletics.com. You just search for carnivore and it will come up. And I want to wrap this point up with a study that is relevant and it was conducted by scientists at the Department of Nutritional Research and Education. And what they did is they analyzed the nutrient density of four popular weight loss diets, the Atkins diet, the South Beach diet, the DASH diet, and the Best Life diet. And note that

two of the four diets are low-carb diets. The Atkins diet and the South Beach diet are low-carb diets. Now, what the researchers did is they added up the average calories and micronutrients provided by three days worth of meal plans for each of those diets. And then they compared those numbers to the RDI for each of the micronutrients. And what they found is on average, the four diets provided sufficient amounts of just 12 of the 27 micronutrients that they measured. The scientists also estimated that you'd have to eat close to 28,000 calories per day on average to reach sufficiency for all 27 micronutrients.

So my point being here is, yes, you can get all of the micros that you need when you are following a low-carb diet. It can be done, but it is a tough row to hoe. You have to carefully micromanage your meal plan and make sure that you are making optimal food choices and you have to pay attention to your micronutrient status. You have to actually get into the specifics of how much of each vitamin mineral are you getting every day. And chances are you're going to have to supplement as well. And if there's no major benefit in following a low carb diet, and there is not, unless you just like it, if you like it, that is the major

benefit. Why make life harder than it needs to be? Why make dieting and eating and meal planning harder than it needs to be? 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. Let's move on to the final says you, and that is from Coda Boda. While the poor have it well today, wealth inequality slash hoarding is a massive issue. And while I don't clearly remember commenting on this at all, I have probably posted some memes on Instagram that indicate I don't agree with the basic assertion. I don't agree that it is that cut and dried. And I certainly don't agree

with any solution that smacks of Marxism. So let me unpack that as the woke folk like to say. So while the current wealth gap certainly appears staggering and even grotesque, any reader of history knows that wealth is actually more decentralized now than ever before. Meaning the problem has been way worse in the past. that our modern Western form of capitalism has afforded, more people have been lifted out of poverty than with any other economic system in history. And upward mobility, the ability to move up the socioeconomic ladder is more prevalent now than ever before. And this charge from Coda Boda also implies that all of the wealth stays concentrated in the hands of just a few plutocrats, more or less permanently. But that's not true. According to NASDAQ, 70% of family fortunes are gone by the second generation and 90% are gone by the third. Those are wild statistics, right?

And that's not going to change. That just comes down to human nature and that most people, including heirs and heiresses, they don't have what it takes to build anything substantial. And they are very good though at destroying things that are working, including their family fortunes. And I've seen this firsthand. I know several people who come from families effectively with unlimited money who have no hope of continuing the legacy. Impossible. These people are way too messed up,

way too incompetent. And the best thing the parents could do for them is to set up a will and set up a trust that is very hyper-specific as to how they can access money and how much they can access money and making it completely conditional upon them being positive, contributive members of society. But for whatever reason, the parents can't see it. So they're not doing it that way. They're just going to give them everything. And these people will quickly squander that money. In a couple of cases, I don't think it'll even last until the end of their lives. And we're

talking about tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars. That's how ridiculous I think it's going to be. Anyway, coming back on track here to the point I'm addressing of wealth inequality and wealth hoarding, something else that doesn't add up to me and I've yet to hear a satisfactory reply to, and I've had this discussion online and in person quite a few times, is this. If you personally have enough to live well, if you have plenty of food and you have shelter and clothing and you have sanitation, you have access to education, healthcare, and on top of that, if you have entertainment and all of the luxurious trappings of modernity, why do you care how much other people have? How is their wealth negatively affecting your day-to-day lived experience? Furthermore, if you have what it takes to

acquire some wealth, if you have done something and you have these things that you've worked for in this capitalist society, you almost certainly can acquire more by just doing more of whatever's working for you. You obviously have a system. You have figured out the game to some degree. So if you want more, why don't you just go get more instead of fretting over what other people have? Now, none of what I've said is to say that our economic system is perfect. Of course, it's not. Of course, it can be improved upon. And I hope to see something much better in my lifetime than what we currently have.

I truly do. But you can't argue with the results. That is something that always must be factored into any of these discussions. is something that always must be factored into any of these discussions. And if you are going to propose that we alter this system that has worked so well in so many ways for so many people, you better have some brilliant ideas. And if you want to tear the whole institution down, well, you better have something really brilliant to replace it with because anybody can destroy. Very few people can create things that work. Now, if your solution is to just try communism yet again or Marxism yet again, you really need to stop worrying about social issues. Just stop.

Just get a job. I mean, think of it this way. If society were full of people like you and you know you, where would we be? Be honest. If you relied on people like you, who probably struggles to get out of bed in the morning on most days, who probably doesn't have enough energy to work more than maybe a couple of hours at best, and probably not even every day, you who probably possesses little knowledge and little skills of any kind, you who is probably morally degenerate and unable to control many of your destructive impulses, if you were to rely on people like you to sustain the entire infrastructure of civilization and to brave the enormous dangers and uncertainties that are part and parcel of innovation and pathfinding and creating a better

future for our species, what would happen to the world? Would you be willing to trade your current existence for that one? Yeah, I don't think so. So stop trying to reform society and just reform yourself instead. Start with getting a job. Just start there. Now that doesn't apply to most of the people listening to the podcast. Maybe all. I don't know if I have any communists following me at this point considering how thoroughly I've criticized communism in the past. And I want to address something, though, that you, my listener, might be thinking, which is a valid point. And that is that the crux of the wealth inequality issue for many people isn't material in nature because, yes, they are doing fine. It's more ideological in nature. It's more metaphysical in nature because it strikes at justice, right? They feel that it is unfair that our economic system produces une, that Western capitalism just favors white people.

And that's not true. What it really selects for, just like any competitive and meritocratic system, or at least mostly meritocratic system, which alludes to, I think, very valid criticisms about the cronyism that is rampant in our economic system and the commercialism and the corruption, all valid criticisms. But the system still in its current form is mostly meritocratic. Most markets, individual markets you want to enter and you want to start selling products and services in are open and waiting for the next great idea, the next great brand, the next great experience. And there isn't much in the way of mega corporations or government regulations standing in your way. That's not always the case. Depends what you're trying to do.

But if what you want to do happens to be one of those things where it should be meritocratic, but it's not, and it thrives on nepotism and legalism, okay, maybe you should pick something else because there are many options that are still, let's say, pure and functional enough for you to succeed if you have what it takes. Now, what does it take? Well, like any competitive and meritocratic system, capitalism is a game that selects for IQ and conscientiousness, which is the desire to do your work well and thoroughly. Those are the two most reliable predictors of success in any competitive arena, really. And that would include, of course, making money. All the different ways you can make money

and all the preconditions that must be satisfied to make money. And I should mention that while research shows that IQ is notoriously difficult to improve, conscientiousness is something that anyone can learn and practice. And you don't have to have an above average IQ to make it in the capitalism game. You just have to be smart enough. You can be of average intelligence and you can cultivate a very high level of conscientiousness and you're going to do well. And so what that means then is in order to succeed in our economic system, there are table stakes. And all we're talking about is moderate intelligence and at least a moderate amount of grit and sociability. And that's it. If you can fulfill those conditions, you can play the game and you can play the game well. Now,

the game, given what it is, is going to be imbalanced. You are going to find a lot of inequality in a game like this because the majority of the intellect and the determination and the agency is possessed in the minority of people. And you can blame nature for that. That's just what it is, right? And so with that being the case, you would then expect the majority of the resources, like money, in such a system to flow to that same minority group because they can just play the game a lot better than most people. And similarly, as some people, these would be the people on the left side of the bell curve, right? They possess very little intelligence and very little agency and very little amenity.

You would expect that a very competitive system like capitalism to reject them as wholly undesirable and useless, essentially. Fortunately, though, most people are smart enough, are diligent enough, are likable enough to play the game and to play the game well. And what's incredible about this game is if you just play it decently, you don't have to be great, just good enough, you can reach a level of personal success and wealth literally unimaginable by most of our recent ancestors. Go ahead and read the book, The Millionaire Next Door, if you don't believe me, and you will find a very simple blueprint to becoming a millionaire by the time you retire.

And you don't have to ever earn more than a moderate income. All you have to do is earn a decent wage for long enough and live well below your means and invest soundly and simply, very simply, easy to learn. And I would say that those are things that most people can do. Earn a decent living for a while and save money and invest correctly. And if you do that for a couple of decades, you will retire a millionaire and you will get to enjoy a level of luxury and leisure that would have made even the kings of old jealous. And that's not hyperbole, really. Now, what many people don't like about that plan is it requires deferring gratification, delaying gratification. It means that you can't necessarily do all the things you want to do right now, maybe buy all the trinkets you want to buy right now.

But often what these people are not considering is what their future is going to look like. And that really they have one of two options. They can be broke now and rich later, or they can live richly now and be broke later. And if you ponder that and you play it out in your mind, I think you will agree with me that broke now, rich later, and let's also say rich for the rest of your life is much better than living richly now and being broke later. And for a few reasons, let's start with when you're young, you don't have a family yet. You don't have to provide a future for other people yet. You only have to provide for yourself. So if you are living in a dented porta potty in New York City, and if you live on ramen noodles, only you are being affected. But if you bring a spouse into it and you bring kids into it, the pressure and the guilt that you'll feel can be exponentially higher. And in some cases, that can be a great motivating factor. known men in particular who were not taking life very seriously, not really trying to create a

future until they had their first kid. And then it was like a switch just flipped in them and they became hell bent on being able to provide their family with a good quality of life. But on the other hand, I've seen people not respond well to that pressure and basically cave in because of it and collapse. And then it ends in divorce and everyone is worse off for that. Another factor to consider here is just vitality and energy levels. And the willingness to exert effort is higher when you are 20 than when you are 50. It is easier to do what it takes to really succeed in your career or business or whatever when your body is essentially invincible, when you can drink all night, sleep two hours, wake up, feel fine, go to work, do your thing. I don't know what that's like

because I've never even been drunk. I never got into drinking, but I may be exaggerating a little bit. Maybe that's not possible. But minimally, I do remember what it's like when I used to be able to sleep four hours. Not that I would want to do that, but it just happened. I didn't sleep well. I only slept four hours and I would barely even feel it. Now at 36 and I take very good care of my body. If I sleep four hours, I'm okay, but I really do feel it. And it is smart

for me to just take a nap come 12 or one, because otherwise I'm just going to get a lot less done throughout the day. As much as I don't like taking time to nap if I don't sleep well. And for me, that's probably anything under six hours is where I really start to notice it, which fortunately doesn't happen often. I will take a one hour nap, which is probably, I don't know, 30 to 40 minutes of actual sleep and it helps tremendously. So anyway, the point here is if someone squanders the wine of their youth on pursuing pleasure and success, and then tries to do it the other way around later in life when they just are not quite as chirpy as they once were. They're not leaping out of bed every morning anymore. Chances are they haven't taken great care of their body.

They've probably done a lot of partying and not a lot of healthy eating and not a lot of exercising. It can be way harder to create the energy that's needed to achieve success. Finally, one other thing people need to consider is many of the experiences they associate with living richly, you know, traveling, living in a nice apartment or a nice house, having a nice car, having free time, eating in nice restaurants, all that stuff isn't all that much more pleasurable when you're young than when you're older. Those things are not twice as pleasurable at 25 as they are at 50, so long as you have taken care of your body and you're in good health. You can do all of those things later in life and enjoy them just as much, if not more, than when you're younger. Why more?

them just as much, if not more than when you're younger. Why more? Because all of those things are more fun, the richer you are. And if you are a millionaire, which you can become one, just read the book, The Millionaire Next Door, follow the plan. You are going to be able to do those things at a level that you simply could not do when you're young, no matter how bad you are with money. You could spend everything you make and then you could spend more. And maybe for a little bit, you could get a taste of what it would be like to actually be a millionaire living within your means until your credit cards max out and then it all comes crashing down. Now, if you do it the right way and you delay your gratification now and work to build wealth for the future, You can live that rich lifestyle in a sustainable way,

in a way that doesn't put any financial pressure on you and doesn't make you feel guilty because you know what you're doing doesn't really make sense and is going to come back to haunt you and maybe for the rest of your life. Now, I'm sure many listeners are agreeing with those things I've said, but some people may still feel that our economic system, that such a system, is unfair. It's still just unfair to the people at the bottom with little or nothing, and especially people who are mostly victims of circumstances beyond their control. people who are mostly victims of circumstances beyond their control. These people, it's claimed, are fundamentally, in an essential way, they are equal to the people who are at the top. Even if they didn't work as hard and they didn't come into the world as intelligent and they made worse

decisions, they're still fundamentally equal to the people at the top who have everything. And especially when you consider that many of the people at the top, and this is a claim, are really just lucky. They're often ascendant mostly through birth and serendipity. And if everyone is equal in this basic and most meaningful way, this is the argument, why is it okay for the resources and the material comfort and the potential for continued survival to be so unequal? Shouldn't we have an economic system that reflects this deeper reality? Wouldn't that be a system more in line with natural law, especially when we're talking about this metaphysical level of existence? Well, I think that line of thinking is just completely false.

First, there are the factual inaccuracies, right? So according to a study by the market research firm WealthX, 68% of people with a net worth over $30 million are self-made and 24% had a combination of inherited and self-created wealth. Only 8.5% of the global high net worth individuals had completely inherited their wealth. And if you remember the NASDAQ data, they probably won't be holding onto it for very long either. There was another survey that was conducted in 2017, or at least it was published in 2017 from Fidelity Investments. or at least it was published in 2017 from Fidelity Investments. And they found that 88% of millionaires are self-made and only 12% inherited a significant amount of money,

which they defined as at least 10% of their wealth. So the reality here is most millionaires were not born with a silver spoon in their mouth. It's just not true. These people may have enjoyed silver spoon in their mouth. It's just not true. These people may have enjoyed other advantages, like maybe they came into the world with a better than average IQ, or maybe they had a strong nuclear family unit that was run by loving and supporting parents. And maybe they received an education that was adequate enough for them to pursue their goals. And I fully acknowledge that those factors can make a difference or can make all the difference in the trajectory of one's life. And I do agree that we should, as a society, strive to promote such fundamental conditions for success, like familial cohesion and familial values and good parenting and good nutrition for children.

That's a big one because it affects IQ and effective education. And if we do that, then we will have more people in the world who will have the chance to participate gainfully in a capitalistic free market based system. Now, what I don't agree with though, is the idea that we are all equal. It's just not true. Individual inequality is a consequence of nature, not social constructs. People are not equal. Some people come into this world smarter than others. Some are more driven than others. Some are taller than others. Some are stronger. Some are more beautiful. Some are more moral. Some are nicer. And accordingly, some are more valuable to groups like businesses and societies than others because of their inborn characteristics. Now, some of the differences between people are learned, but many are not. Many are inborn. They are inherent, and especially those relating to the key factors that nature has set up that is far more complex than any

system we could ever build and that we really know so little about in the scheme of how much there is to know about nature and how the machinery works? I mean, it is not controversial to say that if there's one thing nature likes, it is variation. It is variability and that the system runs this way for a reason. So it might be a bit presumptuous for us to think that we should even override it if we could. And okay, if somebody doesn't agree with me there and they think we should override it, that we can transcend the boundaries and the limitations of nature and we can create, really what we're talking about now is at a species level, we can centrally plan our evolution really better than nature can. Okay. I don't think I could ever be convinced of that, but let's just

say that somebody is going to maintain that position. Then my question is, okay, so how do we do it then? How do we practically achieve the ultimate equality? Well, you have to take it to its extreme. And then you have something like Harris Bergeron by Kurt Vonnegut, the short story, go read it and then go read Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. That is where this line of thinking, where this ideology ends. And ask yourself if you would actually want to live in that world. I wouldn't. I don't even think it would be worth living in a world where we have achieved full equality in every meaningful way. And something else to consider here is to what end are the radical egalitarians really striving? What do they think is really going

to happen if they could confiscate and redistribute all the wealth? Let's just talk about the material side of things first in terms of equality. They think that people will suddenly be happy once everyone is materially equal. Do you believe that? Do you really think people who are too dysfunctional to be of any value to a business, who can't make it in our capitalistic system, people who are really just unable to exert enough focused effort to produce anything of any value. They can't produce really anything that people will pay them any money for. And the money just represents their own effort, right? You think that these people are suddenly just going to feel less pathetic because they're

handed bags of cash or because now everyone else is more pathetic? They're just as pathetic as them now? Of course not. These people know at a deep and you could probably even say genetic level that they are losers and they will never be equal to the movers and shakers of the world in anything but death, which is the true ultimate equalizer. Now, at this point, some people would acknowledge that we can't pursue equality too aggressively. We can't take it too far or it just becomes absurdity. However, they would say that because we can't redistribute inborn characteristics to balance the playing field, that would be the path that leads to brave new world.

What we can do is work to equalize the score, the resources. Again, this comes back to wealth confiscation and redistribution, maybe not at the level that was seen in the Soviet Union, but certainly a lot more than what we currently have here in the West. And to that, I say that, sure, it sounds nice. And I do think that there are good arguments that you can make for the necessity of some of that. Modern money theory, for example, has some interesting ideas as to why taxes are needed, why income taxes are needed in a system that essentially could just print unlimited money. I mean, we're seeing that now firsthand. When you see trillions of dollars being injected into the

economy in a short period of time, you start to wonder, why am I paying income tax again? Why aren't we just printing money and I just keep all of my money? Well, part of it is to prevent people from acquiring too much because if wealth inequality gets too bad, then yes, the fabric of society starts to come apart. And you can find a good example of that in the later part of the Roman empire, where you had the plutocrats, you had the Jeff Bezoses, who had the vast majority, a very small group of people, had so much wealth that at the bottom of the socioeconomic pyramid were people starving in the streets like they had nothing left to even live for and not a few people a lot of people and as they had really no hope for improving their lot they just turned it loose and i understand

that you just started rioting and destroying everything basically saying look if you don't feed us or give us a means of feeding ourselves, we're just going to kill you all and destroy everything. I get it. We definitely need to make sure we do not get there or even close to there in our modern society. Now, hardcore free market people would say that we don't need government intervention for that. We don't need government intervention for that. We don't need progressive taxation. If we got rid of all money and who don't even get to the level of gray when they get a bunch of money, who stay solidly in the white and who don't only act out of self-interest and self-aggrandizement and who do try to act in ways that benefit the whole, even if that means not as much benefit for the self or maybe even

no benefit at all, or maybe even a penalty for the self but positive for the society for example until we could have the majority of resources in the hands of people like that we're just not going to be able to get there we are going to have to have systems in place for preserving the game as we want it to be played. We need the referees to step in and catch the people who cheat and put them in the penalty box or give them the yellow card or maybe the red card. I don't watch soccer, but I think that's when you get thrown out, right? So some people, they do need to get thrown out of the game by the referee, if you have too many referees though, and the rules become too onerous, and if it really just ruins the game, if it is no longer fun to play the game,

and economically how you get there is through massive taxation, wealth confiscation and redistribution makes the game less and less fun to play, what will happen is people like me, and probably you, would never work as hard as we do to create more than we consume. And that's one reason why private property is so important and why it was revolutionary. The ability to acquire resources that are ours, not others, is crucial. And capital markets, for example, are necessary as well, because without those, we would have very few opportunities to even try to acquire property, and especially large amounts of property. And without the capital markets that we enjoy here in the West,

for example, we would have very few opportunities to even try to do that. And again, without those opportunities, people like us would say, why should we sacrifice so much of our life for the sake of mutants, misfits, and freaks who are too damaged, dishonest, or diabolical to give more than they take. We wouldn't be willing to do it. This is reminiscent of the premise of Atlas Shrugged, right? The book about the society that has become so parasitic that the relatively few people of ability and integrity left who are keeping the economic engine going eventually just say, enough is enough. We're just going to go over here and we're going to take care of ourselves and we're going to hang out and enjoy

each other's company in Galt's Gulch. And we'll let all of you people do your thing and you can burn the world down. And then when it's all done, we'll come back and we will rebuild everything. But we're not going to engage in self-immolation because you are and you want everyone to go down with you. Anyway, I have been rambling for a while now. So why don't we wrap up here? Where does all of this leave us? Well, if you want to enjoy all the trappings of our modern Western economy, you are just going to have to be okay with wealth inequality. And so long as you are able to improve

your life, your quality of life through the merits of your character and your work, the sweat of your brow, then you have it better than most people have since the beginning of history. So why not just take advantage of that opportunity while you still can, while it's still here? And of course, that's not to say that capitalism, even in its most perfect form, is the end all and be all of all economic systems that humans could ever devise. Certainly, there is something better out there in the ether, even if it's just a refined and improved version of what we have, but we haven't discovered it yet. And it is going to come from people of extraordinary ability, goodwill, and integrity, not from the dregs of

society driven by envy and misery. Well, that's it for this episode of Says You. If you're still listening, thank you. And I hope you found it helpful. And if you want to share your thoughts with me on anything I've discussed in this episode, or if you want to throw something my way for a future episode, again, you can reach out to me via Instagram at Muscle for Life Fitness, or, and this is the better way really, email Mike at MuscleForLife.com. me a favor, please do leave a quick review on iTunes or wherever you're listening 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, 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 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, mikeatmusclefullife.com. And that's it. Thanks

again for listening to this episode, and I hope to hear from you soon.