Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - The Best of Muscle for Life: How to Make “Lean Gains,” Build a Successful Brand, and Set and Achieve Goals

Episode Date: April 3, 2020

As of right now, I’ve produced over 500 episodes of Muscle for Life, totaling over 700 hours of content. I’ve talked about 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 episode of The Best of Muscle for Life, you’ll be hearing hand-picked morsels from three episodes: Eric Helms on the Simple Science of Making “Lean Gains” Helping people, building a brand, and my biggest lessons learned Here’s How I Go About Setting and Achieving My Goals And we’ll be starting with number one, the simple science of making lean gains with Eric Helms. --- Timestamps 5:59 - Eric Helms on the Simple Science of Making “Lean Gains” 16:05 - Helping people, building a brand, and my biggest lessons learned 25:13 - Here’s How I Go About Setting and Achieving My Goals --- Mentioned on The Show: legionathletics.com/eric-helms-build-muscle/ legionathletics.com/building-a-brand-podcast/ legionathletics.com/achieving-goals-podcast/ Shop Legion Supplements Here: 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: www.legionathletics.com/signup/

Hello and welcome to Muscle for Life. I'm Mike Matthews. Thank you for taking time out of your day to listen to me talk about health and fitness things. Now, as of right now, I have produced over 500 episodes of Muscle for Life and they total over 700 hours of content probably. And I've talked about a huge variety of things related to getting fit and healthy, ranging from the basics of diet and exercise like energy and macronutrient balance and progressive overload and training frequency and volume to stuff that is more faddish, like the ketogenic and carnivore diet and collagen protein and MCT oil, to more unfamiliar territories like body weight set point and fasted training. Now, 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. And as cool as that is, it also poses

a problem for you, my dear listener. Ain't nobody got time for that. 500 plus episodes, 700 plus hours. I mean, some people do actually make the time to listen to most or even all of my podcasts. But according to my whiz bang analytic software, many listeners do tune in on a regular basis, but they definitely do not catch every installment of the show and thus miss out on insights that could help them get a little bit better inside and outside the gym. And people have also been telling me that they would like me to do more shorter multi-topic episodes like my Q&As, you know, stuff that is more easily consumed during a commute, for example. And so I got an idea. Why not do 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? So this way, people who are new to the show can

quickly determine if it is for them or not, because if they listen to a couple best of episodes and don't like them, then chances are they're just not going to like the podcast. to listen to all of my stuff, well, those people will then be able to still benefit from the discussions and find new episodes to go listen to. So in this second installment of the best of Muscle for Life, you are going to be hearing handpicked morsels from three of my most popular episodes. The first one is an interview I did with Dr. Eric Helms on the simple science of making lean gains. The second is an interview I did years ago on a podcast called the Business of Coaching Podcast. And we talk about a variety of things ranging from the biggest business lessons learned as of that time. I could probably do an updated

version of that with more things now. We talk about building a successful brand and some of the things that have worked well for me along those lines. We talk about personal growth, some of my thoughts on happiness and how that ties into it, money and fame and more. And then there's the third and final episode highlighted in this best of episode. And it was an interview that I did with Scott Baptey on his podcast called the Food for Fitness Podcast. And it was all about goals, how I personally go about setting and achieving goals. And it's not just a boring rehash of the standard platitudes, you know, smart goals, affirmations, meditations, journaling, and so forth. I go a bit deeper than that and really get into the principles and processes that I use to build my businesses and to build my body

and to accomplish any of the things that I want to put my mind to. Now, before we get to the show, if you like what I'm doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, and if you want to help me help more people get into the best shape of their lives, please do consider supporting my sports nutrition company, Legion Athletics, which produces 100% natural evidence-based health and fitness supplements, including protein powders and protein bars, pre-workout and post-workout supplements, fat burners, multivitamins, joint support, and more. Every ingredient and dose in every product of mine is backed by peer-reviewed scientific research. Every formulation is 100% transparent,

no proprietary blends, and everything is naturally sweetened and flavored. To check it out, just head over to legionathletics.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 order if it is your first purchase with us. And if it is not your first purchase, then you will get double reward points on your entire order, which is essentially getting 10% cash back in rewards points.

So again, that URL is legionathletics.com. And if you appreciate my work and if you want to see more of it, please do consider supporting me so I can keep doing what I love, like producing podcasts like this. Okay, so let's start with the first highlight reel from my interview with Dr. Eric Helms on how to make lean gains. What are some of the common mistakes that people make when they go, okay, I want to, I don't, I don't need to have a, I don't need to be super shredded anymore. And I want to gain some, I want to, you know, really focus on gaining muscle and strength. Um, and then where it goes, where does it kind of go off the rails from, from that point? You know, what have you seen

in your experience? Sure. It typically comes down to basically two different camps. And they're normally differentiated by who do they follow. You know, like if you've got people who came up reading muscle magazines or the 2017 equivalent, and they are basically following bodybuilders, typically they overdo it. They'll kind of go on a C diet, you know, a seafood diet where they're eating everything, they're gaining a lot of weight very quickly and they go on a basically a go mad diet or something where they're eating everything and they're gaining a lot of weight and a large part of it is body fat.

And very quickly they're running out of room to continue bulking. And they may be putting on effective muscle mass but the time frame that it can last before they start getting uncomfortable with their body is short. And can you talk a little bit more to that point of that time frame? Is it just about comfort? Because I've spoken with a lot of people that they don't really care. They just think if that's what it takes, like if I just have to kind of be a little bit disgusted with myself for half the year, then I'll do that. But is it just that, the psychological, or is there also a physiological element there? Oh, there's definitely both.

You know, if you're a drug-free person with any kind of experience underneath your belt, the amount of muscle mass you're going to be able to put on and the rate that it can get put on is typically slower than what you might be told in the mainstream kind of bodybuilding information. So you're going to have, you know, the idea that you can put on a pound a week and have that be relatively clean weight, when in reality it might be more like a pound a month that's going to be clean. How would you say, like, is that for beginners or intermediates or that number there? You know, really, the range I like to use is about 0.5 to 1.5% of your body weight per month is a recent, it's a decent rate to try to focus on gaining. Okay. And you'd say what the higher is for the, the newer you are, the more you're going to be on the higher end of that?

Yeah, basically it scales to your training age. So the faster rate you gain, you should be lowering your training age because the closer you get to your genetic ceiling, the harder it's going to be to put on muscle at that rate. Can you just speak quickly to why the – I mean it's – when you say lean gains, you always think of Berkan, but that is kind of the concept, right? Is that like you can keep your body fat at 10% and still gain muscle. Why that doesn't work as well as many people hope? Yeah, certainly. I think the big problem is that a lot of people just want to have a certain level of leanness in their mind because they've been told it's maintainable.

I can't tell you how many times I've Skyped with someone for a consultation. They tell me, hey, this is my fourth time trying to cut down to 8% body fat. Each time they get there, but then they can't stay there. They think it's their approach that if they just use a different diet, if they reverse diet, or if they have you, they'll be able to maintain it. In reality, it's just like, dude, your set point is like 15%. Until you accept that, you're just going to be struggling and focused on food and not making great gains and having a relatively suppressed hormonal system and sleeping poorly

and you know so so it comes down to they have to a accept that their walk around physique may be just not quite as lean as they'd hoped which can take not years for some people. Not Insta-worthy, right? Right, yeah. So not something people like to hear, but something they need to hear if they actually want to make progress. And then the second part of that relevant to what we're talking about is that they can learn that a 15% body fat physique in this example is going to look better over time if they actually put in the years and actually spend some time not trying to cut, but actually building a good physique.

And, you know, someone with a lot of muscle mass at 15% body fat looks pretty good. You know, that's the type of person that, you know, would definitely be comfortable taking their shirt off at the beach. So, yeah, these people have typically spent much more time cutting than they have actually gaining. And normally I talk them into going, right, we need to set like a minimum time ratio limit of time spent in a surplus versus time spent in a deficit. And I normally tell them the minimum should be like four to one.

So for every four months of time spent in a surplus is one month you've earned yourself in a deficit. Let's circle back around and talk about how to do it right. Do you want to just start on the diet and nutrition side of things? Certainly. Yeah. So I think the big one is realizing that there's a direct relationship between the calories you take in and the rate of weight that you gain. So if our goal is to gain, you know, 0.5 to 1.5% of our body weight per month, that's really less than 0.5% of our body weight per week. So the average, let's say 170 pound male, that's not a lot of body weight you're

trying to gain per week. And if you need roughly a 500 calorie surplus per day to get roughly a pound of tissue gain, that means you're only going to want like a 100 to 300 calorie surplus, depending on how big you are to start and what your training age is. So if you're a going to want like a 100 to 300 calorie surplus depending on how big you are to start and what your training age is. So if you're 5'6 and you're an intermediate, it's going to be a small surplus. If you're 6 foot and a beginner, sure, you might have like a 400 calorie surplus to get you in the right position. And then the second question becomes, okay, well, if I'm only trying to gain a little bit of weight over time

and it's a small surplus, how do I even track that? And the way to do that is looking at a longer time period. So I'll often tell people to look at like a 14-day body weight average and compare that to the next 14-day period. And, you know, then you're working with, you know, let's say you're trying to gain, you know, a pound a month. You can look at a 14-day average and see whether or not you're up, you know, half a pound half a pound or close to it, say 0.4 to 0.6 or 0.3 to 0.7 pounds. And if you're in that range, then you're thumbs up. You're in the sweet spot. If it's too low or too high, then you can make a small calorie bump by say like 50 or something like that. And just kind of nudging it in the right direction, um, because you're not looking for, for too much.

Um, and just to that point for people listening, the problem with this in particular with, with just trying to use the mirror is, you know, you're not really going to see that much of a difference a week to week. If you're not, if you're not tracking your weight, like what you're talking about, especially with, with, with working out an average like that and you're just trying to go off of like, do I look bigger? That's a, that's not going to serve you very well. Yeah. I mean, honestly, the last time I was able to look in the mirror as a, as a drug free lifter and assess whether or not I was bigger, it wasn't like the first year of my training. Yeah. And then, you know, after that, I really can't, I kind of have a moment of, of like, uh,

of reflection where I go, wait a minute, I'm, I'm two 15. Last time I was two 15, I couldn't see my abs, you know? And I'm like, Oh, okay. Yeah. Um, so, you know, and so 215, I couldn't see my abs. I'm like, oh, okay. That's the kind of thing where that's years apart before I notice gains. Or the other scenarios are when I actually diet down for a bodybuilding show and there's no body fat to obscure my physique at all. I can look from 2009 to 2007 or 2011 to 2009 and see what progress I've

made yeah um but you know obviously that that's not a way to assess you know for the general pop like it was you're getting very successful well just die down until you're shredded and then you'll see just just take six months after you're done bulking and get diced you know that's uh probably not a useful you know like kind of tool to put in your tool belt. Assessing progress primarily what you want to focus on is the ingredients that will result in gaining muscle mass rather than just am I getting muscle. Are you in a surplus so you're gaining tissue? Do you have an appropriate amount of volume and frequency and intensity in your training program? Is progressive overload occurring?

If those three things are happening, then, then you can probably be sure that, that, uh, the most percentage of that weight you're gaining that can be lean muscle is, uh, and if you're not satisfied with it and you're doing everything right, then it's just a matter of, you know, coming to terms with the fact that you're not a beginner anymore, which is tough. You know, I remember when I, I thought i was doing something wrong for many times when i would move from the beginner to the intermediate phase and often i was because you know i was still a relative beginner and didn't know what i was doing but many times i was changing things just because i was still expecting to gain like a newbie yeah and you know falling in love

with kind of the training approach i had at the start because that was the rate of gain that i was now accustomed to and expected uh being, being frustrated by anything less than that. And that, that is quite the mental hurdle for people moving from, you know, the kind of the honeymoon phase. So, um, this is just something to think about for people who are been lifting for maybe more than six months seriously. And they're just starting to notice that the progress is not the same that it once was. So yeah, so on the nutrition side, the first piece is really making sure that your surplus is appropriate and probably not as much as you think. And then how do you track that is by looking at say 14 day averages or even monthly averages and making small changes over time to

push you in the right direction or pull you back if you're gaining too quickly. of time to push you in the right direction. We'll pull you back if you're gaining too quickly. All right. So that was it for Eric Helms and the simple science of making lean gains. If you want to listen to the full episode, it was published on June 29th, 2017. So you can just go back to that period in the podcast feed or in the YouTube feed, wherever you are and find it. The title is Eric Helms on the simple science of making lean gains. You can probably just search for that too. Muscle for life podcast, Eric Helms, lean gains, and it will come up. Okay. So let's move on to the next highlights from the interview I did on helping people building a brand and my biggest business lessons learned. Honestly, I don't really like the fitness space.

It's a lot of bullshit, a lot of scammers. I mean, I like helping people and I like that element of it, but I wouldn't be willing to do the standard type of approach, which is you have to get networked. You have to get in with people normally. You know what I mean? Like if you want to have a guest article anywhere on any website that has any sort of traction and traffic, you have to either know someone or you have to already be established.

So it's kind of there's that catch-22 there. But it can be hard to get to know people if you're not established. So a lot of that in the beginning, I just wasn't really interested running around trying to suck up to people who I honestly didn't really respect. And now that I'm obviously much more familiar with the industry, I would say that's still true, although there are quite a few people whose work I really do like. More of the evidence-based type people. A lot of them are not necessarily great marketers, so their work is kind of obscure in the grand scheme of things. A guy guy like Lyle McDonald super smart dude really knows his shit I had him on podcast recently I love that episode by the way

she loved it oh yeah great so yeah I mean Lyle's an example of someone who I really respect him for the work that he does but he's not a great marketer and I don't think he would even take offense if you were listening I think he would say say, yeah, I mean, that's just not his thing. He's more of a science guy, you know? So I didn't, when I was initially getting into it, I didn't know about Lyle actually at all. I just kind of looked around, like go to the bookstore and just go see what, what, what do you have available for you in Barnes and Noble? If you want to try to, let's say you're, you're someone that wants to get in shape and the people that get the book deals and that are most out there, you know, in, in the public eye are generally just full of shit that kind of includes people in the cooking space. Like what is it like Rocco Dispirito

negative calorie plan, you know, shit like that, where it's just ridiculous. So, so initially I was like, eh, fuck, I don't want to do that. Let's create a publishing company. There's an opportunity. It still actually is an opportunity, and it's something I'm going to be pursuing. There's an opportunity because traditional publishers have distribution, and they have that lockdown, of course. If you want to get into Barnes & Noble, you can get in as a self-published author. It's just hard. You have to have serious numbers.

Like I know I can get into Barnes & Noble and get into other places. I'm bringing somebody on this year to kind of help expand everything on the book side of things because I'm not going to do it myself. But if you don't have big numbers that you can show, it's going to be hard to get a buyer at Barnes & Noble to even care. So of course, you have to go through a traditional publisher. Now, traditional publishers, that's what they have. What they don't have is, in most cases, they're not very good marketers. They're not good at helping refine concept of the book and the hook of the book, taking that initial rough idea and turning it into something that will really grab people's attention and make them want to buy. personalizations but they're generally true not good at helping with getting to a title that again really grabs your attention and really promises strong benefits and evokes curiosity and so forth and they're not good at writing copy for the book and etc etc etc so they also don't know

shit about internet marketing there's so much that can be done there so i was saying like we could do this why do you do what you Like, what's different for you neurologically that made that shift for you where you went from maybe you've always been this way, but maybe doing things just for you and your needs to go. And you know what? I'm actually going to do what I say I want to do. And I'm actually going to give a shit about people and not just say it so that I can achieve my own little financial goals. So why do you do what you do? It's a good question, you know, and it's sometimes hard because I'm me and I'm in my head looking out and it's just, it's just, it's been a part of my personal. I wouldn't say that I've always been a

super selfless type of person, but I definitely have always had a, maybe a sense of ethics and some sort of integrity, but where it would probably begin would be in how I was raised. So my parents and my dad in particular is very much like that. I mean, I say my dad in particular because I saw it in his work. I mean, my mom's like that too, but she raised me and my brother. My dad, he has built up a couple of businesses and so he's a successful business person. So I always had that as like a model growing up. And he's very much like that. I mean, some people here and there, whatever, especially his ex-business partner, maybe doesn't like him so much, but that, but you know, that guy though, that's a whole nother story. That guy's an interesting dude.

And that was my dad sucking, getting him because he was too nice and giving this guy so much stuff. But anyways, you know, I probably kind of internalized a bit of that just growing up, and it was never – and how I was raised, I guess I wasn't maybe raised in the same way that many of other millennials have been raised, which is a whole other discussion, but I think we're seeing a lot of blowback from just terrible parenting. from just terrible parenting. And I was maybe instilled, you know, had certain values of hard work and personal responsibility and also just responsibility and general responsibility to others. I'm all for individualism in certain ways and to a certain degree, but I wouldn't say, like, you know, I think Ayn Rand took it a bit too far. I liked parts of what she had to say, and Atlas shrugged,

but then other parts, I was like, all right, well, I disagree with that. I think that we all live together, and so we do have – I don't look at responsibility as a burden. I don't look at I have a responsibility to do these things for other people, and it's such a burden. I look at it as something positive. I truly believe that service to others is, in a way, it's like a rent that we pay for living on the planet. And I very much disagree with people that only live for themselves and don't want to give back to society and don't want to give to others and just want to take, you know, those are, I guess, kind of just deep seated values or virtues for me. And they're very much kind of tied into the type of person that I want to be. I'm more interested in being the type of person

that I want to be, and that matters more to me than even the things that I'm doing or the things that I get from what I'm doing, like what I have from it. So what I mean by that is I get satisfaction more from, I would say, exhibiting the type of person that I want to be and being that person actively and doing the things that like that. But what I do is more coming from that as opposed to doing things just to have shit, just to be like, oh, I want a Lamborghini, so I'm going to do whatever it takes to get a Lamborghini. Those types of ambitions are, I think, meaningless, and they are more conducive to the corner cutting and the selfishness, just because they're so empty, and they are just inherently meaningless.

Getting into great shape, or just getting into good shape, and just getting into the routine of it all, is probably one of the easiest things you can do to improve every area of your life, everything. Everything gets better if you are exercising regularly, if you have a good diet, and if you're not overweight. And there's a point, obviously, where there are diminishing returns in that regard. But if you just look at how the average person lives in terms of like sedentary living and overweight and terrible diet, and then if you change all that to active, there's also something to be said for the vanity of it too. I mean, there is that matters to all of us, how we look. So there are the psychological and the emotional benefits that come with that that just don't go beyond the physical, but yeah, it's cool.

Okie dokie. That's it for that one. And if you want to listen to that whole episode, it was published on March 31st, 2017. So you can go find that. And the title is Helping People, Building a Brand, and My Biggest Lessons Learned. Probably should say Biggest Business Lessons Learned. I probably should say Biggest Business Lessons Learned, but that's the title. Before we carry on, if you are liking my podcast, would you please help spread the word about it? Because no amount of marketing or advertising gimmicks can match the power of word of mouth. So if you are enjoying this episode and you think of someone else who might enjoy it as well, please do tell them about it. It really helps me. And if you are going to post about it on social media, definitely tag me so I can say thank you. You can find me on Instagram at Muscle for Life Fitness, Twitter at Muscle for Life, and Facebook at Muscle for Life Fitness. All right, now let's get to our third and final key takeaways, our third and final highlight reel, which is how I go about setting and achieving my goals.

How do you go about helping people just make realistic goals? Yeah, that's a whole section in the little black book of workout motivation that I recently published on setting goals. And the book was kind of interesting for me because it was I did a fair amount of research and tied in quite a bit of scientific literature and anecdotes. But also it was heavily influenced by what I do and what has worked well for me as well. by what I do and what has worked well for me as well. And so, you know, as far as goals versus aims, obviously in the dictionary, those things are synonymous. So I guess it kind of depends how you are defining them. But one of the first things I like to do with goals is a lot of people, when they start with a goal, they just go, what do I want? And that's a fine place to begin. But I think that if you don't answer that question in a very specific way, the chances of actually achieving anything worthwhile plummet dramatically.

And what I'm talking about is really, I think one of the first questions that you need to really reflect on before you get into the tactics of goal setting and how do you break goals down into actual plans that you can implement and execute and how do you get feedback, right? How do you track your progress? That's important to know that you are progressing or not and blah, blah, blah, is really thinking about what kind of pain you want because it's very easy to state a desire. And especially when it's something that everybody wants, like everybody wants a better body. Everybody wants more money, wants more time or freedom or whatever. The hard part I think is taking the stars out of your eyes and really asking yourself or asking, I mean, this applies to me too, asking ourselves how much pain

we are willing to endure to get there. And I'm talking about sacrifice, tedium, doubt, disappointment, despair. These are all painful, psychologically painful experiences. And really what I'm talking about is assessing costs first and seeing if we're willing to pay it. And that has been very helpful for me in a number of ways where there's first getting to the nuts and bolts of it, because in the book, I talk about Tom Brady and his story. A lot of people don't know that when he was in high school, he wasn't even good enough. He was a baseball player and he had a good arm and he wanted to play football. People are saying, don't because you suck. You're, you have no, you're, you're slow. You have no athleticism.

Like you can throw a baseball. Well, dude, you just need to do that. And he didn't listen to him. Right. So he starts on his high school football team. He was just a band. He's on the bench. They didn't even, they didn't even start him. They wouldn't let him play. They finished over eight. They didn't win a single game and didn't score a single touchdown right in the, in the season that he joins them yet. He wasn't even good enough. The coach wasn't even confident enough to put them in, to play a single, a single play, right? Despite that Brady, and this is, this is one of those kinds of cool things where he, he was telling his family who are very supportive. And he also had very athletic and she had sisters who were accomplished athletes.

Right. And he was the little, you know, little Tommy. And he was telling his parents, you know, one day he even wrote this in a paper. I'm going to be a household name. And his family were good hearted about it, but kind of laughing like, OK, dude, sure. sure. And, you know, in, um, Facebook in, I think it was this year they released, it was a multiple part, like a six part documentary called Tom versus time. And in the beginning, um, he is kind of just talking to the camera and, and he's talking about what are you willing to do? What are you willing to give up to be the absolute best that you can be? Because we only have so much energy. The clock is always ticking. And I really liked, I think this is just,

just really captures the essence of him is he was saying that 21 out there, if you're going to compete against me, you'd better be willing to give up everything. You better be willing to give up your entire fucking life because that's what I'm doing. I've given up my life to get to where I am. So good luck. You know what I mean? Yeah. And so that inspired him to do things that teenagers, no normal teenager did what he

did. Like he didn't just go to get off school, go home, play video games. No, he would go home and he came up with these like jump rope workouts to improve his footwork. And he would then do strength training workouts. And he would obsessively practice this kind of tedious hopscotch like exercise called the five dot drill that everyone hated. Yet he would do it every day without fail, even on vacations. And in time, he made up for his deficits and compounded his strengths, which were his mind for the game and his arm. You'll find that if you just study the biographies of a lot of successful people is they're willing to sacrifice basically everything to get to where

they are. So I think that that's very important in the context of goal setting is starting with what is this actually going to cost me? What is it going to cost me in time? What's it going to cost me in energy? What is it going to cost me in money? And honestly assessing, asking yourself, am I willing to pay that? Really? Am I willing to pay that? And for me, this is, I'm just speaking personally. If I can't answer that question with absolute conviction saying yes, like basically it has to be, if I don't feel that I'm either going to achieve this or I'm going to die, I am very wary of pursuing that goal. And in some cases I have chosen not to pursue goals simply because I didn't feel it. And I've had enough experience now to when I don't feel that level of conviction, if I'm, if I'm kind of wavering and I'm like, ah, that sounds

really hard. I don't know if that's going to work. I don't know if I want to do that. I would never start in on something with that type of outlook. What are some actual practical things people can do to make it easier to get their workout in so they don't go and say, oh, I had planned on doing leg press, but that machine's busy. I know that, you know, I can't get on a platform or there's no weights. What are some just little hacks you can do to make your workout more efficient when you are training in a packed gym? I'll answer that. First, I want to say one other thing is something else to consider when you're starting out is look for things that allow you to attack, to get at your

goal in multiple ways. So take just losing fat, right? For example, a lot of people want to lose weight. If you go, I can go do a bunch of cardio and sure, you can lose weight and you can lose fat, or I can do a bunch of resistance training. A lot of people don't know that resistance training is more or less as effective for losing fat as cardio. Cardio, depending on what you're doing, it can be a bit more effective. However, with resistance training, you are also going to be gaining muscle. You're going to be improving your body composition. You're going to be improving your metabolism. You're going to get a lot more out of the resistance training.

So there's also a point of when you're looking at where to start out, look for the things that have the highest possible return. Um, so on the training side of things, I think it's resistance training all the way for a number of reasons. So much so that I recommend that 80% of people, or sorry, people spend 80% of their time that they have to exercise. And the average person has like three to five hours a week. I've at least by my experience, working with a lot of people spend 80% of their time that they have to exercise. And the average person has like three to five hours a week. I've at least by my experience working with a lot of people spend 80 percent of that time on doing some sort of resistance training and 20 percent of that time doing cardio. So that's also something I just wanted to throw out there for people. Like, where should I start? If it's an exercise, start with the resistance training. And if it's with a diet,

start with energy balance. And if you don't know what that is, head over to muscle for life dot com and search for energy balance. That's where you start with energy balance. And if you don't know what that is, head over to MuscleForLife.com and search for energy balance. That's where you start. Just there. Just understanding calories in, calories out. Understanding how to make that work for you. Don't worry in the beginning so much about the macronutrients, the protein, carbs, and fat. Don't worry about the fad diets, keto, or that's the fad diet du jour.

But don't worry. In six months, it'll be something else. Don't worry so much about even the foods that you're eating. Sure, it's good to eat nutritious foods, but let's first just hone in on energy balance and understanding that and seeing how that works. Enjoying your training program, enjoying your diet, those things are in some ways even more important than the technical details of how they work. So long as you follow a few basic principles on both the training and the dietary side in both of those areas, you have a lot of wiggle room. There are only a few things that are not negotiable, energy balance being one of them, progressive overload or mechanical tension being one of them on the training side of things.

But so long as you understand just like these are the core principles, these are the fundamental pillars. Beyond that, you have a lot of room to do something that you enjoy. And, you know, I say this, I've said this many times that somebody could have the most scientifically optimal based on our current understanding of everything training program or diet. But if they don't enjoy it, I would not recommend it for them. I would recommend something that is clearly scientifically suboptimal, let's say, but that they really enjoy because compliance is everything. Long-term compliance is everything. So there's no reason to just force yourself to continue doing some sort of workout routine or follow some sort of diet that you don't enjoy when you don't have to understand

all that much. It's fairly easy to get yourself up to speed so you can then create something or find something that you do enjoy. All righty, that's it for the third and final takeaways. If you want to go listen to that whole interview, it was published on February 1st, 2019, and it's called Here's How I Go About Setting and Achieving My Goals. I hope you found it interesting and helpful. And if you did, and you don't mind doing me a favor, could you please leave a quick review for the podcast on iTunes or wherever you are listening from? Because those reviews not only convince people that they should check out the show, they also increase the search visibility and help more people find their way to me and to the

podcast and learn how to build their best body ever as well. And of course, if you want to be notified when the next episode goes live, then simply subscribe to the podcast and whatever app you're using to listen, and you will not miss out on any of the new stuff that I have coming. And last, if you didn't like something about the show, then definitely shoot me an email at mike at muscleforlife.com and share your thoughts. Let me know how you think I could do this better. I read every email myself and I'm always looking for constructive feedback. All right. Thanks again for listening to this episode and I hope to hear from you soon.