Interview with Armi Legge on clean eating, keeping your diet in check, and more!

Mike Matthews: [00:00:00] Hey, it’s Mike. And I just want to say thanks for checking out my podcast. I hope you like what I have to say. And if you do like what I have to say in the podcast, then I guarantee you’re going to like my books. Now I have several books, but the place to start is bigger, leaner, stronger. If you’re a guy and thinner, leaner, stronger.

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As you may know, I’m really not a fan of the supplement industry. I’ve wasted who knows how much money over the years on worthless junk supplements and have always had trouble finding products that I actually liked and felt were worth buying. And that’s why I finally decided to just make my own. Now a few of the things that make my supplements unique are one, they’re a hundred percent naturally sweetened and flavored to all ingredients are backed by peer reviewed scientific research that you can verify for yourself.

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Hey, this is Mike, and this is an interview I did with Armie Legge, who is the founder and editor of Evidence Magazine, which is how I first found him. Evidence Magazine’s a website. That helps people automate their health [00:03:00] and fitness so they can move on with their lives. That’s that’s how army describes it.

And what I like about it is it’s just a, it’s a sober science based magazine that gives you practical, easy to implement tips for improving your health and fitness. I would say it’s similar to the, the content is similar to the type of stuff that I write and that I like to read where it’s science based, but it’s not overly convoluted.

And it’s dealing with, you could say the, the 20 percent of the stuff that you need to know to get 80 percent of your results. You know, there are other, other writers and bloggers and stuff out in this space that I like to follow, but they get into a lot of the esoteric aspects of health and fitness and they’re more, I guess you’d say on the cutting edge of science and more almost in the speculative.

Of what, you know, new emerging research might mean. And that’s cool and it’s interesting, but I think most people are looking for just [00:04:00] practical, easy to implement advice that is a hundred percent proven and known to work. And that’s what army really focuses on over at evidence magazine. So that’s him.

Let’s get to the interview. Hey army. Thanks for taking the time to do this. I appreciate it. Thanks for having me on Mike. Yeah, absolutely. All right, so let’s jump into it. So mainstream fitness screws, a lot of them these days are almost like rabid on the subject of clean eating. And it’s something I talk about in, in my books, bigger than you’re stronger and thinner when you’re stronger.

But I wanted to kind of go into a bit more detail and just get guy dive into with you a bit more because I guess it’s always kind of been a popular thing, but it seems to be particularly popular these days. So what are your thoughts on this? 

Armi Legge: Well, I think first we ought to define it. So, or at least make an attempt to define it.

The general way most people, when they say clean eating, what they mean is just a healthy diet. And generally when people are talking about clean eating, so as you mentioned, a lot of fitness writers and personal trainers, those kinds of people, they’ll [00:05:00] describe this to like a new client and we’ll say like, okay, you need to eat cleaner.

And that’s a really general term. And I think the intention is good. So it’s really just like if you’re eating like Slim Jim’s and Doritos and stuff. Like three times a day, that’s, you know, more on what some people would call like the dirty end of the spectrum. And it’s not a very healthy diet. So, what those people are trying to do, what they mean is just clean up your diet a little bit, eat a little better.

And I think that’s totally fine. The problem arises where people take that to an extreme and they get a little too rabid, as you put it. And the, the other problem is just there is no Good way of defining clean eating, right? So people mean it’s just a healthier diet, but there are all sorts of different ways to eat a healthy diet It’s not like one collection of food.

It’s not that some foods are bad and some foods are good It’s really just a spectrum and you have to consider the diet as a whole instead of nitpicking about certain foods So my thoughts are generally that like the intention is good. And yes, we absolutely [00:06:00] want people to Eating more whole foods minimizing, like, their intake of sugar, their intake of more processed foods.

But not necessarily eliminating it, and that’s not necessary, and that’s not necessarily helpful. For staying lean or staying healthy in the long term. But the problem really comes when, let’s say you have some very well-intentioned fitness writer who says you need to eat clean. Or like, I, you know, some like fitness model online taking their shirt off and showing their six pack and saying, this is what clean eating gets you.

And you know, there’s like an element of truth to that ’cause they’re eating healthier. That helps ’em control their calorie intake and hit their macronutrient targets. But there is no evidence that necessarily like avoiding all chocolate for the rest of your life is going to help you stay leaner than just hitting certain calorie and macronutrient targets.

Yeah, I eat a lot of chocolate. Yeah, me too, man. It’s delicious. Over 

Mike Matthews: time. I mean, obviously, it’s pretty calorie dense. So it’s not like I’m sitting down eating a whole chocolate bar every day. But that’s one of my, I really like chocolate. It’s one of my simple little daily dessert treat things is, you know, whatever.

It’s a few squares of [00:07:00] chocolate. It’s maybe 150 calories. 

Armi Legge: Right, 

Mike Matthews: exactly. Moderation. Yeah. 

Armi Legge: Yeah. So I think the, the false dichotomy comes where you have like the one camp who is all, if it fits your macros which I think is like pop tarts, hot dog, pizza, pop tarts. I don’t, it’s funny, man, pop tarts are like the epitome of flexible dieting for some people or what’s your macro?

Mike Matthews: They need to get in on this. They need to realize it and start sponsoring. Where are all these Pop Tarts sales coming from? What are all these If It Fits Your Macros? What is this? 

Armi Legge: Yeah, the guy from BroScienceLife has an amazing video on If It Fits Your Macros. Oh, really? Yeah, he’s making smoothies out of Pop Tarts.

It’s fucking awesome. Somebody, 

Mike Matthews: somebody has done that, for sure. Yes, 

Armi Legge: I’m sure they have. But yeah, so like the idea is that you have kind of like two ends of the spectrum. Post workout. Yeah, your post workout Pop Tart shake. Yeah. You have one end that’s like Don’t worry about calories, like, calorie counting is a scam, macronutrients don’t matter, like, it’s not what you think, you just need to eat clean, like, avoid all processed [00:08:00] junk.

The other end Or, or, you know, 

Mike Matthews: or you have to just cut out all wheat from your diet, or you have to eat all these weird Brazilian nuts and shit. Yeah, Tim Ferriss right there. Such a troll. 

Armi Legge: Yeah, and then on the other end of the spectrum you have, if it fits your macros, like, the very literal definition of if it fits your macros, where people, and just to explain that, that just means that, You’re setting calorie and macronutrient targets, or sometimes just macronutrient targets.

And you don’t care about your food quality, you just eat whatever fits within those. And, you know, I would say from like sustainability standpoint, or even just like pure fat loss, the, if it fits your macros camp, is a little closer to the truth. Yeah. But you really don’t want to be in either one of those spectrums.

Like it’s not a dichotomy. I think. Just about anybody who’s been interested in health and fitness for more than like a year kind of figures this out by default. That you don’t get lean eating a bunch of junk food, even if it fits your macros, just because you’re hungry all the time and you don’t feel very good.

Mike Matthews: Yep. 

Armi Legge: So I actually 

Mike Matthews: just, just to interpose quickly, somebody a guy that actually works for me. I, I bring him up here and [00:09:00] there because he’s just a hilarious experiment of a human with his diet. He’s, he 20 pounds. It took it longer. Yeah, it took longer than it should have though. It took him, I want to say, He actually, I guess it was about four months, so, considering water and glycogen loss, he was, he was, you know, he did okay, but he, what would happen is he would just, he’d be good on his diet during the week and then kind of eat too much on the weekends, but he he was, Eating, I believe like it was probably close to half his daily calories were coming from candy bars.

That was like, like, like a good chunk of his daily carbs and fat were just from like straight twix bars and you know, yeah, sure. He lost 20, 25 pounds, whatever it was. But by the end of that cut, he was not feeling very good. His workouts sucked. His body low energy just did not feel good. You just did not have that sense of well being.

So, you know, yeah, if you’re just going to talk and he didn’t [00:10:00] necessarily get. Like he didn’t get super lean. He got relatively, he probably got down to the 12 percent range and he started a bit higher obviously. So you know, they’re, yeah, if you’re starting 20 plus percent body fat and you just want to get to an athletic body fat percentage, sure, you can eat half of your daily calories from candy bars, but like.

Your workouts are going to suck. Your body’s not going to feel good. And there are much smarter ways and much healthier ways to do it. 

Armi Legge: Absolutely. And I think the other big problem too is that with, if it fits your macros, like just hitting calorie and macronutrient targets or just eating clean or even just losing weight isn’t necessarily the biggest goal.

And I, you know, one of the things I like about your books, Mike, is that you do talk about habits. So let’s say somebody is dieting for 16 weeks and they don’t lose any weight for the first four weeks, but they’re getting in the habit of eating healthier meals, preparing their own food, that kind of thing.

That’s still progress because that’s the kind of thing that’s going to help them stay lean in the long term. So I think one of the biggest things people overlook is that [00:11:00] they just focus on the weight loss at first and, or they just even focus on the fat loss. Like they set up a very good, like reasonable macronutrient targets are training decently, but they’re not really working on those habits.

So that’s the other, I guess issue you could run into with either of those approaches, either clean eating or if it fits your macros. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. And kind of the dark sides. I mean, so the dark side of. You know, if it’s your macro side of approach of eating half of your calories from candy bars every day is that like Kareem, you do, he had to, he was always battling with hunger.

I mean, like 30 minutes before meals, he would be like, Oh my God, I’m so hungry. So you have that aspect, which of course makes dietary compliance very hard. And then you have the dark side of clean eating, which is, you know, you have to follow all these weird restrictive rules that makes dieting suck and just makes you drew like, you know, salivate at the idea of having a bite of anything that tastes good.

And that’s really the downside of clean eating. It’s, yeah, sure, it’s healthy in a sense of you’re going to be getting the majority of your calories from nutritious foods. But, you know, the health, [00:12:00] the nutritional value of the foods is not everything you have to take into consideration, unless you’re a dog or a robot and you’re just going to put food in your mouth and swallow it every day with no psychological elements coming into play at all, you know.

Armi Legge: Right. Yeah, I think, yeah, the more you, the general way I describe it is just the more you try to, Completely avoid a food the more you’re going to think about it and generally the more you’re going to want it and there’s actually a wealth of scientific studies showing this too that when you make something anything taboo whether it’s drug use, alcohol, sex, anything like that people are generally more interested in it and we saw a lot of that during Prohibition.

Mike Matthews: Even in books, a book gets banned and all of a sudden everybody wants to read it. 

Armi Legge: Right, yeah, it’s like that South Park episode where they Ban catcher and the rye from schools and then all the kids want to read it and then they’re like man What the fuck is this that had nothing good in it? 

Mike Matthews: That’s funny Yeah, okay, so I you know, I I definitely agree on the overall kind of take there and that’s that’s obviously what I what I talk [00:13:00] about in my books and let’s move on to this next point here of like so when when you’re kind of plot planning and tracking food intake I know that you’ve talked about this in other podcasts and you’ve written about it and you know, In my experience, this is, depending on how lean you want to get, I’ll run into people, sometimes they’ll email and they’re going to, and they ask, you know, they basically say they hate counting calories.

They hate tracking food intake whatsoever. So they are kind of drawn to that, you know, clean eating camp because of the, if it fits your macros camp, you know, Oh, okay. Eat anything but it. You have to hit numbers. So some people, they don’t like that idea. Even if they can eat cookies every day, they don’t want to have to follow a plan.

They just want to follow some basic rules. Don’t eat this type of carb, don’t eat that type of carb, eat this kind of nut, do this or whatever. Right. So planning, I, I recommend planning and tracking because I think it is a good way to learn how dieting works and know that you’re not making mistakes by, you [00:14:00] know accidentally overeating basically.

And I would say if you wanting to get below, let’s say as a guy, 10 percent body fat, as a girl, 20 percent body fat, you’re, you’re probably going to have to track. I mean, either that, or you’re just going to be really lucky that you are able to hit numbers every day. But you have to be very, very familiar with the contents of the macronutrient calorie contents of food.

And you have to prepare all food yourself. Forget about it if you’re going out. But. What are some tips for making things work when you can’t track your numbers or when you don’t want to, and let’s say as a guy or girl, they’re not looking to get super shredded, they just want to lose, you know, they want to get down into a healthy athletic body fat range, but they don’t want to get too much into planning or tracking.

What are some tips that you could share on that? 

Armi Legge: Yeah, that’s a great point. So there are definitely some methods many methods actually that you can use. Besides counting or tracking your diet but before we talk about 

Mike Matthews: like, or right in the same foods every day or something, 

Armi Legge: right, right. But before we talk about that, I think one point to bring up is for anyone can thinking about [00:15:00] this is that you should use whatever dietary method helps you lose weight for where you are in time right now.

So what I mean by that is if you’re like 25 percent body fat. And you wanna get down as a guy? As a guy, yeah. As a guy. Yeah. For women, that’s pretty healthy. Yeah. But if you’re like 25% body fat for a guy and you wanna get down to like 10%, you don’t necessarily have to track from the get go. Right.

It could be, you use one method to go from 25% to 15%. And then a slightly different method still sticking to the overall principles of like calories and that kind of thing to go from 15 percent to 10%. So now let’s talk about some of those different methods. So one that kind of throws a lot of people off is they don’t eat when they’re hungry.

They either eat when they, or they keep eating after they’re full, they eat for reasons other than hunger, or they kind of starve themselves throughout the day and eat a lot in the afternoon, or you know, starve themselves in the afternoon and eat way too much in the morning. The former is generally more common.

Mike Matthews: But. Or the big dinner crowd, you know, where they’re going to try, they’re going to kind of just graze on food throughout the day so they can just go ape [00:16:00] shit for dinner. 

Armi Legge: Yes. And I’ve done, I’ve made those mistakes too. And I think that’s, you know. Well, I’ll say this basically when people hunger is a very good tool to hit your actual calorie needs.

So generally you know, we can talk a little bit at set point, but your body has kind of a natural. Body fat percentage that it likes to hang out like for men the research kind of goes back and forth but it’s generally between like 11 and 18 percent body fat and there’s a lot of like kind of variation in there like some people Like to hang out at lower body fat percentages some people their bodies kind of naturally gravitate towards a higher one But one of the problems is that people eat for a lot of reasons other than hunger So let’s say you’re walking through Costco and they have free samples and all of a sudden you want to try like Whatever they have to offer Or you’re at a party and they have birthday cake and you’re not really that hungry.

But you want to go eat anyway, and like those are all, you know, like that’s real life stuff. It happens, like you don’t need to beat yourself up if it happens every now and then, but for most people that happens a little too much. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, and then [00:17:00] you throw in, you throw in caloric beverages in there, and then there’s a real problem.

Armi Legge: Right, right. I mean like you have somebody like, you know, this is common with endurance athletes too. I did triathlons for a long time, and you see people just guzzling Gatorade throughout the day. And they’re still confused about why they can’t lose weight. And it’s not because Gatorade’s evil. It’s just because it’s not very filling for the amount of calories that it provides.

So that’s kind of like the first step right there. It’s just eating when you’re hungry. And that generally brings you within that kind of like 11 18 percent body fat range. Like, you’re not gonna That’s usually not enough to get you, like, shredded in, like, fitness model shape. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. 

Armi Legge: But it’s a great start, and it’s gonna help you And those numbers, 

Mike Matthews: just so the listeners know, those those would be for guys.

For girls, it’d probably be you know, 20 to 26, or something like that. 

Armi Legge: Exactly. 

Mike Matthews: It’s basically Maybe a little bit higher, maybe 21 to 27, or Depending on the body type. 

Armi Legge: Yeah. For like, whenever you’re kind of comparing men and women, you can generally just add about 10% Yes. To women’s. Yeah. And that’s where you should be.

Yeah. So yeah, basically like that’s a really good first step and I kind of consider that a prereq prerequisite for more advanced dieting strategies, like [00:18:00] specific meal plans, that kind of thing. Just ’cause it’s going to make every other dieting strategy you use easier. Like if you plan out calorie and macronutrient targets.

It’ll be easier to hit those if you’re just eating when you’re hungry. You’re not going to be as hungry throughout the day. So that’s a big one. Number two would be stop eating when you’re full, or stop eating when you’re satisfied, not necessarily when you’re full. So in America especially, we tend to love, enjoy our food and we tend to eat too much.

And there are several studies showing that 40 years or so, Is enough to explain the increased obesity. And then when you combine that with less. I think it’s, 

Mike Matthews: I think it’s about a few hundred calories. The average intake now is about a few hundred calories per day, higher than it was in the fifties.

I was just reading it up, up on it recently for an article I wrote. 

Armi Legge: Yeah, exactly. I think it’s like between three to 400, I believe. Yeah. And which is. And that’s a lot. I mean, you just multiply 

Mike Matthews: that by seven and you start seeing how it’s easy. It is to just, you know, have that weight slowly just creep on.

Armi Legge: Right. That’s [00:19:00] about a 0. 7 to 0. 8 pounds per week. So yeah, basically Americans are more sedentary 

Mike Matthews: than, than ever as well. You know, in the past, we weren’t necessarily driving everywhere. We were just moving around a lot more. So you combine those, those two factors and that’s, you know, a recipe for obesity.

Armi Legge: Absolutely. And that’s one of the things you know, before this interview, we were talking about how I had just come down to San Francisco about a month ago and very few, even despite the fact that San Francisco is a fairly dense city, very few people walk anywhere. Like I’ll walk 20 minutes. I took a Krav Maga, which is like martial arts class a few days ago and it’s like a 20 minute walk.

So it’s like 40 minutes of walking total. And I told somebody, they’re like, how are you getting there? I’m like walking. And they’re like, Oh my God, you’re walking. I was like, yeah, it’s like 40 minute walk. I guess when you have Uber all these other things. It makes it a little too convenient, but yeah, basically like our activity levels have also gradually declined.

So when you combine that, it, you know, it’s a recipe for weight gain. So one of the things that can really help with that is just focusing on eating until you’re satisfied and not 

Mike Matthews: and I, I don’t remember if this is just an anecdotal thing I heard or if it’s an [00:20:00] evidence based or research based thing, but for some reason it just pops into my head that it takes about 20 minutes for your body to to register in terms of fullness.

Like you can eat food and feel okay, and then, but fullness won’t necessarily come. There’s a delayed fuse on it in a sense, which, I don’t remember if the 20 minute number is exactly reliable, but I think we’ve all experienced that where even if you eat too much food and you know, like you just ate a huge dinner and then you’re like, I’m not very full.

But then 30 minutes later you’re like, Oh my God, I can’t even move. You know what I mean? 

Armi Legge: Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I think that’s the 20 minute rule has definitely gotten thrown around a lot and I think it’s funny I haven’t seen that much direct evidence showing like 20 minutes is necessarily the average or anything Yeah, but I think from just personal experience and just about everyone I’ve talked to that’s one of these things that you can kind of Bet it’s a safe bet basically like assuming that is not gonna cause any damage So yeah, I think that’s a really good point is that generally like the bottom line is that you generally aren’t gonna feel full even if you’ve eaten like a lot of food until a little bit later, like it does [00:21:00] take, there is a delay for your body to catch up and register how much you’ve eaten.

So one method to help with that is just eating slower. And there are a few strategies you can use to do that. One common one is just putting your fork down between bites. And then chewing, like finishing the bite and then picking the fork back up. Another one that helps is if you’re eating with a group, just try and pick out the person who’s eating slowest and just match their pace.

And all these are described in a really good book called Mindless Eating by Brian Wanczyk. 

Mike Matthews: That’s on my, my, my to read list actually. That’s funny. 

Armi Legge: It’s very good. Very good. Very easy to read too. And one of the other things he talks about is how Generally, people don’t notice a huge difference in hunger levels if they reduce their food intake by about 10 to 20 percent at each meal.

If they start to reduce it more than that, like let’s say you cut your meal in half 50 percent less, you’re generally going to notice that more, you’re going to be more hungry. And another factor that matters too is volume. So one of the things that affects your satiation or how satisfied you feel after a meal is the volume of food you consume, even if it’s lower in calories.

So some of the experiments they’ve [00:22:00] done. Where they’ll have people two groups of people drink shakes that have the same number of calories. But in one case, they’ll whip extra air into the shake, so it looks like 30 or 40 percent larger. And those people will feel more satisfied, and they’ll eat less at a subsequent meal.

So, yeah. 

Mike Matthews: That’s just purely psychological. I mean, there’s not even, it’s not like there’s extra fiber. There’s nothing else to, there’s nothing causing fullness. 

Armi Legge: Right. Exactly. It’s the exact same shake. It’s just that it looks bigger. And they’ve done the same thing with cheeseburgers. They’ll add extra vegetables like lettuce and tomatoes to them to make them look bigger.

They’ll have the same number of calories, but they’ll still feel fuller. Now in that case, 

Mike Matthews: yeah. Let’s just, you could say, well, you know, lettuce is actually pretty damn filling. Sure. Of course, a piece of a little slice though. I mean, is it really going to change that much? Probably not. There’s probably, you’re probably getting a combination of effects there.

Armi Legge: Exactly. And that’s the thing that people, or that’s another thing people need to consider is that. Often we look at hunger as like this very strict math problem when I eat this many calories and if I reduce it, I will get, you know, proportionally more hungry. And that’s not the case. And that’s why some people [00:23:00] are able to maintain very low body fat percentages like yourself and like myself is because you kind of manipulate all the other factors besides your calorie intake.

to make it easier to get to a lower body fat percentage. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, I was just talking about that just recently that, I mean, there’s also a simple kind of, something just to keep in mind when, when you, the listener, when you’re, when you’re dieting is take, take your body as a, if you’re a guy, if you’re at 20 percent body fat, you’re, the amount of energy that you’re burning right now, your body every day it’s not going to change that much when you get down to 10%, like that extra, you know, fat that you’re carrying around.

Yeah. It’s gonna, it’s gonna increase your daily calorie burn a little bit just because moving around to require a bit more energy, but it’s not going to be that different, especially if you’re new to weightlifting, you can count on gaining some muscle in the beginning, even while you’re losing fat. So in the end, when you go from 20 to 10 percent with a little bit more muscle, you may, you may actually be burning more calories and I mean, really actually you will be if, if you’re.

Adding exercise [00:24:00] now we’re adding resistance strength training for the first time because you have not only that energy that you’re burning through exercise, but you do have a bit of that afterburn effect where your metabolism is always just kind of running faster because of the repair and everything that needs to happen.

So something to keep in mind is You can, how, how you’re eating right now, like you were saying earlier, I mean, that your, your body is very good at using hormones to just keep you at your current body composition. It doesn’t want to lose weight. It doesn’t want to gain weight. It just wants to maintain its current state.

And once you get down to your target body fat percentage, you can slowly then start reducing, increasing your calories back up to where you’re eating right now, or maybe even a little bit more every day. But now you’re 10 percent leaner. So it’s not like being lean. A lot of people, they think that being lean or staying lean means basically forever kind of eating less than you want to eat.

And that’s not true. 

Armi Legge: No, it’s not true at all. And you, there are plenty of examples showing that to both with bodybuilders and endurance athletes as well. And that’s another kind of, obviously like most people don’t want to look like [00:25:00] professional marathon runner, but that is a good point. Like a lot of people do kind of assume like, Oh, when you get really lean, your metabolism shuts down.

You have to kind of. subsist on this starvation diet, and that’s not the case at all. You can still eat as much or more when you’re at very low body fat percentages. Like when you get down to like three or 4 percent body fat, like the very limits of leanness for a guy or like, 

yeah, 

Armi Legge: yeah, like, or like eight to 10 percent for a woman, you are going to have a larger decrease in your metabolism than can be explained by just weight.

You’re probably going to wind 

Mike Matthews: up in the hospital if you, yeah, probably as a guy, you probably never really, unless you’re just doing it for a, you know, you’re, you’re going to be competing. So it’s kind of stage day type thing. As a guy for just daily, for a day to day kind of living, probably seven to 8 percent would be the lowest that you’d kind of want to hang out at.

Right. And as a, as a girl, probably 17 to 18, cause especially for girls, I’ve found that they, the hormonal issues can impact them more and they’ll notice they’ll lose their periods and stuff. Whereas a guy may not notice like his, his team might be [00:26:00] down, let’s say 15 percent because of just, you know, the body fat.

When you start getting to lower body fat percentages, your, your body is just not hormonally. That’s not the best hormonally. I think some people take that way too far and they, they try to say that, like I’ve had people try to tell me that being below 10 percent body fat as a guy is just dangerously unhealthy.

Like, what are you talking about? Yeah. Please show me evidence of that. But but there is, there is a point that. But you know, research does show, especially when you’re, when you’re restricting calories, like if you were just kind of restrict your calories and leave them in a lower range and be get down to that 78%, your hormones are not going to be as your, your T is going to be a bit lower than it would be if you were eating, if you were at a higher by fat percentage.

But. You know, it’s, you know, that, I think that that’s where I tend to hang out somewhere between seven and 8%. And I don’t have any, I don’t get blood tested, but I don’t have any, any symptoms of low T. I don’t run into any issues. I’ve played around with my calories and left them a little bit low just to see what would happen.

And I, [00:27:00] as expected, I would, my training was a bit harder. I’d run into recovery problems. So part of it is like, get, you can get lean, but you have to then play around with Calorie ranges and see what you can get away with while staying there, you know? 

Armi Legge: Yeah, I completely agree. So I guess the takeaway from that is just that generally you will have to reduce, anytime you lose weight, you’ll have to reduce your calorie intake.

Yeah. When you get leaner, it gets exponentially harder. Past maybe like 12 to 10 percent body fat for guys or like 20 to 18. Yeah, that’s when it starts to get harder And for most guys you can stay just as healthy as normal at like 7 to 8 percent body fat and you’ll look great Like you don’t necessarily look any better at like 3 percent body fat either.

In fact, some people would argue you look kind of unhealthy Oh, yeah, I 

Mike Matthews: mean at that point it’s ridiculous. Your skin is paper Nobody wants to look like that except for bodybuilders on stage competing 

Armi Legge: Right, exactly. And that’s the only time you’d really want to, even for sports that you’d want to get that lean.

But yeah, and I think, you know, a really [00:28:00] good way of putting it, and Lane Norton is the one who told me this, is that generally You want to eat as much as possible while losing, you know, a reasonable amount of fat or maintaining your weight. And I think that’s a, you know, it’s, it’s basically like the same as just saying, you know, only reduce your calories as much as you have to.

But I think putting it that way is a little better just from a psychological perspective. Like, you’re, instead of thinking like, how much can I cut my calories? You’re thinking, you know, how much can I eat while still accomplishing my goals? And it’s a little bit of a healthier mindset for dieting and just maintenance in general.

Mike Matthews: Yeah, I totally agree. You had mentioned earlier the something, this body fat set point and this is actually was on my list of things that I wanted to write about. So I just wanted to kind of pick your mind on this real quick. So the concept obviously, as you said, is that your body tends to want to be at a certain body fat percentage.

Some people’s bodies, and this is In accordance with your hunger, if you were just to eat let’s say every meal were to contain a serving of protein and some fiber and be good foods, like whole foods that you’ve made to yourself, [00:29:00] not like Twinkies and, you know, drinking not Twinkies, soda and Doritos foods that are just ridiculously calorie dense for how satiating they are.

If you were follow your, your hormonal patterns, you’ll tend to kind of default to a certain body fat percentage. Yeah. I’ve, I, this is an area that I haven’t looked into. I don’t even know what research is out there, but I’ve run into it a fair amount in dealing with people and also just with my body where it seems like since getting, I’ve been kind of experimenting with myself over the last six months or so, just kind of hanging out in this seven to 8 percent range because in the past I would feel like my natural hunger would take me up to probably about nine to 10 percent and you know, that would be eating probably somewhere about 3, 000 calories a day.

And that’s where my body would tend to just hang out. That was kind of comfortable. My training was good and stuff. And by keeping myself leaner, it seems like it’s getting, it’s just easier to stay here now or even bouts of overeating where I’m not like a [00:30:00] binge eater at all. I, I, I plan like, okay, one day a week I’m going to go out and my, you know, I’ll probably end up eating.

I’ll be in a mile surplus for the day essentially is what it boils down to. But I find that it, Almost now, like, getting fatter almost becomes harder, in a sense. I don’t know, it’s an odd type of I don’t quite understand it yet. 

Armi Legge: Yeah and I think a lot of people share that experience so basically let’s kind of break it down from the beginning.

What a set point is, is just a range, it’s, well, first of all, some people call it a settling point because that more kind of describes that it’s a range instead of an exact body fat percentage. Yeah, sure. What a settling point is is just a range that your body naturally tends to gravitate towards when you’re eating a fairly healthy diet Like you’re sleeping enough.

Your stress levels are fairly normal one of the things that can make your set point slightly higher is eating You know a shitty diet like tons of Twinkies and that kind of crap You generally are gonna crave those foods more as you build [00:31:00] up well tolerance isn’t the right word, but basically you kind of develop this reward pathway in your brain Where you expect these foods on a regular basis, you keep eating them, and your body starts to hang out at a higher set point.

And one of the things that, or the biggest thing with food is palatability. So basically, how, and that’s just a measure of how much that food encourages you to eat more of it. And that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s junk food. It could be, you know, something else like I don’t know, like a homemade cheeseburger or whatever.

Like, some people consider that junk food. But, any food that has a high level of palatability, like nuts are a good example. Very tasty. pretty high in calories easy to overeat or like dried fruit. That’s a great one too. Yeah, exactly. And these foods generally don’t satiate your body as much as whole foods.

And it’s not just like a fiber thing where it’s like holding more water in your stomach. Like there, it’s the actual way that it influences your brain’s chemistry. It doesn’t register as, as filling, like your brain kind of ignores the normal satiation signals that come from your digestive system. And instead decides to eat [00:32:00] more.

So one of the things you can do to help lower that is focus more on a whole foods based diet. And there are some other factors that can influence your set point as well. Activity levels. Despite what some people say, exercise generally helps, or actually there’s very good research showing it does help match your actual energy needs to your levels of hunger.

So that doesn’t necessarily mean that it lowers your hunger levels, but let’s say you burn 2, 500 calories per day, but you feel like you need to eat 3, 000 just based on your hunger. exercise might help bring your hunger levels down a little bit in that case to about 2500. So there’s more of a match there.

Mike Matthews: Yeah, I’ve run into that myself and I’ve run into that phenomenon of working with people and just hearing from people that they’ve noticed that that by starting to exercise their diet or sorry, their appetite has even has come down a little bit. And they were just surprised to experience that because they figured they’re burning more energy.

So why are they eating now? They also did change their, their, their diet a bit where now it’s a higher protein [00:33:00] diet. Now they’re, they got rid of the, you know, caloric beverages, the things, the obvious mistakes. So that had, that played a role as well, but I’ve come across that. 

Armi Legge: Yeah, no, that’s very common.

I’ve experienced that myself too. And then what else? Sleep is another factor that affects your set point. So generally studies show that sleep deprivation can increase your hunger levels and lower your self control. And not just self control, but also increase your susceptibility to triggers that you wouldn’t normally need much self control to avoid.

So for instance, like, let’s say normally you have no trouble walking past donuts in the morning. Like, it really requires very little willpower. You’re just not in the habit of doing it. When you’re sleep deprived, you’re more likely to act on a bad habit, even if it’s not that ingrained. So sleep is another one.

So those are really the big physiological factors. Sleep, exercise, and your diet quality that determine your set point. Then and this is something that people don’t talk about as much, but I think, again, circling back to habits is really the reason, kind of, that’s the difference basically between like 10 percent and 8%, [00:34:00] being able to hang out in that area.

So this is one of the reasons too why I’m not. a huge fan of, like, cycling your calorie intake drastically between days. Because it’s very hard to get in that habit and maintain it. Yeah. And there’s not a whole lot of evidence showing that there’s really that much benefit. Yeah, we talked about this actually the last time we spoke, I believe.

So basically, I, at least in my opinion, I think there is some research to support this, or there is, that the difference between being able to hang out, or, First of all, let me circle back. So if you optimize your sleep, exercise, and nutrition, let’s say you can bring your set point down from like 15 percent to maybe 10 or 12%.

And then once you’re there, you can start getting in the habit of just eating less. So you maintain your food volume, like you eat a lot of vegetables, that kind of thing. Slightly reduce your calorie intake a little bit, maybe move a little bit more throughout the day. And once you make those things into habits, like every day you’re training or not necessarily weightlifting, but let’s say you go on a walk every morning with your dog or your daughter or whatever.

But once you get in the habit of those things, you don’t really have to think about it and it just becomes easier to [00:35:00] maintain. And I think that’s kind of the big missing piece for a lot of people is they’re just focusing on all these physiological things like I’m going to eat X amount of fiber and that’ll help me like maintain this new body fat percentage.

Or in some cases, it’s just automating that so you don’t have to think about it. And it becomes easier. And like, I think just about everybody who’s ever dieted has experienced that once you’ve been doing it for like, the first two to three weeks, or two to four weeks, it suddenly becomes much easier.

It’s like those first few weeks where you’re transitioning from bulking or maintaining or, you know, living a fairly unhealthy lifestyle to dieting, those can be hard. Like, you’re gonna have some really tough moments there sometimes. But after that it’s I won’t I wouldn’t say smooth sailing, but the water is definitely even out some 

Mike Matthews: yeah Yeah, for most people I mean just in just my experience working with so many people It’s it tends to be pretty smooth sailing actually if they aren’t in too large of a deficit and let’s say may, depending on some people prefer to do a refeed [00:36:00] every week, not, not that they even necessarily have to, but just because it’s enjoyable.

Some people just prefer to do a standard type of cheat meal. They’ll just go out to a restaurant once a week and not really worry about what they’re eating and enjoy themselves and they kind of fall into that. Rhythm almost where, you know, they get to eat foods they like every day and they’re no longer running into hunger issues.

And then they get to go out to a restaurant once a week and it just becomes like an easy, an easy lifestyle they can get used to. And so I would say it for most people, it probably does become a pretty smooth, like I’ve, I rarely ever hear from people. I can’t even remember the last time I actually heard of somebody who had been dieting for more than three or four weeks.

And we’re still having big problems. Like it’s probably happened. I just can’t think of anybody where, you know, they’re like, Oh, I’ve been on in a deficit for seven weeks and I’m still starving and I want to eat everything. And it’s usually just a week or two, if at all. And then they just go, Oh, this is much easier than I thought.

Armi Legge: Yeah, I would agree with that. The only exception would be people who are like bodybuilders, like we talked about [00:37:00] earlier, went like, just like we mentioned, there’s a certain point where it does start to get really hard. Like a bodybuilder week of contest prep, miserable. It’s going to be fucking miserable.

Exactly. But 

Mike Matthews: there was a guy, there was a guy, you know, he used to, he, he, he was he would compete in bodybuilding and also in powerlifting. And I remember him telling me about one prep. That he was doing, where he would, you know, he’s measuring out his cereal, he would get his like 300 grams or whatever of, of cereal, and he’d be eating it just talking to himself saying, I just want to eat, I just want to eat, I just want to eat, after every, after every bite, like literally losing his mind.

Armi Legge: Yeah, no, and I’ve gone through that too, like before as well, like when you get to those really low body fat percentages, it does crazy shit to your head, so yeah, but again, most people don’t want to do that and they don’t need to do that. So yeah. After like the first two or three weeks of dieting, it does become way easier.

And I think that’s largely just from developing the right habits. And 

Mike Matthews: then also probably just you’re probably getting a bit of a [00:38:00] hormonal, I wouldn’t say reset, but balancing in terms of leptin and ghrelin, which leptin is just so the listener knows that the hormone associated with fullness and ghrelin stimulates hunger.

So if your body, especially going back to like what you were saying, I mean with certain foods that they can mess with. where you’re getting a lot of calories, you’re getting a lot of taste, but it’s not necessarily increasing leptin levels much. So you’re not getting a lot of fullness. And when you start fixing your diet up and you get some of these, you get these hormones working the way that they should with foods that the body understands and that have the correct reactions in the body, then that also, I think, is part of it.

Armi Legge: Yeah. And then of course the other one is like vanity. You know, when you start to see your abs pop out, you’re like, Oh my God, it’s working. You know? And then, and then mild 

Mike Matthews: hunger. You don’t even, it’s not even, you don’t even feel it anymore. 

Armi Legge: Right? It’s not that much of a deal. You’re just like, damn man, I’m looking so good.

That makes it easier to, although I would say that’s more of a kind of a final like icing on the cake, so to speak, then a, like a [00:39:00] major motivator. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. So in terms of, so you’re dieting, right? And Even the best of us will slow up sometimes and just, just overeat. You know what I mean? You, you start eating something that’s good and you know, you should stop, but you don’t what are your, what are your thoughts on kind of how to look at this to kind of prevent any further damage, so to speak, and kind of just move on and not get all hard on yourself.

Armi Legge: Right. Well, I would say one thing. From the outset is just prepare to fail sometimes. And I think that’s kind of discouraged a lot is like, oh, you should always like basically you’re kind of your self worth Even as a human it’s kind of measured as your ability to stick to the diet, right? I think a much healthier perspective is just think like okay There will be sometimes when I’m losing weight that I’m going to eat too much and just recognize that Now if you already have been dieting and like you’ve done this a few times and you’re beating yourself up like that’s not very helpful.

So in those cases, I would say the biggest thing is don’t try to compensate the next day or throughout the week. So if you eat like, you know, an extra three cookies or something, don’t be like adding it up in your head. Like, okay, like 200 each. [00:40:00] That’s like 600. Now I need to work out this long to burn that off.

Yeah. I think two hours of stair mass for tomorrow. Right, exactly. And I think that’s a really unhealthy way of looking at it. Number one, it encourages this kind of short term mindset where like, you’re just focused on your immediate calorie intake and you’re losing sight of the big picture. Like, in the big scheme of things, 600 calories is like, what, 5 or 10 hours of actual living, like the amount of calories you’d burn during that time, you know, more if you’re working out.

So it’s like, literally delayed your progress by about half a day, maybe. I think that’s, I would say 

Mike Matthews: that doing that is probably going to encourage further behavior, just like, you know, you’ve probably heard of research. This was in a book that I read. It might’ve been Cialdini’s book and influence.

I don’t remember, but where it was like the, the school or it was a daycare. So they wanted the parents to pick up the kids by 6 or something. And they had a policy in place that if the parents were late, they had to pay like 5 or something. And they thought that this would, they put this [00:41:00] policy in place thinking that it would, you know, help parents Be there on time.

And then the amount of late parents that actually went up more and more parents were showing up late. Why? Well, because now they don’t feel bad about it. They just pay 5 and you know, who cares about being late then? Because that that’s in place. And then on the flip side, I think would actually reduce the, the incidence of, of.

Lateness was like, it was like basically explaining to the parents, like a letter to the parents explaining that the people running, you know, running the school or daycare have a family too. They need to go home and cook and explaining why it actually mattered and get rid of the penalty. And then it worked.

So in a similar sense, if you’re, if you eat the three cookies and you’re like, Oh, okay, I got, I got to go do two hours of Stairmaster and you do it. Well then next time, when you’re like, Oh, I really want more cookies. You’re immediately going to go to. Well, I could just do that and then go do two hours of Stairmaster RER and it’s worth it.

And then you go sit on the Stairmaster and you’re like, Why the hell did I do this? You know what I mean? 

Armi Legge: Right, it kind of gives you like a false [00:42:00] sense of security or like a false solution. Yeah, exactly, exactly. Yeah, so I think that encourages kind of the wrong behavior pattern too. Like, the idea that you need to You know, especially like if you don’t enjoy cardio, you know, like, you know, I’ve had some endurance athlete friends who are like, yeah, I’ll just like bike an extra 20 minutes or something.

And like, they’re pretty healthy about like their food intake. They’re not like crazy about it. Yeah. Yeah. I don’t think there’s anything terrible about that. I do that sometimes. Yeah. You know, it’s like, 

Mike Matthews: this is going to be a lot of food and I’m going to do one extra day of cardio just to, you know, just cause just to help help a little bit, just to burn, you know, even if it’s an extra three or 400 calories, like whatever.

Armi Legge: Yeah, exactly. But especially if like somebody really hates and like cardio and they’re just way overdoing it already, or they’re already doing a lot. This idea that you need to kind of punish yourself to like get more like oh, I’ve really fucked up Like I need to correct this with you know, punitive exercise, and I don’t think that’s the right mindset so yeah I mean like the best thing you can do is really just start fresh the next day and Don’t necessarily even try to restrict your food [00:43:00] intake like honestly like 400 calories in the big scheme of things Your body probably won’t even notice it like just consider it Like a refeed or whatever, just a slip up, like it happens.

Mike Matthews: Yeah, especially if it’s coming from, I mean, not that, again, not that this really matters, but especially if it’s coming from mainly from carbs or from protein, it’s just the thermic effect alone is going to burn off a chunk of it and your body has other things it can do as opposed to dietary fat, which is kind of just straight to body fat.

Armi Legge: Right. And like, the other thing is that, you know, some people like freak out if they eat like an extra scoop of oatmeal or something and, you know, generally again, like it’s not that some foods are bad or some foods are good, but it’s a lot easier to get in the habit of eating something like Oreos a lot than it is oatmeal or something like that, that has a lower palatability.

So just put it into perspective. I mean, that’s the big thing. Like I would say just focus on the longterm and what you’re really trying to accomplish. And understand that your diet, your fat loss diet should really not be that different from like a maintenance or even a bulking diet. It’s really just subtle tweaks in the amounts of what you’re eating.

Mike Matthews: Yeah. [00:44:00] It’s just quantity. Like for instance I recently, well, I guess I’ve been, I’ve been done with the cut for a couple of months, but I was cutting for for a photo shoot. I had to lose, I don’t know. I think I’d lost like seven or eight pounds, not even anything crazy. But the, the, the beginning of that cut was every morning I have a, it’s a spelt muffin with, I do like PB two and jelly.

It’s, it’s just good. And, but it’s about what is it about 50 carb? It’s probably about 300 calories or so. So in the beginning of my cut, it was. It’s getting rid of the spelt muffin and getting rid of like one other, I don’t remember what it was, another a hundred calories somewhere or 200 or so. So, but on a day to day, like that, that was it.

It was get rid of the muffin and I think it was reduced my, my dinner carbs by 50 or something like that. And that, that was the, and I wrote that out. That probably got me about three weeks of fat loss before I had to change anything else. 

Armi Legge: Yeah. I mean like, like we discussed earlier, do the minimum amount you need.

For your body in that exact moment and then change something else when that stops [00:45:00] working so like earlier when we were talking about methods to lose fat without tracking calories One of the biggest things is just cutting out liquid calories or reducing one source of liquid calories Like, I know a few people who are like the kinds who walk around all day, like with like a two gallon sweetened iced tea, like, container.

And, like, I’m almost surprised they’re not fatter than they are, honestly. I know, it 

Mike Matthews: actually is impressive. Like, you start adding it up, and I know people as well that, where when we start looking, I’m like, Dude, you’re like drinking 2, 000 calories a day. How are you not just obese? 

Armi Legge: Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. And you know, we can talk about that too.

Like how your body adjusts to that. But they’re burning enough calories cause they’re moving around a lot of weight in general. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. 

Armi Legge: And yeah, we’ve talked about that I think before too. But yeah. Also the 

Mike Matthews: more generally, if you’re, especially with carbs, your body’s going to be in a state of wanting to move, like you’re going to move more without even realizing it just in the way that like when you start reducing your calorie intake, you start going into a deficit.

You start realizing that your body naturally wants to move less and you’ll find [00:46:00] That, you know, that, that, that account that can account for a couple hundred calories a day, just, just other movement that you wouldn’t even totally realize, but your body has energy. So you’re kind of twitching around, moving around, moving faster.

Armi Legge: Yeah, exactly. But yeah, so like one super simple thing is just remove liquid calories or remove one major source. Like if you want to have whatever, you know, a teaspoon of cream in your coffee in the morning, that doesn’t matter. But yeah, like if it’s a major source of calories, then yeah, I would cut it out.

And you know, especially with like soda where they have so many diet options now. Like you’re really not losing anything. Like if you switch from diet, or ginger ale to like diet ginger ale, you know? 

Mike Matthews: Although I would say that, I mean, there was just, you probably saw this just recently, a study came out. It was, they already done it with rats.

I saw it over a year ago, but now with humans that, I believe it was sucralose just alters the flora in your gut. Just more and more evidence coming out that artificial sweeteners, eating a lot of them is probably not, just not good for you. 

Armi Legge: Yeah, you know, like there’s [00:47:00] that research. It’s really hard 

Mike Matthews: to say that I know it’s not, it’s not definitive, but it just seems like every few months something else is coming out that just is another like, Oh wait, this might not actually be that good.

Oh, Oh, look at this too. Oh, look at this too. I mean, I’m not, I’m not, I’m not like, you know, super against artificial sweeteners. I stay away from them personally. But I would have a concern. Like my general recommendation is if like take your average person into fitness, I mean if they’re having, let’s say three scoops of protein a day a scoop or two of pre workout and then a scooper to have something else like an intro workout, maybe some BCAs or you just as your average person or a post workout, average guy in the gym or whatever.

I mean, that’s a lot of servings of artificial sweeteners right there. And then maybe they’re chewing gum as well and having diet soda. Like if you’re having, you know, I don’t know, 10 to 15 servings of artificial sweeteners a day, I would, yeah, I wouldn’t do that personally. [00:48:00] 

Armi Legge: Yeah, I think the biggest thing I would say is just ask yourself why you feel the need to consume so much of like a hyper palatable compound, like any super sweet thing.

So like, I’ve definitely gone through a phase like my, my brother before is drinking, like he’s a very healthy guy, you know, normal weight and everything at above average of musculature, but he loves diet soda and he’s gone before and drank in like six two liter bottles. No, not that many, like three, two liter bottles of diet ginger ale in a day.

I’m like, dude, that’s a little crazy. All right. And, like, I would just ask yourself, like, why do you feel the need to consume that much of, like, a hyper sweet something? Like, what’s wrong with water? You know, if you’re one of those people who does that, or even, like, you’re one of those people who drinks a ton of Mountain Dew or something during the day, like, don’t feel like you need to completely remove it all at once.

You can just kind of titrate it down. Switch to something with slightly less calories at first and then switch to water or, you know, don’t make it like super hard if that’s something that’s really important to you. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, I agree. I just wrote about, I wrote an article on something just called mini habits that I ran into recently that I, I always kind of done [00:49:00] intuitively, but didn’t realize it was like a thing.

And it’s just that kind of concept is sometimes if you’re trying to add, you know, change, change behavior, whether it’s adding something or, or, or stopping something you don’t have, don’t go all in. You have to know you like some, some, I, I, Maybe I’m like kind of good in this way that I can kind of just go all in on something and just do it.

But that, that’s me. So other, you know, if I were drinking a bunch of Mountain Dew, maybe I could just cut it out and be okay. But maybe I would need to, and if I was drinking six cans a day, let’s start with five cans a day. All right, cool. Do that for a week. Let’s go down to four cans a day. You know, just, just very easy, behaviors that you can, you can do without even thinking, right?

It doesn’t take a lot of willpower. 

Armi Legge: Right, like that’s one of the funny things I’ve noticed about, you know, like I’ve been writing about health and fitness for about four years and I’ve been competing in sports since I was like four, so what is that, like 17 years I guess now. And like, I’ve always been that way too, like I’m kind of like a light switch, very polar in my, opinion or [00:50:00] not opinions, but just my actions like if I want to do something I just go all in like if I’m gonna start training for a new sport like I get really excited I want to do it every single day, right? But for some people that doesn’t work. Well some people Don’t aren’t as passionate about it as like you and I are And that’s one of the things I’ve had to kind of learn in my writing and, you know, what I talk about stuff like not everybody cares about this shit as much as like I do and you do.

And so you have to kind of meet them where they are and like, okay, okay, you don’t want to get rid of like all the soda, just drink like two cans instead of three today. So yeah. And like, I think the big lesson there is do what you think is going to be most sustainable and makes you happiest. Like if, like for some people.

making really big changes makes them really happy because they really can see like, okay, I’m really taking better care of myself now, like going from, you know, not lifting at all to lifting four times a week or three times a week. Like for some people, that’s Yeah. And it just works better. So I don’t think there’s necessarily like a right or wrong approach.

Like I don’t think [00:51:00] doing super small incremental changes is best for everybody. And there’s some research that suggests that faster initial weight loss sometimes predicts better long term outcomes. Yeah. But for other people that may not be the case. So you just kind of have to, Yeah, like if you’re reading this and like you’re not getting coaching or anything, then you need to understand kind of your mindset or your approach and maybe play with a few different approaches.

And, you know, if you’re getting coaching or something from or consulting, you know, talk to your coach or whatever about this and like, say, you know, maybe we tried this, maybe we don’t. You know, 

Mike Matthews: yeah. Yeah. In my experience with people a fair amount of people will start like if they’re reading one of my books and they’ll start with the exercise portion.

And and, and usually on the, on the, if they’re going to not just like some people, they just call in, they just, you know, they make their meal plan. They go cool. I don’t care about, you know, I’m just going to eat these foods every day, foods I like. I want to learn how dieting works. I don’t really want to think about it, which is that’s, that’s even how I do it now.

Like I’ll leave some foods is variable. Like my dinner is, you know, a hundred grams of carbs [00:52:00] and I’ll decide when it comes to dinner. Like, do I feel like having potatoes today? Do I feel like making some pasta or whatever? But a lot of people, they’ll, they’ll, they’ll just jump in like that. And then other people though, they’ll go, okay, well, I’m going to start with the exercise and I’m just going to clean my diet up a little bit.

Like I’m going to bring my lunch. I’m going to bring lunch to work instead of having fast food or, you know, I’m going to, I’m going to stop drinking all the soda or cut back on it and things like, and then over time, just in staying in touch with these people, when they see, you know, that their body, they’re cleaning up their diet a little bit, which means their calorie intake is usually going down a little bit and they’re adding the exercise.

So they see results. They’re feeling better. And then that, like you said, it’s just, it’s just positive feedback. But then they go, Oh, wow. So if, if I’m seeing these results by, you know, what they would consider being very loose with their diet, considering what they’ve just read, then, you know, imagine if I kind of even tighten it up even a bit more.

And instead of maybe they’re, maybe they’re in a very, very mild deficit because of their dietary changes in there. But [00:53:00] if they went into a larger deficit, not too large, but a more traditional weight loss deficit, you know, they start seeing the, they start seeing it and they go, Oh, well, cool. And then they just, you know, then they jump in.

Armi Legge: Right. Right. I agree. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. All right. So let’s talk quickly about the subject of metabolic adaptation because it’s pretty kind of, it’s popular right now and but I think there’s something to it. It’s not necessarily just a fad thing. So yeah, what are your thoughts on this? And you could also just quickly explain what it is just so that listeners know.

Armi Legge: Yeah, sure. So metabolic adaptation is basically, it’s just the kind of technical term for metabolic slowdown or, you know, calorie a drop in your calorie expenditure, right? And so there are multiple reasons for this. Well, first of all, it always, always happens while dieting. There’s always some drop.

Now you can compensate for that in several ways. But first let’s talk about the different ways it slows down. Number one is that you generally don’t feel quite as energized. Like You know, you’re more likely to sit instead of stand, maybe take the escalator instead of the [00:54:00] stairs. Like. And this almost always occurs Walk 

Mike Matthews: slow instead of fast.

Armi Legge: Right, right. This almost always occurs on a subconscious level. It’s not like you’re consciously saying, like, Oh, I’m tired. I’m going to take the escalator instead of the stairs. It’s just something that kind of happens naturally. The other reason would be that you are lighter. Assuming you’re dieting properly and you’re in a caloric deficit, let’s say you lose 15 pounds.

Well, that’s 15 pounds less that you’re carrying around all the time. And so that’s going to also reduce your calorie expenditure. Then there’s also sometimes a drop in what they call NEAT or non exercise activity thermogenesis. And what that is, is basically all the little movements throughout the day that don’t count as formal exercise or like planned movement.

Like right now I’m Fiddling with like this little thing in my hand. I think it’s like the top of a deodorant box or something. And like, I don’t know, I just picked it up off the floor. Like I’m a super, like I’m a very hyper guy, so I’m always moving and fidgeting like that. And even while I’m dieting, though, that does [00:55:00] decrease.

Like I don’t necessarily notice that it decreases, but it almost certainly does. And the research shows that it does in just about everybody. Now that can be that difference can drastically vary between individuals. So one person. It might have you know, fairly average levels of neat or, you know, like, we’ll just call it fidgeting because that’s kind of the same, basically the same thing.

But let’s say they have fairly average levels of fidgeting normally, but when they start dieting even a little bit, it drops significantly. Other people like me might have kind of above average levels of fidgetiness or fidgeting and it doesn’t change very much. Maybe it drops like 10 percent or something while dieting and it makes it easier to lose weight.

So, those are kind of some of the big reasons all those things basically start dropping during dieting. Now, metabolic adaptation is basically so, first of all, you expect all of those things to drop. So, like, your weight loss will always be a little slower than you want. Metabolic adaptation, though, is generally the way most people think of it.

is when your metabolism, like your basal metabolic [00:56:00] rate, like the amount of calories you’d burn if you were just lying in bed well technically that’s resting metabolic rate. If you’re just lying in bed, it drops more than you would expect based on the amount of weight you lose. So let’s say you expect somebody’s calorie expenditure, like they’re burning 3000 at the beginning of their diet.

Based on all those factors we just discussed, you’d expect it to drop to maybe 2, 700 per day, but instead it drops to 2, 400, 2, 500. So you’re like, well, where did those extra two to 300 calories come from? And there is a, like a actual drop in your resting metabolic rate. Generally that, you know, there are a few theories on why that happens or how that happens.

The most common reason is thinking as the testosterone drops, thyroid hormone drops catecholamine levels drop. And so there is a legitimate decrease now the con, like that’s not really controversial. pretty much every researcher when you talk to you will say that that doesn’t necessarily mean you need to eat less.

Cause you know, like we just talked about earlier, you will, if you’re dieting, you’ll probably be exercising more. If [00:57:00] you move a little bit more, you’re eating a little less already. like if you’re eating more fiber and protein and carbohydrate too, you’ll have a slightly higher thermic effect that can sometimes reach up to two or 300 calories per day when you add all those things together.

Yeah. So sometimes you might not need to reduce your calorie intake and that just happens and it’s not a big deal. Like real controversy is how much of an effect that has on weight loss. So you’ll see some claims saying that like Oh, I, you know, cut my calories or calorie counting stops your metabolism.

So you start gaining weight you know, gaining weight back and it’s impossible as you say. I mean, as for the 

Mike Matthews: listener, just go check out the Minnesota starving experiment or starvation experiment if you see. 

Armi Legge: Yes. And that’s actually kind of the definitive text on this or like the definitive refutation of this because what happened in that study is Researchers led by Ansel Keyes were trying to study the effects of starvation on humans.

It was right at the end of World War II, I think it started in 1945, and they had all these refugees and like people in prison camps and stuff in Europe. And at that point, not just like political prisoners or [00:58:00] Jews or anything in concentration camps, but Europe was kind of a shitty place to live at that point.

You know, the governments were collapsing. And they just had a ton of really hungry people. So they were trying to study, you know, what are the best feeding strategies to give these people? They tested a protein supplement in that study to see if that would help. And Because 

Mike Matthews: what was happening, right, is that, I mean, in extreme cases, you couldn’t, you couldn’t just take people and take people like, you know, that were starving in prisoner of war camps.

You couldn’t just take them and release them back out and just say, Okay, here you go. Because then they’re going to go eat themselves to death. 

Armi Legge: That was one of the theories. So and that’s one of the things they wanted to learn. And that can be true in some cases, although I think it’s generally exaggerated how much of an issue that is.

So yeah, they were worried 

Mike Matthews: about 

Armi Legge: it. Right, exactly. And so this is one of the first studies to look at that. And what they did is they starved people for about six months and they reduced them down to 50 percent of their initial body weight. On a diet of about 50% of their maintenance calories, which ended up being about 1400 to 1500 calories per day.

Mm-hmm . Also walking about 30 to 40 miles per week and [00:59:00] doing manual labor during the day too. So they had fairly high activity levels. What they found was at the end of the study, on average, their metabolisms dropped 15% more than you can explain by the loss in body weight. Mm-hmm . So overall the metabolism’s actually dropped 40%.

But about 25 percent of that was just from the weight loss. Like they’re moving around less weight. And if you look at pictures of these guys, you’ll see, of course, 

Mike Matthews: they lost muscle, which means less, right? 

Armi Legge: Yeah, they weren’t lifting weights or eating adequate protein. So their diets and exercise plans were suboptimal and they lost a lot of muscle.

But what, you know, when you look at that, like, that’s basically the extreme of starvation, like, some of these guys were barely able to walk, like, they were collecting cookbooks, and one of the interesting things that Ansel Keys observed at the end of the study was that it was really a better measure of man’s response to anorexia, or, like, staged purposeful starvation, because you saw a lot of these kind of obsessive behaviors, like hoarding small pieces of food, fighting over food in line.

where these guys were normally like very peaceful. And that’s actually another interesting tidbit is that all the people in [01:00:00] this study were conscientious objectors or I think they had maybe two or three volunteers. I don’t know why but then another interesting thing is that these people starved to the point where one of them they were allowed to go off the campus or out of the research facility every now and then and one of them I think was helping out like cleaning at a local house and he was chopping wood in the back.

And then he ended up cutting off one of his fingers to get taken out of the study on, you know mental leave, basically. So yeah, but what you find at the end of that study is that, or, and first of all, you’re not allowed to, or, you know, ethics boards wouldn’t allow that study anymore. So that’s why it gets referenced so much, just because it’s one of the few studies that actually did this.

What they found is that the metabolisms only dropped like 10%. So when you see people who’ve lost like 20 pounds claiming their metabolisms have slowed down too much to keep losing weight, it’s physically impossible. And many, many other studies have looked at this and measured metabolic slowdown from weight loss and it’s negligible and almost always, you know, small enough that you can easily account for it with just walking like an extra 10 or 20 minutes per day.[01:01:00] 

Now, then we started, so that’s like average people. So basically I would say for like average people, like men above 10 percent body fat and women above 20%, it’s just a non issue. Like it’s not even worth thinking about really. Now, just to, 

Mike Matthews: just to, yeah, just to interject quickly, I have run into, it’s not common at all, but it is out there and I’ve run into a couple.

Kind of extreme cases with women, mainly women that have gone through several cycles of crash dieting very, very low calorie dieting, and then never really brought their calories back up to a decent range and got stuck in a certain weight range. This is, this is when they, you know, what they’re telling me and in some cases, not that they’re lying, but sometimes they forget about things when I really ask, start asking them, they realize that, oh yeah, well, I do have like two cheat days a week where I just eat.

Hamburgers all day or something. Well, okay, there you go. But there have been a few cases of people where they were eating very low calorie. [01:02:00] They were on very low calorie diets, somewhere around 1000, 1100 calories a day, weighing, you know, 150, 160 pounds as women, or even a little bit more. And by having them slowly increase their calories reverse diet, in a sense, they were, the weight loss started again.

Now, of course, What we’re probably seeing was related to water and just cortisol levels being out the roof. And, you know, physiologically it’s, it’s it’s an interesting phenomenon, but I have seen that before and what I’ve seen more commonly is just that people, you know, the, they cut their calories down to, I generally, when I, what I recommend to people is depending on how lean you, you want to get there, you may have to, you know, reduce your calories from your initial starting point.

You can count on it if you want to get really lean, but I personally stop when I reach a BMR is when I personally stop. And that’s what I generally recommend is you know, I, I don’t know, maybe it’s just because even if you’re not going to cause a bunch of metabolic [01:03:00] issues, the, in, in my experience with my body and with working a lot of people, you start eating less than BMR, you, you, and you start getting real below, you just don’t feel good.

Armi Legge: Yeah, you know, that’s like, now we’re getting into the really juicy bit of the interview, I guess, because this is the part that everyone loves to argue about right now. And I don’t think it’s really as much of a controversy as people make it out to be. So, you have, it’s almost always women. As we talked about earlier, women generally don’t respond as well to any kind of dieting than men.

So you generally, you sometimes run into women who are eating. What seems to be like a diet that should cause weight loss, but it generally doesn’t, based on their weight. And, to be honest, I don’t think we have enough evidence right now to say exactly why that is. I agree. It’s hard to say, like there are a few theories about why this might be.

Number one is that it is kind of a hormonal issue. Like their metabolism is basically slowed down to the point where that is their new maintenance. And I think in some cases that may be the case, [01:04:00] or in some cases that may be the issue. I think another reason just could be activity levels as well.

Like we discussed for some people, like we discussed earlier, that generally causes a massive decrease, especially with non formal exercise. So 

Mike Matthews: like you said, thermic effective food, I mean, right, that can change. They’re not likely to be eating a high protein diet and they’re probably not eating a, they’re probably in a lot of cases, the people that are in this situation are.

They’re eating highly processed types of carbs, you know, junky snack type stuff is a lot of their carbs or they’re drinking a lot of a fair amount of their calories every day and they’re not eating a lot of protein. So 

Armi Legge: right. And I think, you know, the big, the biggest reason I think this controversy exists is because everyone’s trying to pinpoint like exactly the one reason this happens.

Yeah. I think it’s really more of a collection of many issues. So let’s say some woman. Burns about 200 calories less just through formal exercise because, you know, she used to be jogging a lot, now she jogs a little slower. Now, let’s add in like an extra 200 or 300 calories from less neat throughout the [01:05:00] day.

So, she’s not moving or fidgeting as much. Add in like another 200 or 300 calories from loss of thermic effect of food. And, you know, it starts to become a little more reasonable to see like, okay, maybe this, you know, even though she’s eating like 1700 calories per day, you know, it’s not a huge surprise that she’s not losing weight when you kind of add in a bunch of little factors.

And that’s generally how weight loss works in just about any context. It’s not like there’s one thing, there’s usually multiple factors that you need to account for. So, in that case, it’s like, okay, now we’ve defined the problem, you know, the next step is like, what do we do about it? And in general, it’s going to be, you know, I know you’ve talked about this in your books too it’s going to be the same thing you do in just about any case to like lose fat or gain muscle.

If you start cleaning up your diet, quote unquote just eating healthier foods, start preparing your own meals, eating more protein, eating slightly more carbs. Lifting weights is a huge part of it and just moving more throughout the day. And generally that kind of fixes itself. And then like too, also and I know a few people have done this and I’ve worked with a few people and tried this as well, slowly increasing their [01:06:00] calorie intake that can help us when it’s paired with physical activity.

Like for instance, if somebody just starts eating more, I don’t think it’s that helpful. But you know, if they start lifting weights too, they’re going to be burning more calories. They’re going to need those extra calories to fuel those workouts anyway. Yeah. And that generally helps a lot. And then I would say the And it 

Mike Matthews: can help with With building muscle as well, which is Right, exactly.

Which can 

Armi Legge: help. Exactly. And the other thing is just I think largely a psychological thing. Our psychological issue is that when people like, let’s say they stall and they’re eating way less than they think they should be, they kind of start to panic like, Oh my God, like I can’t eat any less than this.

Like what the fuck am I supposed to do? But when you give them, when you tell them like it’s okay to start eating more, I think their diet in general gets easier and they’re going to be more compliant with anything, whether it’s eating more protein or preparing more meals at home or whatever. Whereas before they kind of had this sense of despair like this.

None of what I do matters. So why bother right? Whereas now if you give them like, okay, you’re gonna start increasing your calories by 100 per week and they’re like, oh, yes Like the longer I do this the easier it’s gonna [01:07:00] get so it’s a pretty big shift in mindset, too Which I think makes it way easier for people to adhere to and I honestly, I think that me like for a lot of these people, like, let’s say you have some 150 pound woman who’s eating like 2000 calories a day and she’s stuck.

Like let’s say, you know, it’s possible. 

Mike Matthews: I’ve had women down closer to 1000 calories a day and that, I mean, I. Would then of course follow up like, are you sure, are you tracking everything or are you planning, are you just kind of winging it and they would go, no, I mean, I really, this is, they would send me their food logs.

Sometimes they really, this is, here’s my, my fitness pack. Here’s what I ate yesterday. Thousand, you know, 100 calories. And in those cases, gradually increasing calories and adding exercise, especially strength training is what got the, yeah. Got their, their, I would say not just not really weight loss necessarily, but fat loss going.

In some cases they wouldn’t see their weight change right away, but they would start seeing their composition. Their, their waist would get thinner [01:08:00] and you know, that’s the, if you’re gonna take one measurement, if you want to know where you’re going with your body fat, just take your waist measurement. So there had, I’ve run into some stranger where I’m, where I just know that this is something that can work, but it’s hard to say exactly why.

Armi Legge: I would agree on that. And I think that can be the case sometimes. Like I’ve dealt with a few bikini competitors, female bikini competitors, often who get down to really low body weights too, and they’re eating like, you know, a thousand calories a day or something. And in those cases, yeah, like really all you can do is start increasing calories.

Like, it’s not necessarily. Exactly. Yeah. Like it’s. There is that 

Mike Matthews: point where if your weight is stuck and you’re already at a very low and by stuck also legitimately stuck, like, 

Armi Legge: like, yeah, 

Mike Matthews: it hasn’t changed. You know, let’s say you take, you weigh yourself every day and you take a seven or 10 day average.

So you’re as accurate as you can. And it’s not changing over the course of several weeks. Then yeah, that’s stuck. And if your calories are down, you know, in that case, they’re probably below BMR. Like, like you said, I [01:09:00] mean, okay, can you eat less? Like, is that really, it’s probably not a good idea. So. 

Armi Legge: Right.

And it’s almost like a diagnosis or diagnosis of a doctor’s doing. I’m not a doctor, but you know, it’s almost like a recommendation of exclusion where like, there’s not really a whole lot else you can do. So it’s like, let’s just try and eat more and see what happens. And if you gain a little bit of fat, we can worry about that later.

But right now it’s just, the goal is just to get you healthy. Really? 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. I found it. I don’t know if you’ve seen this, but I’ve definitely seen this. I don’t know how many people you’ve done this with, but I’ve done it with quite a few people. Just because they go through the cycles of, yeah. They’re, they’re cutting their calories down and let’s say they had a good run of it.

They lost a good 20, 30 pounds, but they have a bit more to lose and their intake is down now around BMR. And then there’s also the psychological aspect. They’ve been dieting for a few months and just the idea of eating more food is of course appealing. And then they slowly start increasing their calories over the course of the next couple months, bring it back up to where their TD should be like, you know, where let’s say that the.

[01:10:00] Started it, you know, with their TD of 28, 2, 800. They lost weight. Now it’s 2, 600 or something. So they work back up to that 2, 600 in most cases, don’t even gain much weight, maybe gained a pound or two and that’s it. And then they can go back into a normal deficit, drop back down, let’s say 2, 200 and get going again.

And it’s, it’s like they just get to start, you know, fresh. 

Armi Legge: Yeah. You know, I have done that with a few people. And honestly, like that is one of the few things I’ll say that. There’s just not much evidence that works, but I think it probably does. And I can say 

Mike Matthews: for sure, I’ve done it with enough people where it’s something I still recommend, even though I don’t, like you said, the physiology, I’m not exactly sure, but it’s one of those things that just works and it’s enjoyable.

And there’s just no reason not to do it that way. I mean, how else are you going to do it? You’re just going to starve yourself down and then until you can’t take it anymore and then start binging. Well, that’s not going to work. 

Armi Legge: Right. And that’s kind of the thing I tell people is like, I can’t tell you exactly, you know, there isn’t much data to support this, but there’s not really a whole lot else you can do.

[01:11:00] Yeah like if somebody’s already working out a fair amount too, it’s like you can’t really tell them to start doing more cardio. Generally doesn’t work. Yeah. So I think, you know, like My best guess as to why that works is probably just a combination of factors, you know, it’s the psychological stuff we talked about, it’s the physiological stuff, and the little things add up.

Mike Matthews: Yeah, totally, I agree. Okay, awesome, well this is great, we have covered a lot of great stuff so where can people find you and your work? 

Armi Legge: EvidenceMag. com everything they need, like I’ve talked about most of the stuff we talked about now. They can find it there, so just go to evidencemag. com. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, and I definitely endorse your work.

Thanks, Mike. Yeah, yeah, you do a great job. And just to the listener, if you like my stuff, you’re going to like Army’s stuff, because it’s very similar. You know, he knows what he’s talking about, and he can explain things in layman’s terms, and he’s not trying to show off how much he knows or his vocabulary.

You know, is that’s that’s something that is that a lot of people write me about that they appreciate about my stuff is [01:12:00] like you, I try to just keep things simple and understandable and site research and show that I understand the scientific side of it, but you know, the person reading the article, they don’t, they just want to know what to do.

And they want to know, they just want to be lied to. You know what I mean? 

Armi Legge: And that’s one of the reasons I like your work too. So absolutely. Thank you, Mike. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, yeah. Definitely. Okay, great. So thanks again for taking the time to do this. And we will be working on things like I have some ideas I want to talk to you about.

Sweet. Sweet. 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 [01:13:00] that I’m involved in over at muscleforlife. com. All right. Thanks again. Bye.