Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - What Can BCAAs Actually Do For You? (According to Science)

Episode Date: July 13, 2018

In this episode, I interview the co-founder and former lead researcher and writer of Examine.com Kurtis Frank on the truth about branched-chain amino acids (BCAAs).  For years now, BCAAs have been a staple supplement in the bodybuilding scene. If you’ve ever seen a muscleboy or girl in the gym lugging around a gallon jug of fluorescent liquid, chances are it’s water and BCAAs. BCAAs are extremely popular because they supposedly help us build muscle faster when we’re bulking and retain muscle better when we’re cutting. A number of studies are often cited to support such claims too, and if you take the research at face value, it all seems to add up. The problem is when you roll up your sleeves and take a closer look at the research and weight of the evidence on the whole, a very different picture emerges.  As you’ll discover in this podcast, BCAAs really don’t have much to offer beyond making your water more tasty, unless you’re an athlete—in that case, there is one legitimate use for BCAAs that might be relevant to you. 5:50 - What are BCAAs? Why are people using them? 9:32 - Why are they so popular? 14:26 - What does "branched" mean? How do BCAAs reduce fatigue? 18:10 - When do BCAAs work? 23:17 - Why do some people feel less hunger when they supplement with BCAAs? 25:49- Can BCAAs stunt muscle gain? 29:00 - Anything else we should touch on? 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/

BCAAs got caught up in the hype where they thought it could build muscle, and it turns out that they cannot build muscle by themselves. But at the same time, BCAAs were just so cheap to produce, and I guess a culture formed around them pretty early on. They've stuck in the market ever since then, to be honest. It's one of the most popular supplement. Hello and good day to you. This is Mike Matthews from Muscle for Life and Legion Athletics, back with another episode of the Muscle for Life podcast.

And this time around, I interview the co-founder and former lead researcher and writer of examine.com somebody who knows more about supplementation than anybody i will ever meet again in my life curtis frank on the truth about branched chain amino acids bcaas now for years bcaas have been an absolute staple supplement in the bodybuilding scene. If you've ever seen a muscle boy or girl in the gym lugging around a gallon of fluorescent liquid, chances are it is water and BCAAs because supposedly these little guys can help us build muscle faster when we are bulking and retain more muscle when we're cutting. And there are a number of studies out there that are often cited to support such claims. And if you take that research at face value, it all seems to add up. And there you go. You have a best selling supplement on your hands. Ironically, the number one requested product over at Legion Athletics

is BCAAs, and it's also a product that we refuse to sell. Why? Well, when you roll up your sleeves and you take a closer look at the research and the weight of the evidence on the whole, a very different picture emerges. As you will discover in this podcast, BCAAs unfortunately don't really have much to offer beyond making your water tastier, unless you are an athlete. If you are, there is one legitimate use for BCAAs that might be relevant to you. But if you're not, you're wasting your money. This is where I would normally plug a sponsor to pay the bills, but I'm not big on promoting stuff that I don't personally use and believe in. So instead, I'm just going to quickly tell you about something of mine.

Specifically, my 100% natural pre-workout fat burner supplement, Forge. Now, it was designed to be used specifically when exercising in a fasted state and it helps you maximize fat burning while training on an empty stomach, minimize the amount of muscle that you lose while training in this state, and maintain intensity and focus in your workouts. All that is why Forge has over 400 reviews on Amazon with a four-star average and another 220 on my website with a four and a half star average. So if you want to get leaner, faster, and especially in the quote-unquote hard-to-lose spots like the hips, thighs, and belly, then you want to head over to www.legionathletics.com and pick up a bottle of Forge today. And just to show how much I appreciate my podcast peeps, use the coupon code podcast at checkout and you'll save 10%

on your entire order. And lastly, you should also know that I have a very simple 100% money back guarantee that works like this. You either love my stuff or you get your money back, period. You don't have to return the products. You don't have to fill out forms. You don't have to jump through any other hoops or go through any other shenanigans. So you really can't lose here. Head over to www.lesionathletics.com now, place your order and see for yourself why my supplements have thousands of rave reviews all over the internet. And if for whatever reason, they're just not for you, contact us and we will give you a full refund on the spot. Curtis, thanks for coming back on the show once again

to give us supplement wisdoms. And today's discussion is something that it's good that we're putting more content out on and maybe worth actually considering doinger, to supplement with BCAAs. It's not going to help you gain muscle faster. I mean, unless you just like tasty water. And that's not a very good sales pitch because, well, it's just not. not. So that's the... It's funny though, actually, a number of people write back and just say, okay, even if that's true and there are no real benefits to supplement BCAs, I do like tasty water. So if I would buy them from you, I'm going to buy them regardless and I would buy them for you. But just recently, you were looking into, could we swing a BCAA product of some type for any reason that would be, you know, legitimate and it would make for a good sales pitch, a convincing sales pitch, an honest sales pitch. And obviously you came back negative. And I guess that's kind of a segue into today's discussion. Why? And I guess that's kind of a segue into today's discussion, why?

And for people listening, just to answer that question of what BCAAs are, why are people using them, and what can they do, what can they not do, and so forth. All right, so BCAAs, the branched chain amino acids, just to get the obvious out of the way, they have three amino acids that have branched chains. The other amino acids are pretty much straight lines, these ones are all bendy. And they were grouped together specifically for that purpose, just structural. The three BCAAs, leucine, isoleucine, and valine, do different things in the body and truth be told, we don't know anything about valine, it's just nobody really wants to research it. But leucine is the primary one that stimulates muscle protein synthesis. And this led to BCAs being marketed initially because it was claimed that they could build as much muscle as protein.

But because you're taking in less amino acids overall, it's less calories. Then this, you know, fueled consumption of BCAs. it was later found out that this was not the case you needed all essential amino acids to sufficiently build muscle so you shouldn't that have been obvious from the outset it was not necessarily obvious from the outset because there are stores of amino acids in the body mostly the intestines and liver so I thought that if you could just tell the muscle to start building it will start taking amino acids from the liver and intestines and then that those stores would be replenished the next time you eat food

but it seems that it's not so simple you can't just take amino acids from the liver because it's incredibly greedy so it needs a surplus of most amino acids, probably all the essential ones in the blood when you stimulate the muscles. So in a sense, those are essential amino acid stores. I know that's not the correct term, but in a metaphorical sense, it's the body holds onto those because they are more important than more muscle. Pretty much. You have to feed your immune cells. The intestinal cells have a turnover rate that is measured in minutes, so you need to create more intestinal cells. The liver just needs a

large store for amino acids because it handles any insult and needs to be prepared for those insults. Glutamine itself is a huge buffer that regulates blood acidity. So there's so many more important things in the body than building muscle because to the body, building muscle does not in the short term regulate survival. Right. I mean, obviously the total amount of lean mass is correlated with just all-cause mortality. But yeah, being more jacked doesn't necessarily mean you survive better so long as you don't have a very low amount of lean mass, right? Yeah. But again, it's more of a long-term thing.

A lot of these, when organs get greedy, it's more of an adaptation over time for acute stressors like the intestines and liver will only release their amino acids for the muscle i believe in situations of like trauma involving like a weapon wound where you're actually bleeding out or third degree burns which is why there were studies on glutamine shown increased muscle growth because that was a situation of which the other stores in the body would give up their glutamine. I see. But BCAAs got caught up in the hype where they thought it could build muscle, and it turns out that they cannot build muscle by themselves.

But at the same time, BCAAs were just so cheap to produce, and I guess a culture formed around them pretty early on. They've stuck in the market ever since then, to be honest. It's one of the most popular supplements. I mean, yeah. It was one of those tipping point products, right? Because it hit on a big benefit that people wanted. They were inexpensive to produce.

So that means that there's a lot of money that could be spent on the marketing of them. And also you can make them taste delicious, even though they taste terrible by themselves with artificial sweeteners and artificial flavoring, you can make pretty much anything taste really good. And so it's just that perfect storm of factors that made for a real kind of runaway success yeah it's like a perfect cash cow product exactly it's just people are always going to buy it regardless of what you say uh so if you want to sell it at least try to find one or two niches where it actually works but then we got into the discoveries where the signaling for muscle growth was attribute attributable to leucine solely so if you want to stimulate muscle growth you would just get leucine

you don't need isoleucine or valine so it's cheaper you can take smaller pills if you're going the pill route doesn't isoleucine stimulate protein protein synthesis weekly, very weekly, or no? Very weekly, but so weekly that I would say it's inconsequential compared to leucine. Isoleucine is pretty good in high doses to increase the uptake of glucose into muscle cells. But it's high dose. I believe the studies use 10 to 11 milligrams 10 to 11 grams of isoleucine alone so like there is a potential for isoleucine in high doses to be used as like a post-workout to increase glucose uptake into muscles but i believe isoleucine if

you take it away from bcas and pump up the dose starts to get really expensive at that point yeah yeah i'm sure just because if you're isolating it even further that and that's how things get very expensive yeah but leucine like at those doses isn't that expensive right right but like so leucine took that crown and then for actually building muscle the crown was ever since the initial discovery always with protein itself so you have bca in a little area where it can do both those things less good than either the initial ones so you choose a which is protein or you choose b which is leucine then in the middle bca is like well we suck at that and we suck at that what do we do like

literally for a long time the only reason bca's were still sold were because they were on the market and people were buying them and you just wanted to keep the money coming in yeah i mean those in the office that's what some people were saying like yeah we don't we don't have to lie to sell them but so many people ask for them. So many people buy them. So many people say that they're going to keep buying them simply because they like them. I've also heard some people say that when they're cutting, they feel like it helps stave off hunger and cravings, at least hunger to a certain degree. a certain degree. And so in the office, again, so we were like, I mean, can't we just make them and not claim they're going to do anything that they're not going to do? But I still just didn't like that. I was like, that's such a weak product then. It starts a bad precedent. Yeah. And then what does that sales page look like? What's the pitch? Tasty-

BCAAs. You're going to buy them. This one's great. Yeah. That's about it. And I feel like that goes against the brand. That would be a satire sell page. Yeah, I know. If we were making joke supplement websites, joke supplement companies, that would be one of the products. BCAAs, they don't do much,

but we have 25 flavors to choose from. Those competitors over there have three. Buy now. That's a low number. Buy now. Cookies and cream with peach. No one buys it, but it just adds to the list. That's how popular they are.

Yeah, pretty much. But like, so because Legion is the whole premium sports company, we can only sell stuff that has an effect which is why I tried to look into a legitimate effect of BCAs and I technically did find one but it's not something most people would you know use it for because BCAs seem to have a role in preventing central fatigue. So central just refers to the brain in a way that is probably due to the I'd say I'm going to give a little nod to Valiant here, but the truth is the mechanisms of how BCAAs prevent fatigue is just due to the fact that they're literally branched.

You want to explain that? Yeah. I was just trying to the fact that they're literally branched you want to you want to explain that yeah i was just trying to figure out a segue so thanks for that when it comes to uh not sarcastic things by the way you were my segue that's all that's all i'm here for i'm just here for segues yeah i thought i was being unnecessarily sassy so when you're working out, you just have like muscle breakdown and the amino acids go into your blood. And they just float around, some go to the brain realize, we have nothing to do here. So they just leave, go to the kidneys and eventually get processed out. But the more you work out, the more amino acids go in your blood and ammonia builds up. And this does lead to fatigue. But another thing that happens is tryptophan,

the turkey amino acid, as many people know it by, that also produces serotonin and thus melatonin, can go into the brain and start to accumulate. And when it accumulates in the brain, that is strongly associated with not just fatigue, but also fatigue related to heat stress. I do not know why it's related to heat stress, but it seems that this type of fatigue happens faster in hot environments. I can attest to that having grown up in Florida and then now having lived in Virginia for a couple of years where it gets hot, but it's not Florida hot. It doesn't suck the life out of you like the Florida heat does. Yeah. there's like a certain fatigue unique

to heat. So tryptophan does this because it's, you know, tryptophan turns into neurotransmitters, but it's also a large neutral in charge amino acid. There's actually a transporter into the brain. So the door of which it goes through called the large neutral amino acid transporter, very aptly named. It just looks for large neutral amino acids. Tryptophan is one of them, but not the only one. If you pump a lot of BCAAs into the system, they're also pretty large and neutral. And they just kind of float around the body. They sort of clog up this transporter a little bit.

So the tryptophan that would normally go into your brain just hangs around on the periphery for a bit more. It delays the buildup of trip command in the brain, not perfectly because eventually the BCA is just going to leave or the BCA is just going to eliminate it. But by delaying this, it can delay prolonged fatigue with specific reference to a heat. specific reference to a heat but also uh more like when you get fatigued and your finite motor control goes down a bit that's also the fatigue that bcas can prevent a little bit so not so much crossfit not so much repetitive like running where you just do one repetitive motion all the time but more so in highly technical sports like tennis or badminton, those are the ones where BCAA supplementation can really help. Interesting. Interesting.

So it's similar to synephrine or yohimbine's effects on fat cells where they clog up the alpha receptors in fat cells, right, which allows them to be mobilized more easily? Sort of. I don't think BCAAAs literally block the transporter. They're just kind of slow. Because the transporter will accept whatever is there. And if it's only tryptophan, only tryptophan is going to go through. But if it's BCAs, then they're going to have to take turns. It's not like when the tryptophan gets into the brain,

it just always stays there. There is a chance for it to get effluxed as well. So as long as the ratio is kind of balanced, then the ratio in the brain will just always stays there there is a chance for it to get effluxed as well so as long as the ratio is kind of balanced then the ratio in the brain will be kind of balanced and not as fatigue prone one could say that makes sense yeah because i guess it's a transporter not a receptor so it's there's it's a difference there i was thinking you know it could be like caffeine and caffeine and adenosine receptors but again that's different if it's a transporter yeah just keeps them busy basically yeah but uh the main thing that i want to get into and this is like the part where i can

say bcas actually work because for a long time bcas despite these mechanisms did not show much strength like they technically delayed fatigue but it was like you got one extra swing in a tennis match like oh no that just makes such the difference it doesn't this is because when I mentioned earlier how amino acids are breakdown products ammonia is produced in ammonia causes fatigue BCA's themselves will produce ammonia so they cause fatigue in a way BCA's for the purpose of reducing fatigue, shoot themselves in their own feet, which is why I wrote this article for Muscle for Life recently. BCAs paired with citrulline,

because citrulline, through the, I think it's called ammonia, the urea cycle. I don't know how I forgot that. It can help reduce ammonia buildup in the blood. So BCAs do their unique effect on preventing fatigue. There is the natural side effect of increasing ammonia, which would normally shoot themselves in the foot. Then citrulline takes care of the ammonia issues and allows the BCAs to actually shine without being impaired. And the studies that I went over on this article, there's one looking at elite tennis players,

where they're basically put through a few simulated matches just to make them fatigue. And then they just shot tennis balls at them and said, in a very sadistic manner, go until you fall. And in the last stages of fatigue citrulline seemed to stave off like half of the fatigue that placebo group experienced the bcaa citrulline so yeah there actually does seem to be a specific promise for bcaas but it may require citrulline or potentially L-ornithine in combination with BCAAs to truly shine. And again, it only shines in like cognitively heavy, uh, fatigue prone sports.

So it's not really something everyone does. Yeah. It'd be more of a, an endurance supplement, which is something you've worked on, but we've shelved for now because we don't have very many heavy endurance athletes. That's not exactly our target market, and I'm not sure what that market is like or how difficult it is to break into, but it would sound like BCAs would have a better place in a supplement like that than anything having to do with building muscle or losing fat, which of course makes even less sense, but people hear things. And I'd say it's 80 to 90% of the reasons why people that we hear from are taking BCAs are relating more to muscle. And if it's fat loss related, it's usually muscle preservation. They think that

if they drink BCAAs all day, they're going to lose less muscle when they cut or maybe even gain more muscle when they cut. But some people also think that it helps them lose fat faster. Well, they can do whatever they want, but they're just going to be wasting money. There is no evidence that I know of to suggest that BCAs have a direct role in fat loss, and for an indirect role through the muscles, again, there's no good evidence on that. It's basically

a what-if theory that leads to an extra $30 a month minimum. There are plenty of cool what-if theories out there. Just select one that has a bit of promise. Hey, if you like what I am 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 bars, pre-workout and post-workout supplements, fat burners, multivitamins, joint support, and more. Every ingredient and every dose in every product is backed by peer-reviewed scientific research. Every formulation is 100% transparent. There are no proprietary blends. And everything is naturally sweetened and flavored.

To check everything 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 with us, you will get double reward points on your entire order. That's essentially 10% cash back in rewards points. So again, the URL is legionathletics.com. And if you appreciate my work and want to see more of it, please do consider supporting me so I can keep doing what I love, like producing podcasts like this. And what are your thoughts about, and this is very common, why people might be, while there might be some legitimacy in terms of what they are

experiencing phenomenologically, and that is reduced hunger. You think it's just due to drinking something sweet or this is when, when cutting, you know, this is like, again, something that I hear often, um, from people that accept that. Yeah. Okay. Fine. It probably doesn't have any muscle related benefits really. But when I'm hungry and I'm cutting and I drink these BCAAs, I mean, who knows? It could be as simple as these people don't drink much water or much liquid at all. And then when they're cutting, because they're drinking BCAAs, it increases their water intake and that alone could increase general satiety, right? I'm actually thinking it might be some weird neurotransmitter shenanigans that I can't explain. Because there's a lot of serotonin receptors in the gut, and activating them will reduce hunger.

The large neutral amino acids like tryptophan are closely linked to serotonin metabolism. So if you are able to activate serotonin receptors in the gut, you can reduce hunger. Now, when you mentioned that, I was trying to think about all the research I've seen on BCAs and serotonin, but I haven't really seen any. There's maybe a question that people haven't really investigated much. But there is potential for weird shenanigans with serotonin receptors. I see. I can't completely eliminate that. But beyond that like

just having water or just like having something in your mouth because if something's in your mouth you're not thinking about putting something else in at that exact same time right you know quell the oral fixation so to speak that could also be a good reason right and i mean based on what you're saying regarding ammonia buildup is it, it sounds like it's counterproductive for fitness people to be drinking BCAAs all day. I mean, let's say you work out after work and you've been drinking BCAAs for eight or nine hours or something and you go do a workout. I think it might be a bit of a downside. Well, definitely if you have kidney issues, because then the ammonia can't get processed as well. It might be cleared by that time, but if people do drink BCAAs throughout the workday and they find that they can never get a good workout in, it could be useful to just go off the BCAAs for a few days, see how you feel.

Because while I don't think it's a red flag at all it's definitely possible that excessive bcaa consumption could just screw up your workouts so makes sense it's something for people to test out sure makes sense what about uh you were talking about this before we before we started recording um a theory that has been bouncing around online that bcaas may may stunt muscle gain as opposed to augment it. Okay, so that theory comes from the fact that leucine is the trigger to stimulate muscle growth paired with the idea that the body is always in a state of homeostasis, an active balance. Much like a grandfather clock swinging back and forth, if something goes in one direction, it's going to go in another.

like a grandfather clock swinging back and forth if something goes in one direction it's going to go in another you cannot just have a body at baseline stimulate a process in one direction then expect it to go back to baseline without dipping into the opposite direction for a little bit it's very much like a sine curve rather than just a straight line and so if you stimulate muscle protein synthesis but you do not give the actual amino acids to build the muscle with you will have no net gain but then after the stimulation muscle protein synthesis goes away you'll be left with a refractory decline in synthesis rates and you don't need to provide amino acids for that because you have your muscles they can just degrade on their own so i said uh decline in most protein synthesis but the theory is it

might also stimulate catabolism so it's like the sine curve where the stuff you want you're not optimizing but the stuff you don't want will happen regardless. And so the theory is if you keep on pulsing BCAAs throughout the day, could you have a net loss of protein if you don't optimize the positive spikes by actually just having whole foods? And at this moment in time, there's no evidence at all assessing this in otherwise healthy demographics. But the theory has been

going around a lot with sarcopenia researchers those who are tending to the elderly and don't want them to lose any muscle mass and i can't really read their research all that well but it seems like that's a valid hypothesis that they're still testing out as for athletes if you wanted a reason to not pulse bcas each and every day then have that be your reason but i don't think you're just going to like shrivel up into a little weightlifting raisin if you continue using bcas i doubt it would actually cause any significant muscle loss or or even or even any significant impairment of muscle growth i would assume if you're if you have the basics in place if your energy balance is where it should be in your macronutrient balance is where it should be in your training intensely and whatever yeah because

out of all the receptors to be highly sensitized in the body after removing a stressor, the process of building muscle is not usually one of those because the molecular target for leucine is actually inside the cell. It's not a receptor on the outside. It doesn't need to desensitize, resensitize the cell as much as other receptors like the insulin receptor. Interesting. Anything else that's floating around out there? I'm trying to think. I mean, those cover all the major points of BCAAs, what they are, why people are using them, and why they are vastly overrated and what a legitimate use may be. Anything else that you've had on your list that you think we should touch on?

In regards to BCAAs, not not really because they are overall very simplistic creature they're just kind of stimulate muscle growth don't do a good job at it might uh decrease fatigue and hot environments of which like the fatigue is cognitive but we pretty much touched down on all the bases it's still going to be sold all the time i think the only other thing we can mention is how bcas are obscenely cheap and how if you are going to be buying a product all the time you're probably actually overpaying if you're buying one of those brand names yeah they're expensive oh yeah a good uh tip i should mention is uh bcas in their unflavored form are highly bitter yeah le. Leucine in particular is disgusting.

Yeah. So if you want to buy like bulk unflavored BCAAs just because they're cheap, sour is the taste. Like sour and tart are the ones that counter bitter the best. For tart, you can get bulk malic acid, which is a little white stuff on the outside of like sour candies. That's just straight up malic acid, which is a little white stuff on the outside of sour candies. That's just straight up malic acid. Very sour.

Sorry, very tart. And then you can also use a bit of lemon juice. Those two alone may be enough to negate how bad BCAs taste. It can save you a lot of money if you're going to be taking BCAs regardless. That, though, probably eliminates one of the main reasons, again, speaking from customers and other people have reached out to us why people enjoy them is because uh my tasty water and that doesn't make for a very tasty water you just have like a meal flavor enhancer yeah yeah you have to add you know you have to add something like that in

and then you just get to the initial price again eventually. Yeah. Or yeah, you just go back to it. If you want tasty water. Yeah, exactly. That's also the point. Like now how many bags of things are we talking about? Or then you just get back to, all right, why don't you just get rid of the BCAAs then and just have the tasty water.

And if you don't want to buy the flavor enhancers, just have some fruit. Throw some fruit that you like in water and just drink that throughout the day. Yeah, pretty much. All right. Well, um, this was, uh, this was a straightforward. This one was, I don't think there's anything else that is, uh, is, is worth mentioning on the BCA front. Yeah. They're not really that exciting. Yeah. They just make money. That's what, that's really what it comes down to. And, uh, there's so much marketing momentum that has built up around them that it's one of those things where the key to lying well is repetition, right? But if you just repeat something, a little factoid, you repeat it enough until eventually it just becomes accepted and true.

And I feel like BCAs have reached that point where the lies have been repeated enough times by enough supplement companies in enough media that, quote unquote, everyone knows now that if you're into muscles, then you probably should be or you should at least consider bcaas yeah it's just i really don't know how to follow up on the whole marketing stuff because it gets me a lot it gets me really pessimistic at times like at least market the fun stuff like garlic that's cool yeah but garlic's on it's unsexy it's smelly i know but like it has the power of egg farts in your blood to reduce blood pressure the power of egg farts for health benefits there's a headline there's an ad headline right there you'll get readers i don't know how many buyers you'll get but you'll get readers for sure yeah all right well right. Well, yeah, well, I think that's it for this round. As always.

Thank you. Thank you. Okay. Glad to be here. Hey there. It is Mike again. I hope you enjoyed this episode and found it interesting and helpful. And if you did, and don't mind doing me a favor and want to help me make this the most

popular health and fitness podcast on the internet, then please leave a quick review of it on iTunes or wherever you're listening from. This not only convinces people that they should check the show out, it also increases its search visibility and thus helps more people find their way to me and learn how to build their best bodies ever too. And of course, if you want to be notified when the next episode goes live, then just subscribe to the podcast and you won't miss out on any of the new goodies. Lastly, if you didn't like something about the show, then definitely shoot me an email at mike at muscle for life.com and share your thoughts on how you think it could be better. I read everything myself and I'm always looking for constructive feedback. So

please do reach out. All right, that's it. Thanks again for listening to this episode. And I hope to hear from you soon. Oh, and before you leave, let me quickly tell you about one other product of mine that I think you might like. Specifically, my 100% natural pre-workout fat burner supplement Forge. Now it was designed to be used specifically when exercising in a fasted state and it helps you maximize fat burning while training on an empty stomach, minimize the amount of muscle that you lose while training in this state and maintain intensity and focus in your workouts. All that is why Forge has over 400 reviews on Amazon with a four star average and another 220 on my website with a four and a half star average. So if you want to get leaner, faster, and especially in the quote unquote hard to lose spots like the hips, thighs, and belly, then you want to head over to www.legionathletics.com and pick up a bottle of Forge today.

And just to show how much I appreciate my podcast peeps, use the coupon code podcast at checkout and you'll save 10% on your entire order. And lastly, you should also know that I have a very simple 100% money back guarantee that works like this. You either love my stuff or you get your money back, period. You don't have to return the products. You don't have to fill out forms. You don't have to jump through any other hoops or go through any other shenanigans. So you really can't lose here. Head over to www.legionathletics.com now, place your order and see for yourself why my supplements have thousands of

rave reviews all over the internet. And if for whatever reason, they're just not for you, contact us and we will give you a full refund on the spot.