Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - The Best of Muscle for Life: Deep Nutrition, Sleep & Muscle Building, Monthly Fat Loss Targets, and More

Episode Date: December 17, 2020

I’ve recorded hundreds of episodes of Muscle for Life on a huge variety of things related to health, fitness, and lifestyle, ranging from the basics of diet and exercise like energy and macronutrient balance and progressive overload and training frequency and volume to fads like the ketogenic and carnivore diet and collagen protein to more unfamiliar territories like body weight set point and fasted cardio. Some episodes resonate with my crowd more than others, but all of them contain at least a few key takeaways that just about anyone can benefit from (that’s what I tell myself at least). And as cool as that is, it poses a problem for you, my dear listener: Ain’t nobody got time for that. Well okay, some people do make the time to listen to most or even all of my podcasts, but my wizbang analytics tell me that while many listeners tune in on a regular basis, they don’t catch every installment of Muscle for Life and thus miss out on insights that could help them get a little better inside and outside the gym. People have also been saying they’d like me to do more shorter, multi-topic episodes, like my Q&As. And so I got an idea: how about a “best of” series of podcasts that contains a few of the most practical and compelling ideas, tips, and moments from my most popular episodes? This way, people who are new to the show can quickly determine if it’s for them or not, and those who enjoy what I’m doing but don’t have the time or inclination to listen to all of my stuff can still benefit from the discussions and find new episodes to listen to. So, in this installment of The Best of Muscle for Life, you’ll be hearing hand-picked morsels from three episodes: 1. Dr. Cate Shanahan on the Power of “Deep Nutrition” (Originally published July 19, 2017) 2. Q&A: Monthly Fat Loss Targets, Sleep and Muscle Building, Adjusting Meal Plans for Fat Loss, and More (Originally published March 8, 2019) 3. Motivation Monday: What's More Important than Necessity? (Originally published September 24, 2018) And we’ll be starting with number one, Dr. Cate Shanahan on the Power of “Deep Nutrition”. 5:34 - Dr. Cate Shanahan on the Power of “Deep Nutrition” 15:15 - Q&A: Monthly Fat Loss Targets, Sleep and Muscle Building, Adjusting Meal Plans for Fat Loss, and More 24:47 - Motivation Monday: What's More Important than Necessity? Mentioned on The Show: Shop Legion Supplements Here: legionathletics.com/shop/ --- Want free workout and meal plans? Download my science-based diet and training templates for men and women: https://legionathletics.com/text-sign-up/

Hello, and welcome to the latest and greatest episode of Muscle for Life. I'm Mike Matthews, and thank you for joining me today. Now, I have recorded hundreds of episodes of Muscle for Life, and I've talked about a huge variety of things related to health, fitness, lifestyle, mindset, ranging from the basics of diet and exercise like energy and macronutrient balance and progressive overload and training frequency and volume to fads like the ketogenic and carnivore diet and collagen protein to more unfamiliar territories like body weight set point and fasted cardio. And some episodes resonate with my crowd more than others, but all of them contain at least a few key takeaways that just about anyone can

benefit from. At least that's what I tell myself. That's what helps me sit down in the chair every day and do this. And as cool as that is, it poses a problem for you, my dear listener, especially if you are new here. And that is, ain't nobody got time for that. We're talking about probably a thousand plus hours of content at this point. And while some people actually do make the time to listen to most or even all of my podcasts, my whizbang analytics tell me that while many listeners tune in on a regular basis, they don't catch every installment of Muscle for Life and thus they miss out on insights that could help them get even just a little bit better inside and outside the gym. Because if you just get a little bit better consistently enough, that can add up to big

results in the long run. And people have also been telling me that they would like me to do more shorter, multi-topic episodes like my Q&As and Says You episodes. And so I got an idea. How about a best of series of podcasts that contains a few of the most practical and compelling ideas, tips, and moments from my most popular episodes, going all the way back to the beginning. This way, people who are new in particular can quickly determine if this is the droid they're looking for, if this podcast is for them or not. And then

those who are regulars and enjoy what I'm doing, but just don't have the time or inclination to listen to all of my stuff. And I do understand that. I don't take it personally. You can also then benefit from the discussions and the episodes that you are not listening to in full. And you can also find new episodes to listen to without having to give an hour of your time to determine whether it was worth it or not. So here we are with the best of muscle for life. So in this installment of the best of muscle life, you're going to be hearing handpicked morsels from three episodes. The first was an interview I did with Dr. Kate Shanahan on the power of deep nutrition, which is also the title of one of her books. And then the second episode that

you're going to hear highlights from was a monthly Q&A where I talked about fat loss targets, sleep and muscle building, and adjusting meal plans for fat loss. And the final episode was a Motivation Monday episode called What's More Important Than Necess necessity. Also, if you like what I am doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, definitely check out my sports nutrition company Legion, which thanks to the support of many people like you is the leading brand of all natural sports supplements in the world. And we're on top because every ingredient and dose in every product is backed by peer-reviewed scientific research. Every formulation is 100% transparent. There are no proprietary blends, for example. And everything 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

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. All right, let's start with the first, the interview I did with Dr. Kate Shanahan on the power of what she calls deep nutrition. Now, this was originally published on July 19th, 2017. So if you like what you are about to hear, you can go back and find the whole interview and enjoy the entire thing.

How much do you think, I mean, looking at the, just, I mean, pick a disease and it's basically skyrocketing, especially the ones that we care most about. How much of that do you think is due strictly to dietary conditions versus lifestyle conditions? Like not exercising and stress? Yeah, exactly. People in general are less active than they were. You know, we know that caloric expenditure on the whole is going down as we kind of move from the agrarian or industrial type of economy to the more informational informational knowledge economy and and so so you have sedentary living and then also like you said stress and physical and and of course a mental mental and emotional out of curiosity what are your thoughts in terms of like what are the how how much do those factors contribute versus diet

and then on the flip side how much do and something, again, the reason why I'm bringing this up is because I just know this kicks around in the fitness space as a hypothetical. And then so as another hypothetical, how much does exercising regularly and especially emphasizing resistance training, which has a lot of health benefits that you can't necessarily get from just cardiovascular and vice versa. Um, how much can you offset the, uh, negative influences of poor dieting and with exercise and otherwise living fairly healthily? The fundamental, uh, key piece is the nutrition because you, you cannot out exercise a bad diet um yeah you can't out you can't out train a bad diet right is if you are getting foods that are fundamentally unhealthy your body's not going to process them normally and you're not going to be able to um your your metabolism will be dysfunctional so you're not going to be able to get the maximum benefit out

of your i mean at the very best you're be able to get the maximum benefit out of your, I mean, at the very best, you're not going to get the maximum benefit out of your exercise program. And at the very worst, you're not going to be able to exercise for very long because you're going to get sick. You're going to get some, if you don't get overweight, you're going to get some autoimmune disorder. And, you know, if you do get overweight, you're on the way to diabetes. So those are kind of like the two branch points of types of diseases that I feel like people develop as complications of weight and autoimmune diseases. When you are burning sugar for aerobic exercise, right? So you have to burn sugar for anaerobic by definition. So you have to burn sugar for anaerobic by definition.

But if you're burning it for aerobic exercise, there's a cost. And the cost is acid in the muscle. And that comes because metabolically when you're converting sugar into something that the mitochondria can burn, You produce 30% more carbon dioxide than the respiration of the sugar, produces 30% more carbon dioxide than the respiration of a fatty acid. That carbon dioxide is not just something we breathe off. It has a cost even before we breathe it off. But meanwhile, hey, we do have to breathe it off. That means we have to pant more. That means you feel worse. You don't feel so

good when your blood level of carbon dioxide is high and it affects your body's ability to regulate things like pressure and blood flow. So your blood flow is not optimal. You can't regulate it as quickly or as fast. And the cost in the muscle is that you have to turn on these enzymes that try to fight the acid. And, you know they, they can't do that. And you do get acid building up in, in your muscle, um, eventually. So part of training is not just, um, building more muscle. It's actually building more of these enzymes. If you're not a fat burning athlete, it's building more of these enzymes that help you deal with this overload, this air pollution of carbon dioxide in your cells. Right. Um, so not obviously, like you said, that's, that's more, I mean, with aerobics, that'd be what more applicable to endurance type stuff versus, I mean, uh, if you're talking about strength training, especially proper pure strength training is it's, it's a anaerobic obviously just glycogen you know it's you uh there's there's there's not much in the way of lactic acid build up in the sense of like

a cyclist you know what i mean right um well yes it's a different type of exercise absolutely um however um you know we've all the studies that we've done are on people who don't burn fat very efficiently. And so even in the cardio world, we're finding out that, you know, the cardio athletes, if you give them a high carb diet, they're still not burning fat as efficiently as if you give them a high fat diet. So there's there's a lot of adaptation. Sure. That can be expected, right? Because. Yeah. And you know, I mean, if you're doing weights, you're not just always using those type two fibers. There's the other fibers you're using as well for everything else in the, that you do during the workout. So there's that, that inability to access the stored body fat, which is

going to make you hungry. It's going to make you tired. It's going to make you fatigued. It's going to cloud your concentration. And after years of doing that, you can get away with it for a little while metabolically in terms of developing more hormone imbalances. But eventually, you start to see issues in the blood. And by eventually, I don't mean very eventually. I mean, it depends on your genetics. Some athletes, if they're really abusing their body, they can get away with it for 10 years. And what would you consider what qualifies as abusing when you say that? Like if you're having a lot of your calories from junk foods, you know, sugar and carby, vegetable oil,

rich foods, processed foods. Yeah. So it's the two things that divine processed food are sugars and vegetable oils. So if you're getting a lot of your calories from those things, then you're hurting your body. And, average American gets somewhere around 80% of their calories from those two things. In deep nutrition, we talk a lot about epigenetics, the science of epigenetics, which is the new and improved field of genetics, basically. It talks about the relationship of... Do you want to just quickly, for people that don't know what epigenetics is, just give a quick, what is that?

Yeah, the best definition is it's everything that makes your genes come to life, right? So your DNA is made out of genes. That's only about 1% of your DNA The rest of it is regulatory segments and stuff that's accumulated over the the billions of years that that control how those genes function and Your genes and all those regulatory segments function based on your diet and, of course, every lifestyle factor you can name too, like whether you smoke or not, how much you sleep and exercise and all this. Right. And the fact is that over the generations,

our genes have built up these expectations in terms of all of that stuff. And if they don't get something that they expect, that's when we get sick or we don't feel so good or, you know, we ultimately can even lead to a genetic mutation in the next generation. So there's a lot of intelligence built into these billions and billions of letter code um information that is is our dna and when um so the reason it's important to understand how complicated that is and i guess i haven't said that it's complicated it's really complicated if you string together the dna and all your cells from end to, it would reach to the moon and back multiple times. So there's a lot of information in there.

And it is a information repository system, DNA. It's a survival mechanism. It is the ultimate survival mechanism. Nothing beats it because it's been around. That means it goes all the way back to the beginning of life on earth, which we think is 3.5 billion years of trial and error and perfecting the performance of life. And so that's why fertility is actually the best way to define or to identify a healthy diet, right? So a lot of these books and people that talk about… And you say that's for men and women. Yeah. Yeah.

A lot of the books that talk about, you know, pro vegan actually are and vegetarian are from the Seventh Day Adventist community where they do have a lot of longevity. But these are people who also do a lot of gardening. They were like the macrobiotic folks in the 70s. They did fermenting and sprouting. They do eat meat. They just control it and they tend to get healthier meat. They have a lot of control. They don't eat a lot of junk food as a group.

They do live a long time. That's wonderful. But is their fertility any better than anyone else's? No. The fertility aspect is what DNA really cares about. Okay. Well, that's it for the highlights from the interview I did with Dr. Kate Shanahan on the power of deep nutrition. Again, this was published back in July of 2017, in case you want to go find it and listen to the whole thing. Let's move on now to the snippets from a Q&A that I did back in March of 2019, March 8th on monthly fat loss targets,

sleep and muscle building, adjusting meal plans for fat loss and more. How much fat can you lose in the first 30 days of a cut if you are doing everything right? I.e. eating in a moderately aggressive calorie deficit, training fast, doing a yo-heem bean twice a day, taking Phoenix, etc. Good question. And this one depends on where you are at more than anything else. So to keep it simple, if you have a lot of fat to lose, so if you're a guy, let's say over 20% body fat or a girl over 30% body fat, I would say two to three pounds of fat loss per week for the first little bit, maybe the first couple of weeks is achievable for most people. And then it slows down from there.

And it's probably possible to lose a bit more than that per week at least for the first little bit the first few weeks if you are very very overweight obese and are maintaining a very large calorie deficit but i would have to actually look in the literature to find some good examples of that i feel very comfortable saying that for the average person who's quite overweight who has a lot of fat to lose two to three pounds of fat loss per week at least for the average person who's quite overweight, who has a lot of fat to lose, two to three pounds of fat loss per week, at least for the first several weeks, is achievable. Now, if you are starting out a bit leaner, if you're a guy at 15%, let's say, or you're a girl at 25%, you just got to bring that down a bit, somewhere between one and two. I would say skewed more toward two pounds of fat loss per week, at least for the first little bit, is reasonable. That's a reasonable target to shoot for.

And if you are starting out lean, wanting to get very lean, so if you're a guy at, let's say, 10% or a girl at 20%, and now you're going for the shredded look, then something closer to about one pound of fat loss per week is going to be more realistic and it is going to go down from there. Now, remember, I'm talking about fat loss here, not weight loss. You can lose more weight in the beginning, especially when you first start cutting, because for most people, this means eating a lot less carbohydrate, which results in the body flushing out water, flushing out glycogen. So you can see some pretty rapid weight loss in the beginning. You might be able to lose, let's say you're a guy at 10%. You might lose two or three pounds in your first week of cutting, but you didn't lose two or

three pounds of fat. Okay. The next question, do I have to keep adjusting my meal plan when I'm losing my body fat or do I keep it the same until I reach my goal? It's a good question. And the answer is really simple. Don't fix it if it ain't broken, right? So when you start your cut, you have estimated your total daily energy expenditure, at least your average TDEE, and you have worked out a calorie deficit that's probably somewhere around 20 or 25%. You've worked out your macros. You get going. Things are rolling along nicely. You are weighing yourself every day, taking an average every 7 to 10 days. You are also measuring your waist at least a few times a week to keep an eye on that as well.

And the weight, the average body weight and the waist measurements are going down. Okay, great. Don't change anything until you get stuck. If your average body weight and your waist measurement has not changed in a couple of weeks, you are now stuck. And there are a number of different reasons why this can occur. But at bottom, what is going on here is you are no longer in a large enough calorie deficit to continue losing fat. And so there are a number of things you need to look into. And there are a number of strategies you can use to get the needle moving again. And I don't want this video to turn into a marathon.

So I'm going to defer to an article I wrote. So if you want to learn more about that, just Google muscle for life, not losing weight, and you will find a long, thorough article that I wrote on what to do when you are no longer losing weight. And I also just like to add that it is perfectly normal to get stuck when you are no longer losing weight. And I also just like to add that it is perfectly normal to get stuck when you are cutting for any period of time. If you're just doing like a mini cut, so let's say you've been lean bulking for a while and it's been three or four months and you just want to drop a little bit of body fat. So you figure you'll go into a deficit for three, four weeks and get back to your lean bulk. You probably won't have to adjust anything. But if you are going to be cutting for an extended period of time, eight, 10, 12 plus weeks, eventually you are going to have to reduce the amount of food that you eat. It is almost inevitable for most people. How much sleep is sufficient to build muscle? Four hours, six hours, eight hours,

or 10 hours? Well, the simple answer here is getting enough sleep is hugely important for muscle growth and strength gain, and particularly for intermediate and advanced weightlifters whose bodies are not hyper responsive to resistance training anymore and who can't just use newbie gains to overpower dietary mistakes, sleep mistakes, and so forth. And there are several reasons for that. One is a very obvious reason, acute performance. So if you sleep, let's say four, five, six hours, and you're kind of dragging ass in the morning and you get into the gym and you're going to do some heavy squats, you are going to get less work done in that workout than if you had slept what you needed to sleep, which for most people is seven to nine hours, seven to eight hours is kind of the generally recommended amount of sleep for most people. And so of course, less effective workouts

make for less muscle and strength gain over time. So that's a very obvious way that sleep is going to impact your ability to build muscle and gain strength. Another factor is hormones. So the more sleep deprived you are in general, the more catabolic your hormone profile is going to be. And this can actually get so bad that it can lead to muscle loss. That has been shown in scientific research. If you deprive yourself of enough sleep, I believe it was,

I reviewed the study semi-recently, so the details are a little bit fuzzy, but I believe it was three to four hours of sleep for no more than a week. It was like five to seven days, actually started to cause muscle loss. And so that is completely counterproductive, of course. And the reason why muscle loss occurred was not limited to just what happened hormonally, which mostly just came down to lower levels of anabolic hormones like testosterone and growth hormone and higher levels of catabolic hormones like cortisol. Another reason though, why these guys lost muscle was related to cellular signaling and other aspects of the body's muscle building machinery, so to speak. So that machinery just does not work well when the body is sleep deprived. And so what happens then is your body's ability to

synthesize new muscle proteins just gets outpaced by the amount of muscle protein breakdown that is occurring. Now, I know that the sleep deprivation was rather extreme in this case. Again, I believe it was like three to four hours of sleep per night, several nights in a row. And most of us would not try to get into the gym after several nights of three to four hours of sleep. I could see one night. I've done that before, that's for sure. But two, three, four, five nights, no way. I'm just skipping. But that doesn't mean that the same types of negative effects in the body are simply not occurring at less severe levels of sleep deprivation or sleep restriction. So let's say you need eight hours of sleep to feel good, to have your body firing on all

cylinders, to have a lot of energy in your workouts, to feel like you're recovering from your workouts and so forth. And you are getting on average six hours of sleep per night. Now, that is going to be enough for you to get through your days, especially with caffeine and to get through your workouts. And maybe even make up some of that sleep on the weekends, which research shows you can accomplish. You can make up lost sleep to some degree. And of course, then you're going to feel even better on the weekends, but that situation is going to result in impaired muscle and strength gain. It is probably not going to feel even better on the weekends, but that situation is going to result in impaired muscle and strength gain. It is probably not going to be extreme enough to cause muscle loss and

cause the body to just go to pieces, but you are going to gain muscle and strength slower. So my best advice is to really prioritize getting enough sleep. really prioritize getting off sleep. All right, that's it for the highlight reel of that Q&A. Again, that was published back on March 8th of 2019, in case you want to go listen to the whole thing. And that brings us to the final episode featured on this episode of The Best Of, and that is the Motivation Monday episode called What's More Important Than Necessity. And this was originally published on September 24th, 2018, in case you want to go listen to it in its entirety. 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. First, we have a quote, and this one comes from Bob Marley. He said, you never know how strong you are until being strong is your only choice. And that's a perfect introduction to what I want to talk to you today about, which is necessity. So imagine that at nine years old, you are receiving music lessons from an accomplished composer who quickly heralds you as the next Mozart. Imagine that just three years later, you release your first composition, and then the following year, you're appointed as the assistant court organist alongside your mentor and teacher. Imagine that over the next decade and a half, you eventually meet and perform for Mozart, who then tells a friend that you're going to make a great name

for yourself one day. And you continue to hone your skills, amaze your teachers, and establish yourself as a once-in-a-generation talent. But then, at just 26 years old, you notice a strange buzzing and ringing in your ears. It's there the next day too, and the next one. You continue to write, practice, and perform your music, but day by day, week by week, month by month, the static hum in your head begins to drown out the world around you. And it's not long before you realize that you are going deaf. And after trying all kinds of remedies, doctors tell you that the condition is likely to afflict you for the rest of your life. You are overwhelmed by sadness for your entire life. Music is all you've known. It's all you've done.

It's who you are. And now in a cruel and ironic twist of fate, you're being robbed of your ability to even appreciate it, let alone produce it. What would you do? Do you think that you could somehow find the will to soldier on as you slide into a realm of utter silence? Or do you think you would curse your unlucky stars and vow to never touch an instrument again? Well, Ludwig van Beethoven once faced this predicament, and if he hadn't refused to give up, we would never have masterpieces like his Ninth Symphony, his late string quartets, or his Diabelli Variations. Now, how the hell did he write and play music if he couldn't hear, you might be wondering? Well, he imagined in his mind what his work would sound like. And then he went on to produce what are considered some of the most beautiful compositions and

arrangements in the history of music. Such is the power of necessity, which another genius, Leonardo da Vinci, once said is the theme and inventress of nature, her curb and her eternal law. What is necessity though? Merriam-Webster defines it as the quality or state of being necessary, but that doesn't really capture its essence. To get a better sense of what necessity really is, what it feels like, and how it manifests, let's start with the definition from the original 1828 Webster's Dictionary, which is irresistible power, compulsive force, physical or moral. The word comes from the old French term necessitate, which meant need, necessity, privation, poverty, distress, torment, obligation, duty, and can be traced back to the Latin

necessitatum, meaning compulsion, need for attention, unavoidableness, destiny. So as you can see, necessity goes beyond mere desire or even passion, which many people find admirable, and enters the territory of obsession, relentlessness, and inevitability, which many people regard as a form of madness. ability, which many people regard as a form of madness. When you approach something with necessity, you do it with an extreme level of intensity and focus. As Oscar Wilde once said, moderation is a fatal thing. Nothing succeeds like excess. There's no question that Beethoven was animated by necessity. As Anton Schindler wrote in his biography, The Life of Beethoven, quote, Beethoven rose at daybreak, no matter what season, and went at once to his work table. There he worked until two or three o'clock when he took his midday meal. In the interim, he usually ran out into the

open two or three times, where he also worked while walking. Such excursions seldom exceeded a full hour's time and resembled the swarming out of the bee to gather honey. They never varied with the seasons, and neither cold nor heat were noticed. Beethoven always spent his winter evenings at home and devoted them to serious reading. It was but seldom that one saw him busy with music paper in the evening since writing music was too taxing on his eyes. In former years, this may have been the case, yet it is quite certain that at no time did he employ the evening hours for composition, creation. At 10 o'clock at the latest, he retired to bed. In other words, for decades, Beethoven spent nearly every minute of every day either thinking about or working on

his music or developing and expanding his intellectual horizons, which inevitably informed his ability as a composer. That, my friends, is necessity, and you find it in great achievers of all types and in all disciplines. Regardless of who they are, how they like to live and work, and what they're trying to achieve, top performers are almost always characterized by an all-consuming single-mindedness. The first questions I now ask myself before embarking on any endeavor, really, whether personal or in business or otherwise, are one, what does a win look like here exactly? Two, what is it probably going to take to get there in terms of time, money, energy, and effort? And three, can I say

without reservation that I am ready to pay that price and probably more? And I don't begin until I'm satisfied that I've fully answered numbers one and two and absolutely positive in my answer to number three. In other words, I avoid vague, unquantified, lukewarm commitments. And this means that I get to spend most of my time on activities that are aligned to clear-cut and achievable objectives. And as this has proven to be a reliable recipe for necessity for me, I also now get to enjoy more meaningful wins. Okay, so let's wrap this episode up with a little practical exercise, a little do this now. So can you think of any endeavors or even entire areas of your life where you feel that your necessity quotient is lacking, where it's low, you know, where you're just kind of going through the motions of half-hearted commitments? Of course you can. We all can. Now consider this. What would your relationship to those undertakings or those parts of your life look like if you were to approach them with unwavering compulsion, duty, and relentlessness? What would you have to do for other people to consider you obsessed?

Take your time. Think about this. Get specific. Now, what do you think might happen if you were to be that person for the next year or two or five? How might things change? And what's at least one thing that you could start doing today, no matter how small or simple, to move toward becoming that person, to start thinking and behaving that way? your first step of what could become a transformative journey if you're willing to continue walking the path. And that's it for the highlights from that episode. And that's it for this episode of Muscle for Life. Thank you again for joining me today. I hope you liked it. And tomorrow I have another Q&A coming. This one is going to be on three topics, running and muscle gain, kids and dieting and the pros and cons of Kratom. And then next week I have a monologue coming on massage guns. I have an interview with an ex NFL player and fellow podcaster, John Wellborn on his favorite functional exercises for more stability and power. And I have a very special Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays message from me to you. Please do leave a quick review on

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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, mikeatmustfullife.com. And that's it. Thanks again for listening to this episode, and I hope to hear from you soon.