Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - The Right Way to Use "Cheat Meals" and the Ridiculous Side of the Fitness Culture

Episode Date: December 24, 2014

In this podcast, I talk about simple strategies that help you enjoy "cheat meals" without ruining your diet and a couple physically and mentally unhealthy aspects of the fitness culture that I really don't like (25:39). ARTICLE RELATED TO THIS PODCAST: Does Alcohol Consumption Affect Weight Loss and Muscle Growth? http://www.muscleforlife.com/does-alcohol-consumption-affect-weight-loss-and-muscle-growth/ Want to get my best advice on how to gain muscle and strength and lose fat faster? Sign up for my free newsletter! Click here: https://www.muscleforlife.com/signup/  

Hey, it's Mike, and this podcast is brought to you by my books. Seriously, though, it actually is. I make my living as a writer, so as long as I keep selling books, I can keep writing articles over at Muscle for Life and Legion and recording podcasts and videos like this and all that fun stuff. Now, I have several books, but the place to start is Bigger Leaner Stronger if you're a guy and Thinner Leaner Stronger if you're a girl. Now, these books, they basically teach you everything you need to know about dieting, training, and supplementation to build

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about my supplements at www.legionathletics.com. And if you like what you see and you want to buy something, use the coupon code podcast, P O D C A S T, and you'll save 10% on your order. All right. Thanks again for taking the time to listen to my podcast and let's get to the show. Hey, this is Mike Matthews from MuscleForLife.com. And in this episode of my podcast, I want to talk about cheat meals and how to do them correctly so you can minimize the amount of fat that you gain while still being able to enjoy yourself. And I want to talk about a couple of things that I kind of don't like about the fitness culture. A couple of things I think are a bit unhealthy and a bit ridiculous about it. that I kind of don't like about the fitness culture,

a couple of things I think are a bit unhealthy and a bit ridiculous about it, and how I try to stay, I could say, mentally balanced, I guess, working in this industry and avoiding some of these pitfalls, I guess you could say, that I see other people falling into. So cheat meals, let's talk about this. Now, realize or notice that I'm saying cheat meals, not cheat days. This is a big important thing that you need to know. Whether you're dieting for fat loss or whether you're dieting just to maintain your current body composition, a cheat day can kill you. You can undo a week's worth of fat loss and even gain fat in a day easily.

And this is mainly because not only can you eat a lot of calories in a day, if you really were going at it, you could probably easily eat 10,000, at least 7,000, 8,000 calories in one day. If you start in the morning with a big breakfast and you just keep on going, keep on going. And also usually when people are cheating, it includes very fatty foods, which is even worse, and it includes alcohol, which is even worse. So a cheat day I definitely do not recommend. A cheat meal is what I recommend.

So when you're cutting, for instance, you're dieting for fat loss, take one meal a week where you're going to be eating something you wouldn't normally eat. You're going to basically be eating an excessive amount of calories one meal a week where you're going to be eating something you wouldn't normally eat. You're going to basically be eating an excessive amount of calories one meal a week. If you combine that approach with some of these little tricks I'm going to share with you here, you can do that, even dieting to get very lean. I just finished my cut. Now I'm starting my reverse diet. I'm calipering at about 6% to 6.5%. It I'm about, I'm calipering at about like six to six and a half percent. And it looks about, that looks about right. I'm somewhere between six and 7%, probably a little bit under 7%. And this is where I'm happy. Um, I'll stay here for summer. And then in winter,

I usually eat a bit more, go up to eight or 9% and then just kind of rinse and repeat. Um, so you can do this little, uh, cheat meal, you know, these little cheat meal tricks even when you're dieting to get very lean you have to use these tricks in my experience whereas when your body fat percentage is a bit higher if you're just going to do one meal a week you really can just eat your normal stuff throughout the day maybe go out to dinner

don't, but eat, you know, I don't know, a thousand to 1300, 1400 calories, enjoy yourself and being a bit of a surplus that day, maybe gain a little bit of fat by the end of the day, you know, your net get, you haven't lost that day. You gained a little bit, but you know, you lost enough during the week. It's just not that big of a deal. Um, but if you want to really minimize the amount of fat that you gain in your cheat meal, you can do a few things. So one of the things that I really like to do is I save up calories for my cheat meal. And what that means is throughout the day, I usually have my cheat meals on Friday. Usually I go out to dinner with my wife.

And I don't, you know, again, I can eat a lot of food if I want to eat. I mean, I could, I could probably eat 4,000 calories in one meal. And that's about my point where I really don't want to eat anymore, but I can eat 2000 calories and really, you know, feel at like 60% capacity in terms of my stomach. So I don't, I don't go crazy, but I don't want to have to, I'm not thinking about macros at all or calories at all. I want to sit down. I want to look at the menu. I want to order a couple appetizers and entree dessert. I don't want to have to, I'm not thinking about macros at all or calories at all. I want to sit down. I want to look at the menu. I want to order a couple appetizers and entree dessert. I don't want to just want to eat what I want to eat and that's it. So what I do is, um, I save up calories, meaning that throughout the day I'm really only eating protein. I have a little bit of carbs post-workout, really a little bit like 30, a banana or a cup of rice milk. I have some protein post-workout and my

meals throughout the day are just protein. So my lunch would be like some salad and chicken with some balsamic vinegar. Of course, salad is a very small amount of carbs. Maybe there's five to 10 carbs in the salad, not a big deal. And I'm not using very fatty dressing. I might use a little bit of vinaigrette. So I might get about five grams of fat and the rest is just balsamic vinegar for a little bit of carbs. Again, maybe five grams of carbs. So I'm very, I'm very carb light. Um, and then in the afternoon I would just have a protein shake. Um, and maybe, maybe a little bit more, maybe I might do a little more chicken than I would normally do at lunch because what I want to do is I want to come into dinner with about 30 or 40 grams of protein left to hit my daily number. Um, and I want to basically

have 90 to 95% of my calorie of my carbs and fats still available to me. So, um, you know, I just finished my cut and I was doing 2,300 calories a day at the end of this cut. It was about, I believe, let's just say it was about 200 protein, 250 carb, and about 50, 60 fat were my final macros. And I reduced the carbs a little bit, maybe 230 or so. So even then, that's not that much food. But when I would save all that up, when I would come into dinner with 200 carb and, you know, 45, 50 fat left, that's actually a lot of food. Like you'd be hard pressed to eat more than that in one meal. I mean, well, again, like I said, I can eat a lot, but that's

satisfying. You know what I mean? That alone right there, that's, you know, 1,200, 1,300 calories right there. And then you add some protein. So I have like one serving of protein left, 30 or 40 grams left to hit my daily number. So that's going to be some sort of protein dish. You know, maybe I'll get some fish, maybe I'll get some beef, chicken, pork, whatever. It doesn't matter. Whatever I feel like having, which helps also with just fullness and satiety. And, you know, you just get that. I mean, part of the cheat meal is just the psychological enjoyment of, because if you've been restricting your calories for quite some time,

you know, after the sixth, seventh, eighth week of doing it, at least for me, I don't get overly hungry. I don't really have energy problems. But the feeling of eating more food just begins to feel better and better. So there is that psychological benefit. So you get, you get protein and a bit more satiety. Um, so that's with only eating 2,300 calories a day. When I was maintaining while my training days, I was eating about 3,200 calories a day. So now you can imagine, I mean, I come into dinner having only eaten my protein and eating and having, having eaten maybe about 30 carbs and 10 fat. And now, and you know, so my, my total calorie intake is maybe at, uh, 1,100 when I come into dinner, um, or even less actually probably closer to 900. So now I have to eat about 2,000 calories, 2,200 calories, just to hit my normal numbers for the day.

Now, of course, it feels ridiculous. I mean, you come into dinner, I don't really get hungry for some odd reason. It really just doesn't matter how I eat. I just don't get hungry. I only will sometimes feel like I just would like to eat food, but I don't get hunger pangs anymore, which is kind of strange, but I just don't. So, uh, but you know, you might be hungry coming into dinner. Um, and, and, and it feels, it feels like when, if you go sit down and you eat, you know, 2,200 calories in one meal, you feel like you just, you're, you're, you know, you're going to gain a pound of fat right there, but you're not. You remember that dieting is just numbers. Uh, and throughout

the day, you've been burning your normal amounts of energy, uh, you know, reducing your calorie intake for, for over the course of nine, 10 hours does not slow down your metabolism. So your metabolism just keeps running. You're just burning more fat, burning more fat than you normally would throughout the day because you normally would be eating food. And there's that balance of you burn a little bit of fat when you're in a fasted state or post-absorptive, and then you eat food, and then you gain a little bit of fat. And by the end of the day, the amount of fat that you burned in the day is kind of compared up against the amount of fat that you gained through eating food,

and then you have a net number there of fat loss or fat gain. So what you're doing is you're basically throughout the day, you're burning a lot more fat than you normally would come dinner. And then you're just adding a lot more than you normally would in one meal. But those can just balance out. So it feels like this has got to be a terrible idea. But actually, it works very well. It's something that, you know, I shouldn't, it doesn't even necessarily need to be tested per se because

it is that, I mean, that's just how metabolism works, but it's, I've been doing this for, uh, at least a year now. It's been just a standard thing of mine, whether I'm cutting or maintaining, I don't really bulk much these days because I don't really see a reason to, I'm not trying to just put on size anymore. I'm kind of happy with how my body is overall. So that's the first thing, save up calories. Another thing you can do is you can deplete glycogen stores before you go and have this meal. This is a minor thing.

Like scientifically speaking and physiologically speaking, it's something. It does do something. Practically speaking, I'm not sure how much of a difference it actually makes, but it's not a bad idea. I will do it if it works on my schedule. Because basically what you want to do is glycogen is a form of glucose. It's stored in your muscles and it's stored in your liver. Your body uses this for energy.

The glycogen in your liver is used when your body runs out of energy from food that you eat, it's done absorbing it. Part of the energy. Now it needs glucose in the blood. So it goes to your liver, pulls glycogen stores, uh, converts them into glucose, keeps you going. Glucose in your muscles is used primarily in anaerobic exercise. So weightlifting, um, it, uh, pulls heavily on glycogen stores, high intensity cardio pulls heavily on glycogen stores. High intensity cardio pulls heavily on glycogen stores, whereas low intensity cardio doesn't. And when your body's glycogen levels are low, when they're depleted, its number one priority with glucose is, well, its number one priority is to keep all the organs running, but then its second priority is to replenish glycogen stores. So when glycogen stores are low, and this has been scientifically proven, by the way, this is not just some theory. When glycogen

stores are low and you eat carbs, your body, before it's going to turn any of those carbs into body fat, glucose into body fat through a process called de novo levagenesis, before that can occur, it needs to replenish glycogen stores. So by depleting glycogen stores before you go eat a bunch of carbs, I wouldn't really call it a hack because I hate the whole biohacking. It's such a silly trend right now. Instead of just sticking to fundamentals, a lot of people get lost in trying to hack their metabolism with all kinds of weird workout routines and weird

supplement routines and weird diet routines that ultimately just don't work or don't work nearly as well as, you know, control your food intake, balance your macronutrients, lift heavy weights, use cardio, uh, accordingly, depending on your goals. Anyway. Um, so I wouldn't say that it's like a super metabolism hack or something like that, but it does buy you what you can think of it as it buys you a little bit of a carb sink. It buys you a little bit more. It gives your body another thing it can do with all the food you're about to give it besides store fat. in stores by, I would say what I do is the best way, if I'm going to do it and I have the time, 20 minutes or so before you're going to be going out or whatever. I mean, you have to time it, but you're going to need about 20 minutes.

And really what you're looking to do is you can do like a whole body type workout, weight lifting, where you're just looking to, it doesn't have to be necessarily heavy, you know, 10 to 12 reps where you're failing at about 10 to 12 reps, and that alone, just doing that. So if you did a simple workout, it could just be stick to the compounds. Just, you know, do a set of 10 to 12 rep deadlifts or do a couple sets of that, a couple sets of squats, a couple sets of bench press, a couple sets of military press. There you go. And really, actually, you could probably leave out the military

because it's a smaller muscle group. So if really you just focused on your push with bench press, your pull with deadlift and your legs with squats, and you just stuck 10 to 12 reps, do a few sets of each, that's all you're really looking to do is just burn up some glycogen. You can also do it with high-intensity cardio. That does burn up glycogen as well, but the weightlifting workout would burn up a bit more. So that's another little thing you can do. And then you do that and then you go out and you eat and your body will store less carbs as fat as a result of that. Like I said, it's not going to be a huge difference because that process whereby the body converts carbohydrates into fat isn't all that efficient anyway, but it's something you should just know about. And then that brings me to the next point, which is the worst type of cheat meal that you can have is a very, very high fat meal.

You want to, your cheat meals, like I said, I always like to include some protein, but you want to stick to high carb. And that's really what you want your enjoyment. I mean, I could say stick to high protein, that would be best, and that's true, but that's not a fun cheat meal. You know, you want to just go eat three steaks or something. No, you want, you know, pasta, you want bread, you want the carby stuff, you want desserts, you want whatever that tastes good. So high carb is fine, and it's much better than high fat because dietary fat is stored as body fat very, very efficiently. Carbohydrates are not stored nearly as efficiently because they have to be converted from their form.

So, you know, whatever you eat carbs, it's broken down into glucose. and then that glucose needs to be turned into that type of molecule. It needs to be turned into a lipid, a totally different type of molecule. And that process costs energy. According to research, I believe it's about 25% of the energy in a carbohydrate is utilized in that process of actually turning it into body fat. And your body has more uses for carbs. Like I said, there's the whole glycogen, uh, uh, matter, which, uh, especially if you're lifting weights and your body stores glycogen and muscles in the muscles and the more muscle you have, the more glycogen your body can hold. So your body can do more with, with excess carbohydrate than it can with excess dietary fat. The, the primary, what

prime, what mainly happens with a dietary fat is it just gets turned into body fat. The primary, what primarily, what mainly happens with dietary fat is it just gets turned into body fat. And that's not a bad thing. Your body, I mean, body fat is necessary for life. I mean, if you drop as a guy, if you are, if you get too low, you die, you know, down, if you get down to 3%, you're dead. And where I'm at right now, 6 or 7% is really the cutoff for, for maintaining health because the amount of body fat you have on your body relates to hormone production and other things that just affect your overall health. You don't want to be too lean.

So your body does have other uses for dietary fats. They are used in the synthesis of hormones. They are used in regenerating cells. But a big major role they play is just replenishing body fat stores. So you go out and you eat a ton of dietary fat. That means gaining fat, really, is what that is. It's directly going to be stored as fat. And a pound, what's a pound? I believe it's like 400 and something grams. Let's see. Yeah. I'm checking Google right now. 453 grams. That is a lot of dietary fat to eat, but you can do it. I mean, depending on what you order, you'd be surprised how much fat is in food, certain foods that taste

really good, you know, full of just butter, cream, cheese. The butter and oil are, when you go to restaurants and you're eating tasty stuff, it's all over the place. So it's very, very, very easy to hit 200 grams of fat in a meal. That's like, if you are not quite, if you just don't care or you don't know exactly what to kind to look for on the menu, you can easily hit 200 grams. Think about 200 grams of fat, that's a half a pound. If that were just converted directly into body fat, which is almost essentially what happens. Compare that 25% energy cost to convert carbohydrates into body fat, and research shows it's 0-3% to convert dietary fat to body fat. It's because the molecule is essentially almost the

same thing. It doesn't need to be processed nearly as much to be stored as body fat. It just needs to be transported and changed a little bit. So you want your cheat meal to be a high carb meal. That's the most enjoyable way to do it without gaining a bunch of fat. You don't have to completely avoid fats, of course, because that would be impossible. I mean, if you're going to enjoy yourself, you are going to have some fat. If you're going to completely avoid fats, of course, because that would be impossible. I mean, if you're going to go enjoy yourself, it's going to have, you are going to have some fat. If you're going to eat some bread, you're going to probably want some butter with it. If you're going to get a pasta, there's going to be some oil. You know, even, even meats, you know, if you want to, if you want a burger or something like that, there's fat there. So that's okay. That's

why I save my fat. I want to save pretty much all of it. I mean, I save all the carbs too, but it's important that it's more important that you save all of it. I mean, I save all the carbs too, but it's important that it's more important that you save all of your fats for that meal. So depending on what you're doing with your diet, you can also, I mean, once again, I don't think about this all that much, but you also, let's say you want to have a fattier meal. Let's say you want to eat a hundred grams of fat, but you normally would only have 50 in a day. If you really wanted to, you could just do it. It's not that big of a deal.

Actually, 50 grams of fat, okay, fine. But if you really wanted to be fancy with it, you could cut a little bit back on the carbs. So let's say you had 200 carbs left and you want to go, you know, you want to eat a really fatty meal, 50 grams fat over your normal daily intake, you could cut your carbs intake down to about 100 grams in that meal and just make up for the calories of it. So again, I do recommend don't get too worried about it. Eat what you want to eat. Don't go completely overboard. And if you're fine with it, I recommend sticking to a lower-fat meal, high-carb, enjoy the carbs, include some protein, and don't worry too much about the numbers. But if you are looking at something that just you know this has an insane amount of fat, like a tablespoon of oil is about 12 grams of fat, for instance.

Same thing with butter, a tablespoon. That's not a lot. Cream is the same or more, actually. I'm not sure. But you start looking at certain foods uh and you can get an idea you know you see this big bowl just filled with cheese and cream and butter and you know pasta like like a macaroni and cheese a big macaroni and cheese thing that is a shitload of fats just know that um so if you want to do that and you really want to especially as you this matters a lot actually when

you're when you're cutting to get really lean like my cheat meals as I was cutting down I wouldn't do that I don't go out and have the you know the big macaroni and cheese like instead I would go out maybe I get some calamari which you know has some carbs has a little bit of fat I'll get some protein I'll eat some bread and I'll save all my carbs for a dessert, for instance. Like I'll have some, I just last weekend, I went and had carrot cake because I love carrot cake and yeah, the frosting has some fat, but I saved everything basically for that carrot cake. Like I had some calamari, which is just some protein, a little bit of carbs, a little bit of fat, had some fish, low fat fish, and then I had carrot cake. Okay. It works.

low fat fish, and then I had carrot cake. Okay. It works. Um, so yeah, that's that point. Um, the next point is alcohol. Uh, if you're going to drink alcohol, stay away from, from carb heavy drinks like beer and fruity stuff. Um, dry wines are good as well as spirits. Uh, I'll link an article. I won't go into all the reasons why instead I'm just going to link an article below so you can see why I recommend this. But to just give you a quick summary, basically the problem with alcohol is not the molecule itself. The molecule itself isn't converted into body fat. Basically, it's not at all. Alcohol as a molecule does not turn into body fat. But what it does is it blunts fat oxidation. So it accelerates the rate at which your body stores, uh, especially dietary

fats as body fat. So that's why the, you know, the standard type of cheat meal like beer and pizza and wings, just tons of fat, uh, and you know, some carbs in there, but tons of fat and alcohol, um, is, is, is bad. That's what you don't want. Um, and it also can mess with your carb metabolism as well. So I do recommend if, as you're getting leaner and leaner, there probably is a, you probably are going to have to limit your alcohol intake, uh, keep it pretty, pretty under control. I don't drink at all. I never really got into it. I mean, I don't care. I'm not against it, but it's just not my thing. So I can't really speak from experience on this, but I've worked with a lot of people and that has become, that has become a sticking point for a lot of people where it was just the alcohol intake. And we got rid of the alcohol intake with the cheat meals, and then all of a sudden they're losing fat again.

So that's something to keep in mind is don't go crazy on the alcohol and stick to dry wines. Spirits are better. I'll link the article, and you'll see I give some more tips on diet-wise what you want to do if you're going to be drinking because your dietary fat intake is even more important if you're going to be drinking. So another thing here is you can reduce your calorie intake over the next day or two if it's necessary. So let's say you overdo it or you want to overdo it. I mean, part of succeeding in the long run in this game is just being flexible.

Like sometimes if I'm at a restaurant that's exceptional and I want to eat a lot of food, I don't care. I'm going to eat a bunch of fat and I'm going to overdo it. Well, that's fine. And I do that, but then I just compensate for it by the next day. Maybe I cut my calorie intake by 1,000 the next day. So I really just eat maybe not 1,000. It depends on what I'm doing with my diet. It could be 500.

It could be 1,000. But I get my protein in, and I get a basic amount of fat in for health reasons and just cut my carbs very low for the next day. Is it particularly fun? No. I mean, again, as I said, I don't really get that hungry. It doesn't bother me. Um, but one day of very low calorie isn't going to cause any issues. Very, very low calorie dieting causes issues when you do it for a long time. That's when it causes issues. So maybe I go for, you know,

I wouldn't even say very low calorie. Let's say my intake, uh, you know, if I were doing that right now, if I were cutting, still cutting 2,300 calories a day, I'd really overdo it on my cheat meal. Then maybe I eat 1,300 calories the next day, just basically protein and some fats and keep my carbs to nothing. That then makes up for when you look at my calories burned versus my calories consumed over those two days, it now works out. You know, the, the cheat day or the cheat meal, the day that I had the cheat meal disaster, but then I make up for it by reducing calorie intake the next day. It works out on that deck on that next day. Maybe I do a little bit of exercise. Maybe I just do some like walking, nothing all that intense because I'm not eating that much food. Um, but just burn a little bit of energy and, uh, you, you know, it probably wouldn't even take a third day to balance that out.

But if it did, then I guess I could do that. But you can do that. You know, as long as it's a day or two, it's not a big deal. So those are all the major cheat meal little strategies that I use to really just enjoy myself. It's also psychologically, I could say soothing to do these things and know that they work because then you just go to a restaurant, you're not fretting over what you should order or if you should eat that or is it really worth it or are you just going to ruin your week's worth of progress. You just get to go and

you get to have the things you like. Certain things, maybe you stay away from it, that doesn't bother you. Okay, there are a couple of dishes, you know, yeah, that sounds good. But this other thing sounds just as good. You know, instead of the super cheesy fatty pasta, I'm going to go with the pizza. Because, you know, depending on how the pizza is prepared, it could actually not be that bad. It could just be like 60, 70 grams fat, some carbs, and that's it. And you're done. And, you know, you can eat a big pizza and feel quite satisfied.

Although pizza is on the edge because it is quite fatty. But you get the idea. So and remember, stick to a cheat meal each week, not a cheat day. Cheat days are a killer. And now I think you see why. When you start looking at these numbers, I mean, you go and eat in a day. You can easily eat, you know, 400 grams of fat, 400 grams of carbs. And I guarantee you, especially when this is, this is usually on a rest day too, where you're not even exercising, you're not moving around and you add alcohol on it. I mean, you can gain a pound of fat in a day easy, uh, or more. So, um, you know, I got to get people that go on vacation and gain two and a half pounds, you know, a day for the first week or something like that.

There's a guy who works for me. That's like we always joke with him. He just goes apeshit on food when he goes out. And he gains about two pounds a day. And then he has to come back and cut for like four weeks just to undo it. So, yeah, that's the, yeah, that's, that's the cheat meal. That's the cheat meal game, how to enjoy it without ruining your diet without, you know, putting on too much fat. All right. So now, uh, just kind of transition into the next thing I

want to talk to, which is just their talk about, uh, which is a couple of things that I kind of just, I just don't like about the fitness culture and that bothers me about it. And, um, that ironically, there were a couple of things that kept me from wanting to ever work in the fitness industry. And just, I didn't like being around it. I liked being fit and I liked working out, but I didn't like a lot of the people that also were fit and into working out. And there are a few reasons why. So one of the things is a body dysmorphia where people, they get, you know, this is where people think like with us guys, it's normally, we never think we're big enough we never think we're we're lean enough how we see our bodies becomes twisted um you know internally when when you when you look at it in in an objective

sense like a guy could be in in my shape and and feel like he looks terrible you know what i mean and nitpick his physique and everything that's wrong with it. And, yeah, my abs aren't, you know, they're kind of like staggered, and that doesn't look good, and I don't have a full six-pack because for some reason only two of my abs are really all that developed on either side, so I have like this four-pack going, and, you know, never lean enough because I have this, I can still grab this tiny little bit back here

because I'm not, you know not 4% or something like that. And it sounds funny, but for some people it becomes like a very unhealthy type of mental state where they become obsessed over this and it becomes quite a problem for them. I mean, sometimes I'll email with people that are to the point of like being depressed about it. Um, and I think that, you know, if you get, if you get too consumed with how you look and too consumed with your body and just, you know, you're with fitness in general, it just becomes mentally unhealthy. Um, you know, even fretting over like you, cause you're holding a little bit more water today than yesterday. And what's good, what, yesterday, and then you're thinking over your diet. Did you overeat?

Nobody didn't overeat, so what's going on? I try to stay away. Personally, I don't go down that road. I try to stay kind of balanced and objective about my body. I'm happy with how things are. Also something to realize is the vast majority of people that you see on Instagram and, you know, social media, whatever, a lot of these guys that are big and super lean and girls also that are, have like super developed muscles, very, very

lean is they're on drugs. And, you know, I, I know I harp on this and stuff. And the reason why though is more because of this point, I don't care that people are on drugs. Do all the drugs you want. It doesn't bother me. Your body, your thing, don't care. But it can be for people that are on the outside looking in and they don't know that. It can fuel this type of dissatisfaction with themselves because they look at these guys and girls and go like, how is that possible? I want to look like that. And if you set that as a goal, but when you, that's fine, but you need to know how that person got there. If

you're not willing to do all the drugs and you don't know how to do all the drugs, you're not going to look like that. There just is a look. There are things that you can do in the, with the physique, with drugs that you simply can't do naturally. I mean, I would say in terms of like overall impressiveness, a natural physique, like a really well-trained natural physique is 50% of a really well-trained drug physique. You put them side by side, same weight, more or less same body fat, um, percentage, and the drugger looks twice as good and that's just the way it is so just know that like set realistic goals for yourself and just know that like if you're if you're aspiring to look like a top-tier physique competitor

why that person is on a lot of drugs so just know that when you're when you're seeing a lot of these pictures and don don't judge yourself harshly because of what you see in these pictures. There are plenty of guys and girls on Instagram and such that are natural and that look great. But they just don't look nearly as good as the drug guys ever. So that's one thing that I think is I don't like, this body dysmorphia type thing in the fitness culture. I don't like this bodies morphia type thing in the Finn sculpture. Another thing I don't like is the kind of overblown sense of achievement and self-importance that we see in this space. I mean, you read some of the captions of these people's daily selfies.

I mean, you'd think they just like conquered a country or something. You'd think they just defeated an army in hand-to-hand combat or something like that. I mean, I'm all for like motivating and being motivated and staying on track, but I think it becomes a bit cheesy and overblown. I mean, let's look at it realistically. What do we do? We go and we pick up heavy things and we put them down and we control our food intake. That's what we do. That's it. There's really not anything else to it. We do that stuff.

Our bodies improve. Voila. Magic, right? I think that it's really just not that special. Yeah, it takes discipline and it takes some know-how. But in the greater scheme of things, and I'm saying this as someone that this is what I do for a living. I've always kind of been into fitness. I played sports growing up.

I've always, you know, I keep myself in good shape. But I'm not that person, you know, thinking that I am such a special, amazing human because I know how to pick weights up and put them down and control my calories and stuff. I know how to pick weights up and put them down and control my calories and stuff. I think it's much better to look at it that way as something that's really, it's just something that we do. It's something that's healthy. It's nice to look good, but it's not like we have finally made it in life. Like we, some of these people are like, it's as if they've won in life. Like they're dominating life because they know how to lift weights and build some muscle. Like, I just don't agree with that. I think that, I think it, it, it takes, uh, a lot

more effort and a lot more discipline to build a successful career or a company to raise a family, you know, to give back to communities, to do charity work, um, to be a good friend. I think all those things are a lot more admirable personally than, you know, I pick the barbell up, I put the barbell down, I follow my meal plan, I get shredded. Like, okay. I mean, that is really all it is. So yeah, I mean, I guess it's just kind of maybe a little bit of a rant, but I think kind of staying humble and keeping what we're doing in proportion to the overall picture of life in general, I think is healthy and to not get too consumed with just this one little thing of getting in shape to the exclusion of everything else. And really not using it as a point to be arrogant or think that you're, you know, I don't say you personally because chances are you're not like this, but you see it a lot where these people, they think that they're, you know,

superhuman because they get in the gym every day and, you know, control their food, and in many cases, you know, use drugs as well. So just my thoughts on the matter, and keeping it downplayed for me definitely has just, I think, helped prevent me from turning into that type of person that I don't like, and focusing more on just how I can help others. I do things, I do my stuff, but I'm more interested in just seeing other people do well, as opposed to getting all this attention for me and look at how amazing I am. And like, I'm not even into posting selfies. If I didn't have to do it for my work, just to kind of prove that I know what I'm doing, I wouldn't even do it because I really don't care to get the attention,

honestly. Um, so that's me. All right, well, that's it for this podcast. I hope you liked it. Lots more stuff coming. I'm going to be doing some more interviews for the next few. And, yeah, I have a new book launch, a new book coming out very soon, Beyond Bigger, Leaner, Stronger. That's the sequel to Bigger, Leaner, Stronger. I got the proof back from the printer.

I want some changes. So I keep on running into these little delays. It's annoying. It is what it printer. I want some changes. So, you know, I keep on running into these little delays. It's annoying. It is what it is. It's almost done. And I got definitely some more cool things planned. So stay tuned, and thanks a lot for your support. Hey, it's Mike again.

Hope you liked the podcast. If you did, go ahead and subscribe. I put out new episodes every week or two where I talk about all kinds of things related to health and fitness and general wellness. Also head over to my website at www.muscleforlife.com where you'll find not only past episodes of the podcast, but you'll also find a bunch of different articles that I've written. I release a new one almost every day. Actually, I release kind of like four

to six new articles a week. And you can also find my books and everything else that I'm involved in over at MuscleForLife.com. Thanks again. Bye.