Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Spotting Fake Natties, Training Weak Points, Diet Cravings, and More...

Episode Date: December 18, 2014

In this podcast I talk about how to spot people that claim natural but aren't, why sodium and water manipulation aren't as important as some people think, how to target weak points in your training, how to deal with cravings while dieting, and my upcoming line of supplements. DO CARBS MAKE YOU FAT? http://www.muscleforlife.com/carbohydrates-and-weight-loss-should-you-go-low-carb/ IS FRUIT BAD FOR YOUR HEALTH? http://www.muscleforlife.com/do-fructose-and-fruit-make-you-fat-and-unhealthy/ ARE YOU A HARDGAINER? http://www.muscleforlife.com/the-hardgainers-guide-to-guaranteed-muscle-growth/ WAYS TO IMPROVE HUNGER CONTROL: http://www.muscleforlife.com/8-ways-to-improve-hunger-control-and-weight-loss/ 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 guys, this is Mike Matthews with MuscleForLife.com and this is my second video podcast. In this podcast, I'm going to talk about a few things. I want to talk about some water and sodium manipulation. I just recently had a photo shoot and did something a little bit different this time

but was pretty happy with the results. It was easier too than what I would normally do. I want to talk about how to spot fake naturals, people that claim that they're not on drugs but are. Just because there's a lot of steroid accusations that get tossed around. I mean, I get it. You know, I think of guys like Matt Ogis. He gets it. You know, think of guys like Matt Ogis, he gets it. And there are very easy ways to spot if someone's on drugs or not, though. And I'll talk a little bit about that. I want to talk about some

training tips for weak points. And not only how to do it, but when you should start focusing on weak points in your physique and how to do it correctly, and talk about how to deal with cravings when you're cutting. And then I also want to talk a little bit about my upcoming line of supplements. The brand name is Legion, and yeah, I was going to talk about that briefly. So let's get started. Let's start here with water and sodium manipulation. You've probably heard before, especially, you know, with competitors and stuff, people that compete in shows,

that usually the week leading up to the show, you can do some various things with reducing or increasing your sodium, water, and carbohydrate intake. And the reason to do that is to get that really dry, kind of hard look on the day of the competition. Now, the normal kind of protocol, well, actually I can't say the normal. There are several types of protocols. Certain people seem to do better with certain protocols than others. But one that, you know, I had a photo shoot just recently. We wrapped it up, uh, I guess it was like a week ago now. Um, pretty

happy with, with the, with the results. Um, I was lean, um, you know, dry probably around six, six and a half percent, uh, vascularity, abvascularity, whatever. And normally for that, um, I would do a protocol where you're gradually reducing your carbohydrate intake, increasing your sodium and water intake. And there's like a day by day kind of progression. And then it leads up to, it kind of, it gradually goes, your sodium goes up and then it cuts to nothing and your water goes up and then it cuts to nothing and then your carbohydrates go down to nothing. And, you know, I've done in the past and had mixed results. I've tried other protocols as well. I've had it work well and then I've had it just not work well.

And it's also pretty grueling, uh, working out. I hate working out on no carbs. It's just sucks. You have your muscle endurance is crap. Um, you have no energy, no energy. Anyone who's done a low-carbohydrate diet knows what I'm talking about. It just is bad. So I decided to do something a little bit different this time. I was reading up on, I wanted to dig a little bit more into the science of fluid, how the body balances fluids in the cells and outside of the cells so I could better understand not only what is happening physiologically, but what's the best way to go about it because it seemed very hit or miss what I was doing in the past. And what I kind of came to the conclusion of in reading, you know, looking into some of the science of it

and also just reading some other bodybuilders with, you know, their experiences, which were similar to mine where sometimes it was good, sometimes it wasn't good, is that the body, it tightly regulates the fluid that it holds in the cells, which is what you would want. You want fluid sucked into the cells, which gives you that expanded look. And then it also tightly regulates the fluid that is outside of the cells, which is what you don't want. If you mess up sodium and water manipulation, you end up with a bunch of water outside of the cells, which sits above your skin and just gives you that round, kind of soft, puffy look. And you can even be fairly lean, but you'll look like

1% fatter just because you messed up on your sodium and water and carbohydrate manipulation. So basically what it boils down to is the body, I mean, it regulates this very precisely, even on a minute to minute basis, it's regulating the cellular fluid levels. And when you start playing with sodium and you start playing with carbohydrates and water, basically what it comes down to is you're risking doing it wrong. You're risking messing it up, which is going to leave you kind of just fat and bloated looking, even though you're lean. And of course, I'm speaking relatively fat or bloated looking. But when you get lean, you notice these things from a day-to-day basis. You can wake up, when you're around 7%,

6%, you can wake up from a day-to-day and you can look in the mirror and be like, what happened? Uh, because you can just be holding a lot of water from the day previously, or on the flip side, you can wake up and just be looking extra lean just because a little bit of water flushed out. And you're just like, wow, uh, you know, I don't think I lost a pound of fat overnight. So what's going on here? Um, so basically the best advice that I was able to kind of dig up and I tried it myself and I was happy with it is to not mess with your sodium or water, but to just keep them balanced. That's the key. Your sodium and potassium levels, if they become imbalanced, either with the sodium going very high or even the potassium going very high,

that can cause water retention. So you want to just keep these things balanced. In terms of how much daily sodium, I mean, generally speaking, I just kind of stick to the Institute of Medicine's recommendation, which is anywhere between about one and a half and two grams of sodium a day. And I just measure some salt. Like I just know that, okay, I'm going to get about a teaspoon or maybe like a half a teaspoon, three quarters of a teaspoon of salt a day. And that's my sodium because I prepare my own food. So I don't, you know, I can control, I know what's going in there. If I don't add salt, it's just basically a very low sodium meal. And then potassium, you want it to be double your sodium. So me personally, like I said, I do probably about 1.5 grams of sodium a day

and about 3 grams of potassium a day, which I actually just supplement because I guess I probably get a little bit more potassium because I do eat some bananas every day and probably get some potassium in the vegetables I eat. But I also supplement with about 3 grams. Yeah, supplement about 3 grams of potassium a day and probably get another gram, gram and a half in my food. And so so that's my standard sodium that's what i did leading up to the shoot i started playing with sodium increasing sodium increasing decreasing water decreasing carbs wasn't

happy with how i looked training sucked and then i was like all right i'm doing something different this time so this is what i did i brought my uh sodium potassium back to regular levels i brought my water intake back to regular levels which is um, um, also the advice that I, that I found that, that most made sense to me based on my experience is, uh, don't try to do any crazy things with your water. Just keep your water intake where it always is. For me, that's about two gallons a day. Um, I, I sweat a fair amount, you know, I lift in the morning. I do cardio a few days a week. I live in Florida. Very humid. So I'm sweating a fair amount of water out with my exercise.

And then if I'm outside, it just kind of pulls water out of you because it's so hot here. So yeah, about two gallons of water a day. And all my carbohydrates, I just kept them normal. Like at the end of my cut, which is, you know, I cut up to the point of the photo shoot, I was at about 180 grams of carbs a day. So I just brought it back to 180 grams and, of course, felt better doing that than what I was doing before and looked totally, I mean, I think I looked good. I was happy with how with how i looked um and

you know that's uh i think of i think of matt ogis he was taught if you're not familiar with him he's a natural bodybuilder great physique seems like a cool guy um he was talking about this recently and was saying the exact same thing that he doesn't he doesn't mess with water sodium carbohydrates he just gets really lean and that is kind of the bottom line is there's a point where if you're lean enough, that's it. You're going to look good. Just don't, don't do anything crazy. That's going to cause you to hold a bunch of water and you're going to look good. And so, so yeah, I just wanted to talk about that quickly because I do get asked about that fairly often with people that not necessarily for competitions, but if they

just want to look extra good on a certain day, I don't know, you're going to go to the beach and you're meeting some girl for the first time or something, whatever, or girls, you know, meeting some guy or something, whatever. And really the thing is on that, now that I've tried it in different ways, I would just recommend getting lean and just keeping your water intake and your salt and potassium intake at the correct levels and not playing with anything, not swinging anything to one extreme of a high or a low. And same thing with carbs. You know, if you're familiar with my work, you know I'm just not a fan of low-carbohydrate dieting, period, for anything, unless you really wanted to just flush some water out for, I don't know, to try to look a little bit leaner on a certain day. Yes, you could cut your carbohydrates in half for a few days,

and you will flush some water out. But otherwise, in terms of long-term getting lean and getting strong, getting big, just low-carbohyd carbohydrate has no place in that. And if you're worried that you're going to get fat if you eat carbs and stuff like that, I'm going to link an article that I wrote on this, which basically just 100% debunks the current crusade against carbohydrate as this evil macronutrient. I'll link it down in the description so you can

check that out. The bottom line is if you're exercising regularly, and especially if you're weightlifting, carbohydrates are your friend. Yeah, there's no reason to eat a bunch of junk carbs, but carbohydrates are not going to make you fat. In fact, they're going to fuel your workouts. They're going to help you feel strong. They're going to help you with your energy levels. They're going to help you, uh, feel strong. They're going to help you with your energy levels. They're going to help you just feel satiated. Um, and they're, they just make you feel good. I mean, there's a, there is a sense of overall wellbeing that comes with eating some carbohydrates and I don't mean going in, you know, pounding desserts or something like that. I mean, even if it's healthy stuff, it's, you know, even vegetables, vegetables have carbohydrates, some more than others.

Um, but, uh, you know, regardless of what it is, if it's, uh, you know, sweet potato or if it's rice or, um, I mean some other, even in certain breads that I like, like Ezekiel bread and really like Ezekiel bread and don't eat that much of it. But if I'm going to have bread, it's usually that. Um, and I like fruit, pretty much all types of fruit. Uh, I'm going to have bread, it's usually that. And I like fruit, pretty much all types of fruit. I eat a lot of fruit. And once again, there's another thing, if you're afraid that fruit is going to, that it's bad for your health or it's going to cause you any sort of issues, I'm going to link another article that I wrote on that,

which, because it's total bullshit, and, you know, it's kind of a strange, the guy really pushing it, I think, is something Lustig, I think his name is. And he is saying that fructose in fruit makes you fat, it ruins your liver, and blah, blah, blah. Anyways, I talk about it in the article. So that's the sodium and water manipulation story. And in the future, I'm just going to do what I did, which is no crazy swings one way or another, just keeping things steady and getting lean and letting that just kind of take care of itself.

So let's move on to the next little thing I want to talk about in this podcast, and that is how to spot a fake natural. Steroid use is pretty prevalent these days. It's actually kind of shocking. I'm even surprised sometimes to hear some people that I meet in the gym and stuff that looking at them, you wouldn't think they're on drugs, and they don't really know what they're doing. They don't know how to train correctly.

They don't know how to eat correctly, but they're on steroids, which is really stupid. but they're on steroids, which is really stupid. Some guys don't understand that steroids don't automatically just make you huge and shredded and aesthetic. That's just not how it works. If you know what you're doing and you're on drugs, yes, you can make much faster gains than you can naturally, but there are a lot of risks that come with it. If you mess things up, you can, I mean, you can cause permanent damage to your body if you cycle, if you do a cycle incorrectly. And of course, it's very expensive and you're injecting yourself every week or every other day or whatever. So there are a lot of downsides. I don't judge or have a problem with people doing drugs. I've

never done any and I wouldn't, I don't see any reason to. But to each their own, whatever people want to do with their bodies, I understand. Some people are just smarter about it than others, I guess. But in terms of spotting a fake natural, the easiest way to know if someone's on drugs is to simply look at their shoulders, their traps, and their upper chest. On druggers, they're massive. That's those big, massive, like, basketball shoulders that just come way out. That's autodrugs. Same thing with traps.

The massive traps that you see guys have, massive upper chest, is the drug look 100% of the time. Now, of course, some guys can have particularly good genetics when it comes to their shoulder development or whatever. But if I won't necessarily, I'm not going to put some, I'm not going to put pictures down. I don't want to call anybody out in specific. But, you know, you could find plenty of pictures where it just looks superhuman. It looks almost like their shoulders are like my head, you know what I mean? And the reason why that is is because those areas of the body have a lot of receptors for the anabolic hormones. So those hormones bind in a high quantity, I guess you could say, in those areas.

So they grow very quickly and, you know, they look very big. So that's an easy way to spot a fake natural. Also, there's still level of muscular development that you just can't reach naturally, um, in terms of getting every little cut, seeing every little fiber everywhere. Um, it's, that is, is usually a sign of drugs. And, of course, you can get the acne stuff, and that's obvious. But a lot of guys don't necessarily get the acne. So it's really you're looking at huge shoulders, huge traps, huge upper chest, and just that crazy kind of where you can see every little muscle, every little fiber is really well developed

is pretty much telltale signs of someone that's on steroids. And the other reason why I'm even talking about it is I just get asked about it. Like I said, I don't really care if people are on drugs. They can do what they want. But I do think it's kind of lame when people claim natural and are giving advice to other weightlifters as a natural bodybuilder or as a natural weightlifter, even a fitness model or whatever, because that's also one of the things to look for is you'll also, usually you can spot a drugger by their training. The common training style when you're on drugs is very high volume workouts.

You're in the gym for a couple of hours. Usually you're working in that quote-unquote hypertrophy rep range, which I have things to say about. I'll link another article here that I wrote for people that think they're hard gainers and what it takes to really build muscle efficiently in terms of rep range or kind of exercises and stuff. I'll link that down in the description below. But anyways, the drugger style of training is very high volume workouts, usually in the 10 to 12 rep range. Some guys will work in some heavy stuff, but you'll be in there for, you'll be doing, you know, 20, 25 sets in a workout and usually a fair amount of isolation work as well. It's just a common, you'll just see

it a lot. So when you see these guys that are big, they have big shoulders, big traps, big chest, shredded, everything is super developed. And then you look at their workout routine and it's this kind of workout routine where they're doing 20, 25 sets. You know, they're being in it for a couple hours, high rep, and probably a lot of supersets and stuff. It's just drugs every time. So it's unfortunate because then guys that aren't on drugs, and especially guys and, you know, even girls, there are a lot of, you know, girls, fitness model model girls and girls that compete and stuff on drugs as well. And, uh, so, so natural guys and girls will, will, you know, read the interview, look at the workout and be like, Oh, I guess that's what I should do.

And then they go do it and they just end up over training and, uh, feeling terrible. Um, and then just wondering, you know, and then they, they can chalk it up to like, Oh, well, you know, I just don't have the genetics or something like that. No, you just don't have the drugs. That's, that's the problem. So yeah, I mean, if you want to know a little bit more about how I think you should train as a natural, then check out the article on hard gainers. But that's, that's all I really have to say on spotting fake naturals. So let's move on to the next thing here, which is training tips for targeting weak points. So I get emailed fairly often from guys and message from guys and girls that they have, for guys, it's usually chest and biceps probably are the most commonly complained about body parts. How do I make my chest bigger and how do I make my arms bigger, specifically my biceps probably are the most commonly complained about body parts. How do I make my chest bigger

and how do I make my arms bigger, specifically my biceps usually. Um, and, and girls are usually more concerned with toning. Uh, well I say toning cause that's really the word they use, but you know, they want, they want, um, leaner legs, more, more defined legs and a better butts usually as what girls are most concerned with. So in terms of targeting weak points, the first thing that I always tell people is don't worry about this so much if you're new to lifting. You don't really want to be, because normally to target, like if I say, oh, I need more side delt, which I do, right? So I need to isolate that muscle more and do some more side raises, maybe train them twice a week, something like that.

You don't want to get into that until you've really built a solid foundation of muscle and strength. And that requires focusing on the big compound lifts, you know, stuff like military press, bench press, squat, deadlift, and focusing on heavy weightlifting. For guys, if you're familiar with my work, you know that I recommend you work in the 4 to 6 rep range, 80, 85% of your one rep max, and you're hitting your whole body with heavyweight compound exercises every day. And for women, it's the same approach, although the rep range I recommend is a little bit higher, 8 to 10 reps.

And really the reason for this is because, in my experience working with many women, they're just very, very intimidated by the 4 to 6 rep range. I mean, most women that I talk with are fairly intimidated by the 8 to 10 rep range because it feels very heavy for them when they're used to doing maybe 20 reps of something and they're ending not even at failure but just at a point where they're fat weight that you can get at least 8, but no more than 10. If you can get more than 10, you're raising the weight. When you go that transition, I mean, most girls are very sore and they're like, wow, this feels really heavy. So to go from that 20 rep style, which is the standard what most women are told to do to go from that to four to six in my in my experience um is is is just overwhelming for a lot of for a lot of girls so um that's why i recommend the eight to ten rep range for girls and they can they do very well in that rep range they're not

as concerned with maximizing strength and muscle growth as guys are. Um, and you know, even for some, for some girls that want to lift heavy, what we do is, uh, we work some four to six rep, uh, lifting into the, into their eight to 10 rep. So, um, usually what I'll do is I'll have them hit the big compounds in the four to six rep range. I'll have them hit, um, their squats, their deadlifts, their bench press, their military press. These, these types of exercises will be like very heavyweight four to six reps. And then the rest of the workout, that'll be about three to six sets of really heavy. And then three to six sets of eight to 10, which is still heavy. It's just not as heavy. Um, so, uh, yeah, I mean that, that's, that's really what I recommend in the beginning. And it takes to, before you really like even know what your weak points are, I would say that you have to really pound your body with heavy weightlifting compound lifts probably

for a year or so before you really even know what your weak points are. Yes, chests just tend to grow slowly. It's annoying. It's just the way it is. In my experience, I would say that it probably takes to go from just a normal type of physique to have, you know, a big chest, like a chest that would be comparable to, you know, a fitness model or a lot of these guys on the internet whose images get shared around and stuff. It takes a few years, probably three years.

I'd say at the end of the year one, you should have clearly have a chest that should really have filled in. But it takes, it takes a couple of years to get that real big kind of like armor plate looking chest. And you just have to keep on hitting it hard and hitting it heavy and, you know, doing a lot of incline presses because you don't want to have that chest. When I first started lifting, I made the mistake of doing a bunch of flat, usually on the Smith machine too, which is extra fail, a bunch of flat pressing and a bunch of decline pressing. And what I ended up with is a very bottom heavy chest where I'd had very little upper chest and had this big bottom chest.

It just looked, now that I look back on it, it just looked bad. Um, so to fix that, it took probably a year of every workout, every, every week, my chest workout would start with, um, six sets of incline heavy. So I would usually start with either incline dumbbell press or incline bench press. And then I'd move up to the other for the next three sets. So it'd be like three sets incline dumbbell and three sets incline bench or vice versa. And then I'd move on to some flat. And I'd completely stop doing decline altogether. And then after, yeah, it took about a year.

And my upper chest finally came into a point where it was proportionate with my lower. Although it's not, it's still, I still need some work and I'm still working on it, but, um, don't make that mistake. Uh, hit your inclines heavy and hit them, uh, early and you're going to be happy that you did one after a year or two and you really start to have a chest. It's going to be a well-rounded chest. Um, you're at that point, though, where you have built a good foundation of muscle and strength, you've been lifting, you've been hitting your compounds, you've been lifting heavy, and you really do have weak points that you need to target, what I recommend is training them twice a week, of course. I mean, that's like standard. a week, of course. I mean, that's like standard. And you can work like in terms of working in your schedule. I like to, I live five days a week. I do one major muscle group per day. And so what I would do is like, for instance, I'm going to start training my shoulders twice a week because they need it. So what I'll do is I'm going to be working in probably three to four

sets of shoulders. I have my shoulders day, which right now is Wednesday. I'm doing a little bit more now on shoulders day. I'm doing 12 sets on shoulders day. I've added in some front raises just because I just need more delts period. So I'm doing that that and then I'm going to add in some more front raises and side raises, which are isolation exercises. And I'll be doing them. I'll probably, I do shoulders on Wednesday. I probably will be fine to do the extra sets on Friday. I think, um, either that or I will do them maybe on Monday.

I'm going to play around with it, but the basic, I mean, it's very simple. You just take whatever your weak point is. Um, you have your day that is, is training it directly. And then you're doing three to maybe six. You don't want to overtrain. That's the thing. You know, there are programs out there that have you doing high volume workouts twice a week, like hitting a muscle group, uh, heavy and hard, high volume twice a week. As a natural, I don't, that's just a recipe for overtraining. I mean, I couldn't even do that. And I don't, I mean, I don't have amazing genetics, but I have pretty good genetics for lifting. I don't overtrain easily. I don't need a lot of sleep to recover. My body is just well conditioned, I guess. And I couldn't do that.

So instead of doing that, what you do is one, you know, heavy, moderate volume, you know, bigger and stronger style workout on the whatever is the weak point. And then you give it a couple days rest. And then you start your workout with three to four sets of hitting it again. Depending on what it is, I mean, I would just stick with heavy weight. Although with shoulders, it can be a little bit tricky because sometimes it's just hard. I mean, the four to six rep range can be a real pain in the ass with shoulders, especially with like side raises. So you can raise that. What I do is I'll raise it to like six to eight reps

and work in that range with the smaller muscles that are just, you know, it's hard to keep your form. Some people don't have a problem. Some people do. It's kind of strange. Um, but so, uh, like for instance, talking about chest, it's a commonly complained about body part, even from guys that have been lifting for a few years. So what we'll do is they have their chest day on Monday and then Thursday, which in my program is legs day. What they do is they start their, their workout, they warm up their chest and they do like three to four heavy sets of incline bench press is normally what I have them do, and just get in that extra work, and then they go and train their legs after. So, you know, it adds 15 minutes to their workout or so. It's not a big deal. So that's really all it is in

terms of training weak points um calves are a common weak point it's a weak point of mine uh genetically i have like zero calves so i've had to work really hard just to have anything um i'm training them right now i'm actually training them four times a week which i recently did with my abs and i was pretty happy with it i have an ab routine in my book bigger leaner stronger that's a solid ab routine. It's a circuit that starts with some weighted cable crunches, then you move into captain's chair leg raises, which are awesome for lower abs and just great for your core. And then you end with air bikes, air bicycles, which are also very good for your obliques. They're good for your, it's called the transversus abdominis, I think TVA. It's that line, those lines that come down the side.

called the transversus abdominis. I think TVA, it's that line, those lines that come down the side. So that's a good circuit that I recommend that people do two times a week and you're running through it several times in each workout. But what I did recently is I was trying, I wanted to try something different that I heard about,

which is just doing three to four, maybe five sets of weighted cable crunches. So you're just hitting your abs with just weighted work every day, at least four times a week. And that's what I did for several months. And I was actually pretty surprised with the amount of development that I got out of my abs doing that. Because it just seems so brain dead, like, oh, go on, do cable crunched, do the cable crunches. Okay, next day, do the cable crunches, like for months and months and months. But I was pretty shocked actually with, because I wanted my abs to just come out more.

I needed more development. And you've probably seen that before where some guys will be lean, but their abs are very small. They just look, they look like a teenager. And some people have genetically, they have very well-developed abs, and they don't have to train them that much. Just doing stuff like heavy squats and deadlifts can be enough. But for some people, that's just not the case. They have to directly train their abs. And I was one of those people. So yeah, that's what I was, that's what I was doing with abs. It worked nicely. So I'm doing it with calves

now and we'll see how it goes. From what I've read and what I've heard, it's really calves are just a matter of just beating them up over and over and over and over and they grow. So we'll see how that goes. So that's one way you can, you know, if you want to target your calves, you can start doing that right away. I just work them in just like how I work in abs. I'll do a set of a major muscle group, whether it's chest, whatever, do my chest set, go do my calves, rest, you know, whatever, 60 seconds or so, because my chest will already have rested in 60 seconds. And then just let my heart rate come down, go back to my chest and just cycle through it. So yeah, that's how you can also train your abs and calves more.

Let's move on to the next point here, which is how to deal with cravings. I'm actually going to do a blog post on this because I want to do a bit of research. I've heard things like vitamin C can help with cravings. I'm not sure if that's true. I have to do some research, but I wouldn't be surprised if there were some micronutritional things you can do to help with cravings. But what I'm going to talk about now are some things that I know that help. Really, the major thing that I've found that helps with cravings, I mean, I don't get cravings that often when I'm cutting. So I guess maybe I'm a little bit lucky in that way, but I've worked with a lot of people that do. And a major point is when you're dieting, when you're cutting,

one, make sure that you're eating foods that you like. I know it sounds stupid, but it is necessary. A lot of people that come to me that have tried things in the past are of the mindset that dieting or to lose weight, cutting equals eating nothing but boiled chicken and steamed broccoli every day, every meal. And if they touched a, you know, if they had a little ice cream sandwich at night, like their diet's ruined or whatever. Or if they're, if they're eating a piece of bread at lunch, then they won't lose weight. And that's complete bullshit. And that style of dieting gives weight loss and gives dieting a bad name. I was just talking recently with a guy who I guess, I mean, I don't even know, he says he competes physique. He doesn't really look, I don't know,

but whatever. He said, you know, oh, you know, he's going to be eating only orange, roughy and asparagus for the next four weeks. And I asked him, so the conversation started, I was like, why, why, why are you doing that? Um, so no, because I'm, you know, preparing for a show or whatever. And I was like, oh, okay, that's cool. But, but why, like, why be so restrictive with your diet? It just makes it terrible.

And, um, this was on Facebook and then, I mean, he didn't respond. And, but that, that style of dieting sucks. Like, yeah, who wants to eat bland, crappy food every meal, every day? Um, so what's much better is when you have, uh, your macronutrient, your protein, carbs, and fats, you have your numbers. This is how much you can eat every day. And if you're curious on how to calculate that, I mean, I talk about a lot about it in my book, Bigger, Leaner, Stronger, but for cutting, for instance, I recommend a very simple formula, 1.2 grams of protein per pound, one gram of carbohydrate per pound, and 0.2 grams of fat per pound. And it works out to be about a roughly 40, 40, 40% of your calories from protein, about 40% from carbs and about 20% from fats, which is very standard. So you have your numbers. And then what you do is to meet those numbers, you eat foods that you like.

Now, of course, you're limited. If you're like, oh, I like beer. I like chicken wings. I like pizza. Okay. No, that doesn't work. But you can find foods that are not super calorie dense or are not completely imbalanced macronutritionally. Meaning like pizza, for instance, yeah, it kicks ass. It's good.

But in terms of nutrients, it sucks because it's like all carbs and fats and it's a shitload. So pizza would really just be reserved for a cheat meal. But to meet your numbers, what you should do is make a list of foods that you like to eat. And I really recommend eating the same foods every meal every day, especially initially. If you haven't dieted before, that is the best way to learn it because then you get to see this is all it takes. Hitting numbers every day is all it takes. And you don't want to mess it up by trying to introduce too much variety, not knowing really what's in your food. You go to a restaurant, you don't know how much oil or

butter they're putting in your food. And if you try to do it that way, and then it doesn't work because you accidentally are overeating without realizing it, you can come to the conclusion, well, this style of dieting doesn't work. And then you're off into whatever kind of random things after that HCG diet or something, right, so what I recommend is that you be very specific on your meal plan. You have to account for every little thing, every tablespoon of oil, every pat of butter, whatever, and it meets your numbers and eat those foods every meal, every day, same thing. And then you see your body change and then you know, okay, this is all it takes. And then to introduce variety, you would simply take one of your meals. Let's say your

breakfast has been, you know, some oatmeal, some eggs, whatever. And you're like, Oh, I'd rather have rather do rather do this for breakfast. No problem. You just take your numbers for breakfast, swap out foods that meet those numbers. And there you go. Um, so that. So that's the first tip on cravings is don't be too restrictive on your diet. Make sure that you're eating foods. Like through my cut, I was eating stuff I liked every day. My post-workout shake is delicious. I love it every day. It's bananas, rice milk, put some PB2 in there, some protein powder. I put cinnamon, I put some fiber. It's delicious. I look forward to it every day. My lunch, I eat some chicken, some protein powder. I put cinnamon, I put some fiber. Um, it's delicious. I look forward to it every day. My lunch, uh, eat some chicken, some vegetables, um, whether prepared

in a way that's good. Like, you know, it tastes good to me. Uh, my, my afternoon snack would be like banana almond butter, which is just delicious. Uh, protein shake, some more PB two. Um, so I was eating things I liked every day. i actually looked forward to each meal i never felt like oh my god i gotta force down this orange ruffian asparagus for the 70th time this month um so that that's the first tip with cravings and the the oh and i also should say if you want to have a little like dessert a little treat or indulgence or whatever just work it in uh i was eating i dropped it, toward the end of my cut because I needed to cut my carbs and I just felt like cutting this thing out. But for half of my cut, I was eating a little ice cream sandwich every night.

Um, it was like a coconut ice cream, kind of a healthy version or whatever, but it tasted great and I enjoyed it. And it was like a hundred calories, like no big deal. I just worked it into my meal plan and I got to have a little something that, you know, a little dessert every day while cutting. I also drink a lot of, I also like to drink a lot of tea. I like Teavana's tea. It's so good. You got to try this.

It's like kiwi berry colada or something. It is the best shit ever. It's so good. I make it with some green tea, and then I sweeten it with stevia, and it actually tastes like dessert. It's so good. I make it with some green tea and then I sweeten it with stevia and it actually tastes like dessert. It's just delicious. So I drink a bunch of tea after dinner and it tastes great. Stevia is like, you know, it's a zero calorie sweetener, has health benefits. So it's just zero calorie, good tasting stuff with health benefits. And then, so that's the first tip on dealing with cravings. The next tip is make sure to have your cheat meal or have your refeed depending on what

you're doing. Don't leave these out because there's the big part of it is the psychological benefit. I mean, it's, it feels good. You get to, you know, if you're going to go to a restaurant, don't go crazy, but don't, don't, uh, restrict yourself. Don't say like, Oh, I really want to get that appetizer, but I don't want to go over on calories or whatever. Don't worry about it. If you go over your daily calories by 500 because of that meal, it won't do anything.

It's not a problem. So make sure that you have your weekly cheat meal or your weekly refeed, which if you're not familiar what that is, it's where you are spiking your carbohydrates up. And the reason for doing it is mainly because it spikes a hormone called leptin, which tells your body that it's full or tells your body that it has, that it's fed, that it can continue losing fat. I talk about it in an article, which I'll link below so you can read more about the science of it. But anyways, refeeding is more important as you start to get leaner and leaner. I don't think it's very important if you're above 10% as a guy, you don't have to worry about it. If you're above 20% as a girl, it doesn't really matter. You can

just go have a cheat meal and you're fine. It becomes more important as you get leaner because body fat actually produces leptin. So as your fat levels get lower and lower, your leptin levels basically become chronically low. It affects your metabolism. And anyways, there's some more information on it, which will be in the link below. So that's another important thing on dealing with cravings is make sure that you're doing a cheat meal every week because it helps. Like if you're craving some pizza, good, that's your cheat meal. Go have some pizza.

I would recommend not eating three pizzas, but, you know, go have 1,000 calories in pizza and just enjoy it. And don't have any mental of like, oh, you're getting fatter now. No, that's not how it works. A pound of fat has about 3,500 calories in it. And so even if you overate by 3,500 calories, that doesn't equal to a pound of fat storage. Because for your body to take that food, that 3,500 calories worth of food, and turn it into fat, that costs energy in and of itself. For instance, protein is just, it's very hard. It costs a lot of energy for the body to turn protein into body fat. It costs very little

energy for your body to turn dietary fat into body fat. It costs a fair amount of energy for your body to turn carbohydrates into fat. So there's the energy cost of turning it into fat. There's also the fact that the body has other uses for the protein, carbs, and fats before it will store them as fat. It's not like if your glycogen levels are low, for instance, in your liver and your muscles, when you eat carbohydrates, your body as a priority is going to fill those glycogen levels up, and then it will store fat. It doesn't store fat to a certain point and then give some to the glycogens the other way around. It's the same story with protein and fats.

There are physiological processes that your body uses these things for, and when that's done, then it will store fat. Now, in terms of dietary fat, a lot of it actually is stored because that's one of its main things, but it does have some other uses on a cellular level, hormones and stuff. So, yeah, don't get all weird about a cheat meal. Just enjoy it. And I also, like I said, I will write an article on cravings.

I just have to do a bit more research before I can really say if certain things in terms of certain supplements or even certain vitamins and micronutrients can help. And it also is worth noting, actually, on the cravings. Make sure that you're not in too much of a caloric deficit that can really mess with you it can mess with make you very hungry which then leads to cravings although cravings can be totally separate from hunger but in terms of a

deficit you want to i don't recommend putting yourself into more than 20 deficit what i mean by that is if your body's burning 2000 calories worth of energy every day, you don't want to be eating a 20% deficit would be 1600 calories a day. You wouldn't want to drop below that because that, uh, yeah, it speeds up the weight loss, but it also just makes you miserable. If you take it too far and go for too long, you can damage your metabolism. Slow and steady is the name of the game with weight loss.

All you want to see is one to two pounds of weight loss per week. And you don't want to try to rush it because that can lead to crazy cravings. And also off the top of my head, I just think of these things as I think back over a lot of emails. Don't have a bunch of cheap foods around in the house. If cookies are your thing, if chips are your thing, if whatever is your thing, popcorn, whatever, throw it out. Just don't have it there. That's a big part of it as well. Some people, they get into a habit of eating.

It's kind of like smokers. Smokers associate smoking with certain things. They go to a party, they have to smoke, they do this, they have to smoke. Some people associate eating with certain things. They're going to sit down and watch their favorite TV show. They're going to eat something. Uh, they're going to, you know, hang out with these friends or whatever. They're going to eat something. Um, so if you can just not have the food there to eat, then that is a simple way to, to at least, uh, prevent you from, from drastically overeating. I know it's not like the best in terms of how do you actually get rid of cravings, but you know, it is, it is part of it. Um, yeah, so, okay. I guess that's, uh, I think it's one of the things, but I'm going to talk

more about it in an article. Um, so that's, that's what I'll,'s one of the things, but I'm going to talk more about it in an article. So that's what I'll say for now on dealing with cravings. And last but not least in this podcast, I just want to give a quick heads up on Legion. I know a lot of you are familiar with it. It's my upcoming line of supplements, which I'm pretty excited about. They're basically going to be the products that I've always wished that somebody would make, and nobody was, so I'm just doing it myself and that means no proprietary blends I'm going to be completely transparent with my ingredients, all ingredients are going to be backed by peer reviewed published research that you can go verify yourself

no bullshit ingredients that are just there to fill the ingredients list to make you think you're getting a lot for your money, but which have no science behind them. No misconstruing studies. I mean, some of these companies, they'll cite studies in some of their marketing and you go and look at the study and it literally has nothing to do with the marketing claim. They're just citing anything or something very broad or vague. And then they're just extrapolating somehow this crazy claim out of it. So none of that, you'll be able to see all the studies. They're all going to be directly relevant to that ingredient and with, you know, resistance trained people. And it's going to be

real science, not bullshit science. They're going to be naturally sweetened, no artificial fillers, uh, or, or other junk that gets added, which I'll be talking about on the website. Um, and yeah, so that's like kind of going to be the, the, the products, uh, what the philosophy of, of the products and also of the brand is I want to, I want to kind of like be the change that I want to see in the supplement industry. Um, you know, maybe it's a bit, uh, ambitious to say that I want to try to reform it, but you know, whatever, that's my, my products. I want to create products that are going to be the standard by which other products are judged. And I want to really, what I want to do is I would love to force the other supplement companies to stop bullshitting and even in the marketing like the exaggerated or ridiculous marketing where you have these crazy

massive drug beasts you know saying oh I'm taking the test draw cyclone max supplement that's why I'm so big like who believes that like I think we all know that it's complete bullshit but somehow they keep on doing it and they keep on selling products. So I also, uh, I'm going to be, I want to be totally different in my marketing. I want to focus on education in the marketing. I want to help people, uh, better understand what supplements are and aren't worth their money. Um, and I want them to be able to avoid a lot of these common scams that are out there. Even if you don't buy my products, I'll be happy if you walk away as a better educated consumer and you don't go waste your money on crap. That is going to do absolutely nothing. And where you're really just buying,

you're giving them money, not for the, not the, they're going to take that money. They're going to put 10 cents of every dollar or less,.05 of every dollar back into the production, like manufacturing. They're going to put all the rest of the money into marketing to get more sales and profits to buy Lamborghinis and stuff. more about it soon. The website's going to be going up and there'll be a lot of information on the website. I'd love to get your feedback, you know, once it's up. And yeah, I mean, I'm excited. I'd really like to, to kind of build a movement, not just sell stuff. So yeah, that's, that's it for, for today's podcast. I think I ran a little bit, 45 minutes again. All right, well, I'm going to try, I'm going to try. I'm going to put less stuff. I'll talk about three things in the next one. I'll try to keep it like 30 minutes.

Once again, you can comment. If you have any comments, suggestions, anything you'd like to hear about, let me know. If you could subscribe to my channel on YouTube, that'd be awesome. You can find me on Facebook, on Twitter. I answer all messages. I really like to stay engaged with everybody. I really appreciate the support of my people.

So you can write me anytime and I'm happy to help. Yeah, I hope you have a great 4th of July. It's 4th of July. Enjoy the fireworks. Enjoy the food. Enjoy your cheat meal. Don't be don't, uh,

go, don't be too hard on yourself. And, uh, yeah, have a great weekend too. See you guys next time. Hey,

it's Mike again. Hope you liked the podcast. If you did, uh, go ahead and subscribe. I put out new episodes every week or two, um, where I talk about 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 like 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.