Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - The Best Of Muscle For Life: How to Stop Bingeing, Increase Your Bench Press, and When “Good Enough” Is Enough

Starting point is 00:00:00 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

Starting point is 00:00:55 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

Starting point is 00:01:44 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

Starting point is 00:02:30 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. And in this episode, you will be hearing hand-picked morsels from three episodes. The first is an interview I did with Carter Good on how to finally stop binge eating. The second is a monologue I recorded called 11 scientifically proven ways to increase your bench press. And the third is a motivational monologue called how to know when good enough is good enough. Also, if you like what I am doing here on the podcast and elsewhere,

Starting point is 00:03:17 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,

Starting point is 00:04:11 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 bars, pre-workout and post-workout supplements, fat burners, multivitamins, joint support, and more, head over to buylegion.com slash Mike. That's B-U-Y-L-E-G-I-O-N dot com slash Mike. And just to show you how much I appreciate my podcast, peeps, use the coupon code MFL at checkout and you will save 20% on your entire first order. All right, let's start with the highlights from my interview with Carter Good.

Starting point is 00:04:56 What are some of the typical things, what are some of the typical factors that precipitate a binge that cause it? factors that precipitate a binge that, that cause it. Yeah. I would say probably the biggest three that I see with the people I work with, um, typically tend to be either one in all or nothing type of mindset where, and this is, you know, the typical yo-yo diet or type of mindset where, you know, if they're not doing everything perfectly and they slip up a little bit, it's sort of like a effort. I'll just keep going because it's like on or off type of switch, right? Where you might as well just keep on making it worse. That's usually the first thing that happens because it's in the moment. Yes. Psychologists call that the what the hell effect. Like, what the hell? I've already blown it. I might as well just go all out. Yeah, that's it. And then I would say another one is probably honestly over-restriction and that

Starting point is 00:05:41 could be twofolded either in being over-restricting calories, right? Or over-restriction and that could be twofolded either in being over-restricting calories, right? Or over-restricting even food choices or at least your perception on how you're restricting those foods. But that's what I would say are probably, I guess those are three, even though the last two are kind of coupled together, but probably like over-restriction of either how many calories you're eating or the types of foods that you're eating. And then the mindset of sort of the perfect perfectionist mindset that people are trying to achieve when they are losing weight. And how do you generally help people who, cause those are, those are very common. I've, I've run across them a lot again, just interacting with a lot of people and how do you help people work through them?

Starting point is 00:06:18 Yeah. So I would say the first thing that I do, I'm actually, I'm big, I'm a big fan of like awareness of like realities of overeating. So like, you know, you can go into the science of like, you know, 3,500 calories is a pound of fat and stuff. Like, I always like to remind people that they get so fixated on the one time that they go over their calories and they blow it out of proportion mentally and saying that like, you know, this is this horrible thing that happened. I always like to kind of bring it back to reality and say, okay, well, let's look at this realistically. Let's say that they went over their calories by 2000 calories or whatever, right? Like, let's look at this realistically across the week. And then

Starting point is 00:06:51 imagine if like tomorrow we got back on track, like how insignificant that would be really helping people focus on the idea of consistency over perfection in that way. I just noticed that if I can get somebody to do that once where they will have a moment where they will overeat or whatever it is, right, and go over their calories and they get right back on track and they physically see that, you know, the scale comes back down, that their progress still, you know, moves forward. It's like a huge win because they actually see that taking place instead of letting like the mental fear of like, oh my gosh, I blew it, that happening, take over. the mental fear of like, oh my gosh, I blew it. That happening, take over. Because if I can get somebody to do that once, usually it's something that even if in the future they overeat again on accident, like it's that thing where, okay, I've done this before. I know if I get back on track that I can be right back to where I was in a short amount of time. Well, something that I know helps people is not having, let's say they're going to be dieting for

Starting point is 00:07:41 some period of time, not having the foods, whatever their quote unquote trigger foods are the foods that like a guy that works with me, he loves chips. And when he's cutting, he just doesn't have chips in his house or in his, in his, you know, condo because he just knows himself. He knows that if they're around, he's probably going to eat them. And he's probably not just going to have a chip or two here and there. It's probably going to turn into the whole bag, even if it's over the course of an entire day. And sure, he knows that he can adjust to make up for that. But that means that his diet just gets whacked because chips, it'd be like maybe a thousand calories in chips and maybe he's cutting on 2,000, 2,100 calories. That's pretty shitty. Especially if you ate that in an hour and now you have the rest of the day where you're just like,

Starting point is 00:08:27 eat your calories out for the rest of the day so you don't starve. That's something I know that can help people or waiting if they feel the urge to eat, drinking some water and waiting 10 minutes or so, little things like that. Are there any specific tips that you found that help like that? Yeah. So kind of going into that one about like the out of sight, out of mind type of thing with foods, you know, especially, you know, while you're trying to diet, just because, you know, hunger levels are going to be naturally a bit higher and the temptations obviously are going to keep increasing, increasing over time. But with that, even I noticed that some people do really well with the, you know, out of

Starting point is 00:09:02 sight, out of mind thing, like leaving those foods out. But I also think can be very helpful to, um, if you are following an approach where you're tracking your nutrition and you are taking a bit more of a flexible approach, obviously, I'm not like eliminating specific foods. So I guess is, is a tip in and of itself is to not eliminate food groups, which maybe we can get into, but just for that example, like having a food that is, will satisfy a craving, but isn't as, I guess, enjoyable, I guess, in a sense, as the, as the food you struggle with. So for example, for me, like I struggle when Oreos are in the house, even to this day, not that I just like eat the whole

Starting point is 00:09:37 box all the time, but like, I'm going to, if Oreos are in my living area, I'm going to eat them. Right. It's just a matter of time. But for me, I also enjoy like dark chocolate, but like not enough to where like, I don't sit down and feel the need to like eat two big dark chocolate bars in a row. Like it's normally at that point, it's just like not necessarily something I want. Whereas I could sit down and eat like one to two sleeves of Oreos if I was just like really, you know, feeling it or whatever. But the dark chocolate though still kind of gives me that sweet satisfaction that sometimes I'm looking for in the evening or whatever. Uh, and so, so like with chips, even, you know, I've had people who will maybe have a issue with like

Starting point is 00:10:12 Doritos or something, and then we'll switch to, and it's funny, even it could, you know, it might be something like some people might say like kale chips or whatever, but I've even noticed like even making a switch to a different brand that might be like lighter, like pop chips, even, um, even though it's like still a chip or whatever, like it does, doesn't have the same type of like reward response. And, you know, it might take some experimenting or whatever, but just finding something that's comparable, like in terms of still satisfying your craving, but you don't like lose control around it. Like for whatever reason, I've noticed that that's worked really well because then you don't feel that over restriction,

Starting point is 00:10:44 which can sometimes, you know, be enough motivation to be like, well, you know, shit, the Oreos aren't in the house, but I'm going to go drive and I'm going to find them because I've wanted Oreos for the past four weeks and I've not had anything to satisfy that craving. So now I'm going to do it. Right. As opposed to if you did have something that kind of was still allowing you to enjoy that sweets at night, I guess. Let's say it has happened though, a binge, a period of excessive eating, whether it's one day, two days, maybe it's even a few days. How do you help people work through the fallout? Yeah, that's the first thing, right? And it's easy to say that. And

Starting point is 00:11:16 honestly, sometimes people just need to hear that it's okay, even though they know it is, right? They just need it reaffirmed by somebody else. So that's always the first thing is reminding them, hey, it's one time, it's not that big of a deal. And if it really is just one time, you know, it isn't a big deal. Practically, what I like to do, or what I've seen work really well is, you know, the first thing is, if it's somebody who's, you know, still sort of in that emotional attachment to eating and dieting and getting through that, you know, not weighing in for a few days, I think that helps, even though I will tell them, like, listen, you know, the weight doesn't matter. Sometimes just not worrying about that part for a few days can really be helpful with just focusing on getting back on track and kind of

Starting point is 00:11:52 keeping yourself in like a more positive mindset. Another thing that I really like for people to do is after having a meal or whatever, where they go over is trying to like do the best they can to plan out their eating for the next few days. And I like for people to do this thing where they do daily meal planning. So like the night before, they'll plan their next day meals. And then at the end of that night, they'll plan their next day meals. So it's this thing where they're not like saying on Thursday, I have to eat this, this, this, and this.

Starting point is 00:12:19 And it's like Monday, right? And stuff might happen between Monday and Thursday. But just going into each day with like a solid plan of what you're going to do and can really help with just getting back on track. And then by that point, if they can get through like three to four or five days of just like being back on point, whenever they start weighing again, they see that their weight's normalized, kind of going back to what I said right at the beginning of the podcast where they're like, oh, wow, okay. I really didn't do as much, you know, quote unquote damage as I thought I was going to do. One of the reasons I like working with people one on one is because you can actually talk to them about things in terms of like, if they have like a specific issue,

Starting point is 00:12:52 like talking them through that. Because you know, like we talked about a lot of overeating is psychological in a sense. So figuring out why did you overeat? Like, why has this become a problem? And even just like vocalizing those things or writing them out in an email or whatever can make it a lot easier to look at it objectively to start to, you know, fix that problem, right? Because it's not the food isn't the problem. It's how you're using the food in response to something happening usually, which is the problem. So almost getting to the deeper cause of that, which is obviously not just an easy task for everyone because sometimes it requires facing bigger demons. But, you know, I think the more

Starting point is 00:13:25 honest you can learn to be with yourself of why you're overeating, the easier it is to not use food in that way in the future. So something I might do with a client is, you know, after a night of doing that, like, and we're back on track, maybe even talking about, okay, like what was the plan that day? Like, what do you feel like happened that led to the overeating and whatever it is, whether it's like, I got in an argument, I got. I'm like, okay, well, in the future, like what are some things that maybe we can do in that situation besides eating, right? Or things that when that happens to help prevent yourself from, you know, turning to food in that moment. And something might be like waiting 15 to 20 minutes, right? Or going, getting out of the house and doing something, right? Like small

Starting point is 00:14:03 things and what works for one person isn't going to work for somebody else, which is why it's important to kind of experiment with yourself on those things. But I think that like, going into it, recognizing that there's a reason why you overrate in the first place and addressing that rather than, you know, always thinking about like, how can I prevent myself from overeating, thinking about why are you overeating in the first place, so that it doesn't even become really an issue anymore or an option that is always happening. All right. Well, that's it for the featured snippets from that interview that I did with Carter Good. And if you want to listen to the whole thing, it was originally published in February of 2019. So you can go back and find it or just search

Starting point is 00:14:42 Carter Good in the podcast feed or on my YouTube channel and it will pop up. All right, let's move on to the next episode featured in this episode. And that is 11 scientifically proven ways to increase your bench press. We're going to talk about how to bench more weight. Specifically, I am going to share with you 11 evidence-based tips for increasing your bench press. And as you will see, many of them will immediately increase your bench press. Some of them will take some time to really have an effect, but many of them will help you out right away. So let's get right to it. The first tip is to get pumped up, to get focused. Yes, it does matter. There is a reason why many powerlifters and strongmen go through what

Starting point is 00:15:31 looks like a satanic ritual of sorts before stepping underneath or walking up to a very heavy barbell. And of course, you don't have to do the same thing, but getting a bit hyped up and particularly getting focused on what you are about to do is going to help you increase your force production, which ultimately will mean more strength. And this has been demonstrated in scientific research. There was a study conducted by AUT University with elite rugby players that found that if they pumped themselves up before a bench press, their force production improved by about 8% on average. And if they distracted themselves before, their force production decreased by about 12%.

Starting point is 00:16:25 So what does that mean practically? Do you got to go stomp around like a raging bull before you hit a heavy lift? No, you do not. What I like to do is two things. One, I like to use music. So I will have songs. These days, it's usually heavy metal that make me want to lift heavy weights. And I like to take 10 or 15 seconds or so before I am going for a particularly heavy lift to just visualize it in my mind, really focus on what I'm going to be doing, how I want my body to feel, and to just see a successful set. That helps. There's research on that as well. That's another discussion, but that is also a valid technique in and of itself. Okay, so the next tip here is to give the bench press priority in your workouts. And you might be surprised how

Starting point is 00:17:21 often I hear from guys who complain about having a weak bench or just being stuck on their bench who are doing it later in their workouts. They're doing it after dumbbell work, after dips, and so forth. Well, several studies have shown that the order in which you do your exercises in your workouts significantly impacts the rate at which you progress on them, which of course makes sense. Anybody who has lifted weights for a while knows that you are freshest in the beginning of your workouts. You have the most energy to give to the first exercise or two, and then things start to taper off. And that's one of the reasons why all of my workouts for men and women in my bigger leaner stronger and thinner leaner stronger programs start with compound exercises the number one goal i have

Starting point is 00:18:13 for guys and gals on my programs is to increase their whole body strength and really what that means is getting strong on a few key lifts like the bench press, the overhead press, the deadlift, and the squat, which is why most of the workouts start with one of those movements and then progress toward less important exercises, usually isolation stuff to just fill in development. So the point here is when you are going to bench press, start those workouts with the bench press. you are going to bench press, start those workouts with the bench press. Okay, next tip is to vary your grip width. This is something that powerlifters have been doing for a long time and swear by, and it also has scientific research on its side. So what we know is the wider your grip gets in the bench, the more your pecs have to work, and the narrower it gets, the more

Starting point is 00:19:05 your arms and shoulders have to work. So what you can do then is include both some wider and some narrower grip bench pressing in your routine to help strengthen all of the muscles that are involved in producing a very strong regular bench press. And specifically what that means then is you could include maybe one to two wider grip bench press sets after your normal bench pressing in an individual workout. And so, you know, this is just like a couple inches wider than normal. So normal is about shoulder width in terms of grip. You go a couple inches on either side outside of that. You don't go all the way to the plates. And then you can also work some close grip bench pressing into your routine. I personally don't do it on my chest days or my press days or push days, whatever you

Starting point is 00:19:56 want to call them. I like to do my close grip bench pressing on an accessory kind of arms day because it is a really effective triceps exercise. on an accessory kind of arms day, because it is a really effective triceps exercise. All righty. I hope you liked those selections from that episode. And again, that was called 11 Scientifically Proven Ways to Increase Your Bench Press. And that was also published back in February of 2019, in case you want to check it out. And let's move on to the highlight reel of the final episode in today's best of, and that is how to know when good enough is good enough. 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

Starting point is 00:20:46 world. So it is a Friday night and you want to go out and get tacos with a friend, but you are not sure where to go. How would you choose the taco joint? Would you be fine with whatever's closest? Would you pour over reviews in search of the best place in town? Or would your approach fall somewhere in the middle, like finding a spot that's close enough with good enough ratings? Believe it or not, your answer can reveal a lot about how you make decisions in general and even predict how likely you are to generally experience happiness and satisfaction in your life. In short, if you would make a quick and decisive decision on where to eat based on simple criteria like no more than five miles away with a four-star average on OpenTable, you'd be engaging in what psychologists refer to as satisficing. And chances are you would end up enjoying your food and feeling contented with your selection. If, however, you would analyze

Starting point is 00:22:01 the possibilities from many angles in hopes of finding the quote unquote best one. You'd be pursuing the strategy of maximizing and chances are you would end up dissatisfied with the meal and irked you didn't spend even more time investigating the alternatives. This phenomenon holds true for every decision that you make. The more you satisfy, go for good enough, the more likely you are to be happy with what you get and with life in general. And the more you maximize, seek and accept only the best, And the more you maximize, seek and accept only the best, the more likely you are to be disappointed with the outcomes. Now, that doesn't mean you can't have high standards. More on that in a minute.

Starting point is 00:22:56 But it does mean this. Good enough is almost always good enough. almost always good enough. Here's how psychologist Barry Schwartz explained the problem of maximizing in his excellent 2009 book, The Paradox of Choice. Quote, maximizers need to be assured that every purchase or decision was the best that could be made. Yet, how can anyone truly know that any given option is absolutely the best possible? The only way to know is to check out all the alternatives. A maximizer can't be certain that she has found the best sweater unless she's looked at all the sweaters. She can't know that she is getting the best price unless she's checked out all the prices.

Starting point is 00:23:42 As a decision strategy, maximizing creates a daunting task, which becomes all the more daunting as the number of options increases. If you're a satisficer, the number of available options need not have a significant impact on your decision making. When you examine an object and it's good enough to meet your standards, you look no further. Thus, the countless other available choices become irrelevant. But if you're a maximizer, every option has the potential to snare you into endless tangles of anxiety, regret, and second-guessing. Whereas maximizers might do better objectively than satisficers, they tend to do worse subjectively. Imagine a maximizer who succeeds in buying a sweater after an extensive search, a better sweater than any but the luckiest satisficer would end up with. How does he feel about the sweater?

Starting point is 00:24:40 Is he frustrated at how much time and work went into buying it? Is he imagining unexamined alternatives that might be better? Is he asking himself whether friends of his might have gotten better deals? Is he scrutinizing every person he passes in the street to see if they're wearing sweaters that look finer? The maximizer might be plagued by any or all of these doubts and concerns, while the satisficer marches on in warmth and comfort. Getting the best objective result may not be worth much if we feel disappointed with it anyway. End quote. Just to be clear. So in other words, while maximizing can produce an objectively better result than satisfying a softer pillow, a more delicious mustard, a sharper picture. The cost in time, attention, and effort is often much higher,

Starting point is 00:25:37 and the fruit of your labor often tastes inadequate. So the crux of the matter is this. Good enough is almost always good enough. A good enough cup of coffee, a good enough bagel, a good enough pair of jeans. Except when it's not, some decisions are indeed important enough to warrant deliberation, like whether to go to college or trade school, who to marry, and where to work. Sometimes the opportunity cost in time, effort, money, and stress of maximizing can be well worth it in the long run. or maximize then is a vital skill to develop if we want to not only experience better objective outcomes in our lives, but also experience more subjective satisfaction with them. Because while maximizing almost certainly produces better objective results, as Schwartz said, they may not be worth much if we feel disappointed with them anyway. So whenever we are faced with a decision, we have to honestly ask ourselves this question,

Starting point is 00:26:55 what really matters most here, the objective results or the subjective experience? If how we are going to feel about the decision afterward is clearly more important than the objective factors, then satisficing is the surest path to satisfaction. Take planning a vacation, for instance. With all the wondrous places to visit in the world and all the information and all the media available for review, this can be a maximizer's nemesis. And I'm speaking from experience. I've been there. As someone who has done a fair amount of traveling and logged way too many hours on TripAdvisor along the way, I can attest to this. You can spend countless hours trying to solve for the quote-unquote best possible trip and then find it no more enjoyable and often less so for the reasons we've discussed than just booking the first one that can deliver on a few promises like gorgeous scenery, good R&R,

Starting point is 00:28:02 and fantastic food and fun. This example highlights another benefit of viewing decisions in this way. It forces us to clarify our true motives and desires. It's easy to say that we will only accept the best, but what does that mean exactly? Best for whom? Best in what way? The fundamental problem with best is it's an abstract, vaporous standard that is practically impossible to meet. Very good, however, can have a form. It can have features. Very good can be measured. And very good can feel great. This is true even when the objective results of a decision seem to matter more than how we are going to feel about them. We can't forget that our subjective perception of events will always affect the overall quality of the experiences. And that's all I have from that episode. always affect the overall quality of the experiences. review on iTunes or wherever you're listening to me from in whichever app you're listening to me in because that not only convinces people that they should check out the show, it also increases

Starting point is 00:29:32 search visibility and thus it helps more people find their way to me and learn how to get fitter, leaner, stronger, healthier, and happier as well. And of course, if you want to be notified when the next episode goes live, then simply subscribe to the podcast and you won't miss out on any new stuff. And if you didn't like something about the show, please do shoot me an email at mike at muscleforlife.com, just muscle, F-O-R, life.com, and share your thoughts on how I can do this better. I read everything myself and I'm always looking for constructive feedback, even if it is criticism. I'm open to it. And of course, you can email me if you have positive feedback as well, or if you have questions really relating to anything that you think I could help you with, definitely send me an email. That is the best way to get a

Starting point is 00:30:25 hold of me, mikeatmulsifullife.com. And that's it. Thanks again for listening to this episode, and I hope to hear from you soon.

Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - The Best Of Muscle For Life: How to Stop Bingeing, Increase Your Bench Press, and When “Good Enough” Is Enough

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