Ben Coomber On “Diet Wars,” Under-Recovering, 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 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.

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Hey, it’s Mike. I just want to say thanks. As usual, for checking out another episode of the podcast in this episode, I interview Ben Coomber, who is a popular nutritionist and a trainer and coach, and he does a lot of [00:03:00] seminars actually. And he has a very popular podcast and I think he’s actually number one in the UK for health and fitness on, on iTunes.

And he also has a rather extensive advanced learning program called Body Type Nutrition Academy. which I didn’t actually know. I knew that he had it. I just didn’t know that he has programs ranging from two to two months to two years. And he’s also an author and coming out with a line of supplements that I don’t know too much about yet, but I’m curious to see what he’s going to be doing on that front.

Because I like Ben, he’s a good guy. He’s science based. He gets good results he’s worked with hundreds and hundreds of people personally and probably actually worked with thousands, I don’t even know, he’s been around for a while and he knows his stuff and it’s always fun to talk to him.

Plus, he’s a Brit and British people are just, they’re just cool. I just like talking to them. They’re always so chill and so nice and I don’t know, I like British people. That’s Ben and let’s get to the interview. Hey Ben, thanks for coming on my show. I was on your show last time and I got hopefully you’re, hopefully your people liked it.

I got some [00:04:00] good feedback. I’ve gotten emails from guys. Hey, I heard you on Ben’s show. I like what you had to say. Seems like you have a pretty cool crowd. 

Ben Coomber: We do. And I try and get a lot of feedback from people. I try and say, look, tell us what you think, what you like, tag us on Twitter, start a conversation, because ultimately if you don’t get to talk about this stuff with the people that are sharing the knowledge, then it feels like you’re not engaged in the process.

And a podcast can be a bit of a one way street sometimes. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. Yeah. It’s, it’s if I understood you correctly on that, where a lot of people that you’re saying that are, I don’t even, I don’t hold myself up as any sort of guru or even much of an expert. What I’m talking about, the majority of stuff is very basic, very simple.

I’m not somebody like, you have guys like Eric Cressy and gentle core and Contreras and those guys are on another level for sure. Where even these basics, the stuff that we talked about and that I am constantly talking about and writing about a lot of people are not talking about them because they’re just doing their thing.

And you’d find that is, is that what you’re saying that I understand you correctly? 

Ben Coomber: Yeah. We’re majority 

Mike Matthews: [00:05:00] of the books are the bestselling books. They’re talking about the fat burning principles of fat burning foods and all that bullshit. You know what I mean?

Ben Coomber: It’s just like a podcast is, we’re standing here talking to people and people are just listening and sometimes people just don’t go, I’d really like to go and engage with these people. They almost feel like they can’t sometimes. So I just, I’m so active of reminding people that come and talk to us.

We’ll talk back on Twitter. Let’s get a conversation going because otherwise you don’t want to. Otherwise you do pitch yourself as this kind of expert guy and after all, we’re just people, we’re just people trying to help other people and engage in conversation. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, I totally agree. So I misunderstood you, but I agree with that.

No, it’s very true. That’s also why I I’ve myself intentionally kept that very open in terms of emails and still responding to people’s emails. And I intend on always allotting time for that just because. I think it’s the right thing to do. I don’t know. I think like it would have been helpful for me back when I didn’t, I was just like reading bodybuilding magazines [00:06:00] and doing stupid workouts and trying all these dumb diets and shit.

It would have been nice to be able to just email somebody and been like, Hey, so I’ve been reading these magazines. What do you think about this? And have that person respond and be like, nah, it’s all bullshit here. Go read these few things, go read this book and you’re good. That would have been nice. 

Ben Coomber: Oh, definitely.

I think if we put ourselves out there as people that others can learn from, we need to accept that people want to ask us questions. We need to be available for that. There, there’s a limit to that, of course, but sure. It’s our duty in a way. 

Mike Matthews: I agree. I agree. That I think I got this from, there was like this book that talked about the habits and routines of all different types of.

People throughout history creatives and ranging from like artists to business people to inventors to whatever and it was Charles Darwin throughout his entire life would spend a large portion of every night answering letters from from, just readers and just people not peers necessarily just random people out there.

That was something he did consistently throughout his life though. Like when he was Charles Darwin and now he was so he didn’t once he made it, quote unquote, be [00:07:00] like, I don’t give a shit what people say anymore. I don’t, I’m not gonna waste my time with these people.

He made a point of, and that was like handwriting letters, of course, for a few hours. I believe it was every night for his entire life. He kept that up. 

Ben Coomber: Wow. If he can do that, we can do a couple of, I 

Mike Matthews: tell myself that sometimes I’m like, where I have a blot of emails and I’m like, Hey, And Neil Gaiman, the famous writer he also, I was listening to the interview with him where he was saying that he always does that as well.

So he’s always like answering emails and on social media, engaging with his fans and his readers and stuff. And but it got bad where he was saying like he was spending, He felt like he was almost like a full time email answer and part time writer where he was spending like five, six hours a day doing email.

And then by the time he would like, okay, he needs to write, he needs to get that next book done. He would feel like, it can be mentally draining to answer emails for six hours, but again, he still did it though. And he had to, he actually had to tell himself like, all right, I need to chill out.

I need to cut this back or I’m just like not going to get my work done. You know what I mean? So [00:08:00] anyways, I think that’s pretty cool when I hear stuff like that. So let’s get on to the point of why you’re here. So first we’d come up with a couple of topics that I thought would be cool to talk about.

And one is you have, we could say it’s not really a. Wars, you have these different schools of thought in terms of dieting. So you have paleo primal type stuff very popular right now. Gluten free, very popular right now. If it fits your macros or flexible dieting is popular in the fitness world and it’s gaining a little bit of mainstream popular.

I don’t know if you saw, I think CBS or some, someone, do you see that came out on flexible dieting and it got, it made the rounds and I think they were talking with Lane Norton in it. So Norton was just talking about flexible dieting. And et cetera, et cetera. And what’s your take on these, you could say they’re fad diets.

They are, although some are seem to be here to stay, but, 

Ben Coomber: I think Lane’s done a brilliant job of flying the flag for flexible dieting, especially in the population that he works in bodybuilding. People can easily get very orthorexic [00:09:00] about. That style of eating both on a healthy and unhealthy level.

Orthorexia is just an obsession of essentially the details of what you perceive as healthy. And we all package nutrition in different ways as healthy. If you ask one guy, what is healthy? The next guy will say something slightly different. It’s all our own interpretation. Now, how would you define 

Mike Matthews: healthy food?

Like what does that mean to you? 

Ben Coomber: I think straight off the bat, I describe as a healthy food is something that was grown or swam or was reared, it’s essentially one single ingredient food or that food was closely made from those ingredients. So 

Mike Matthews: minimally processed. 

Ben Coomber: Yeah. And it has all the constituents that it’s meant to.

If you look at a piece of steak, it’s all still there. It has the protein and everything. It hasn’t been screwed up by someone in a lab. Now, I suppose the thing with all these diets is that people, can become cult like and really invest themselves heavily in these diets. And while I appreciate that [00:10:00] people want to really believe and follow and buy into something, I think every diet has it’s pros and it’s cons and people just need to be aware and critically stand back and go, logically, what are the pros from this diet, we’ll look at the paleo diet and there is some incredibly valuable information from the paleo world, single ingredient foods, look at inflammatory foods, et cetera, high protein dieting, exactly. We’ve breached the whole gluten free thing with them, dairy but there’s limitations to that, right?

There’s people that have taken that to the extreme and gone, no one should eat gluten, no one should eat dairy. Yeah. No one should eat a baked bean. And so we’ll hang on a second 

Mike Matthews: potato or something like what are you talking about? 

Ben Coomber: Exactly. So people have taken it to the extreme, but people haven’t been critical enough to stand back and go does that sound rational?

Does it sound logical? So they’ll read an article, they’ll think, Oh my God, this guy says baked beans are bad. I’m never going to eat baked beans on toast again. Cause it’s got gluten and beans. I don’t mind people, following a certain setup, [00:11:00] but they still have to see where the diet’s limitations are and be critical for themselves.

It’s gonna be 

Mike Matthews: hard though because sometimes the, you can read an article or read the books or on let’s say Paleo or Primal that through, it’s very easy to take. If you have a half of a brain to make a pseudoscientific argument for anything, you can misinterpret research.

You can talk about, you can cite studies that got disproven later that you don’t talk about, there’s a lot of ways to do that. So just to stand out, it can be hard for. For people, if that’s their first entry, if they’re like I’ve heard about paleo. Let me read this.

And it can be real convincing. Like you could read a guy like Mark Sisson whose work I do mark is a super smart dude, really good writer. Like I admire him just as a person, but and his primal thing is like paleo light, so I can appreciate that, you could read certain things that he writes and come away convinced like, Oh shit, this is the way there’s no other, like, why would I do anything else?

Ben Coomber: Oh, definitely. And I think, we’re in a gifted position now because you and me know a lot. We’ve been there. We’ve been like, especially [00:12:00] even more with you, the training, like you’ve been through all these different workouts, systems, that kind of stuff. Me with the nutrition, I’ve followed paleo, I’ve followed fasting, I’ve followed all sorts of stuff.

And at the time, I bought into it to a degree. Because, the writers that were saying this stuff was so convincing and I, but I still think I wasn’t being critical enough, I wasn’t standing back, and viewing it with a bigger picture, because I was just interested in my end goal, and I got this diet, and attached it to my goal, and go if I want to achieve this goal, I have to do this diet.

And I had my blinkers on, I had tunnel vision, because all I was focusing on was my goal. But I didn’t stand back and go, look at the variable. So I understand people’s frustrations. We live in a world of information and misinformation. But for people, I just want to say, look, take five minutes, stand back, put your thinking cap on, and don’t just jump straight back to the newsfeed on Facebook and look at the next cat falling off a wall in between articles.

It’s just being aware. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, I think that’s a [00:13:00] good point. I think also there’s something to be said for this is something at least I tried to do when I get into anything really, if I’m going to, whether it be a hobby or whatever is try to first establish the the most important information in terms of principles and try not to try to go to the original source of, so in this case, it would be It’s risky to just rely on someone else’s presentation of research or interpretation of research.

If you just read a book, that person has a, they’re going to, they have something they’re trying to usually a philosophy or agenda of some kind to sell you. And then it’s very easy to mold that as opposed to going and looking at the research yourself. So like in terms of energy balance, for example, if we’re talking about diet, that was one of the first things when I was like, Decided to actually educate myself on dieting.

One of the first things that I, that made sense to me, like this is a fundamental principle of dieting. This is, we have a hundred plus years of metabolic research here. I can go read these papers for myself and I trust a review of [00:14:00] 70 years of metabolic research and what that. Paper has to say on energy balance more than I trust some random dude who says that, I don’t care about his supposed credentials.

He has stuff to sell. And he says energy balance is a hoax. So that at least that was that, that, that was when I first started looking into it, like it’s more work that way and it’s tougher, but. I feel that I pointed me in the right direction. I was able to then go, all right, these are the things that are most important.

These are the things that are less important and judge things accordingly. But. 

Ben Coomber: As we’ve become good practitioners though, we’ve been able to do that, and for a layman to read research, man, that stuff’s tough. I still struggle with a lot of research, I’m like, I just don’t know what those numbers mean.

So it can be tough, so you have to rely on people’s interpretation. I think You know, the industry has been gifted a little bit by the work of examine. I think examine works. Fantastic examine. 

Mike Matthews: com. Just so the listeners know. Yeah. Great resource. 

Ben Coomber: Yeah. And it’s something that we [00:15:00] actually provide to all our students.

We pay for the UK license that all our students get that so that they can keep up with the research, these are guys are going, but this is what creatine is, what it means. And this is what the research actually says and to have that in our industry right now with zero bias. Is a gift. 

Mike Matthews: I totally agree.

Yeah. Huge resource. I check things on it all the time myself. And yeah, I’m a big fan of examining the, all the guys behind it and what they’re doing. So that, that’s paleo. That’s what I’ll say. What would you say? Are the ups and upside and downside of something like flexible dieting, which is, a lot of people think that is like you said, they can.

I’ll let you, I’ll let you take it. So let’s talk about that. 

Ben Coomber: Flexible dieting for me is. Is a massive pro. It allows people to understand whether they can bring in quote unquote bad foods into their diet. We’ve classically, especially in the paleo, primal, eat natural environment, been almost scared to eat some [00:16:00] foods.

It’s like You need to eat this, and only this, and if you slip up, you’re a bad person. And then, that’s when these binge cycles come in, because people feel that I’ll screw 

Mike Matthews: up. Repent! 

Ben Coomber: Shame! Yeah I’ve eaten a donut now, so I might as well spend all weekend eating donuts, and I’ll maybe get back on my diet on Monday.

The kind of science, as you mentioned, of energy in, energy out, is largely gonna control body composition. We need to take faith in that and say I need to get my calories right if I’m concerned about body composition or a goal of losing or gaining weight. And within that calorie amount, there is a certain amount that I’m willing to forego for processed foods.

And I usually say that should be 10%. I know a lot of people will say 20%. Hi. Cause I’m a big fan of micronutrition and really getting as much in you as possible. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. 

Ben Coomber: So especially 

Mike Matthews: if calorie intake, someone’s in a calorie deficit and they, and if let’s say it’s a, like it’s a girl that, she’s not very big to start out with and if she’s going to be getting 20 percent of her daily calories from shit food, that can actually be quite a bit.

Ben Coomber: Exactly. So it allows people to [00:17:00] go, Oh, okay. I’m going out on a Friday night. I’m eating 3000 calories. I want a thousand of those calories to be on pizza. It’s not ideal, but I’m still going to be able to stick towards my goals and it allows people to go, yeah, cool. I can do that.

And tomorrow I’m going to wake up and look the same, so there’s a certain amount of rules that keep, in track or on track when you want to break the rules, quote unquote. So I think the perfect diet for a lot of people that are just want to be healthy, live longer, look good.

It’s probably a whole foods diet. Where you probably don’t need to track your calories and micronutrients. Eat a decent amount of protein, get loads of fruits and veggies, balance your carbs and fats, how it makes you feel good. Now as soon as you’re an individual that is concerned about body composition, you want muscles, you want abs, you want to be lean.

Then you need to understand the numbers. You can’t get the cover model physique or it’s rare to, without understanding the numbers. And it’s at that point where you need to go I need to eat a whole foods diet, but I need to understand my calories, my proteins, my fats, my fiber, [00:18:00] and hopefully my micronutrients as well.

So it, it definitely depends on the severity of the goal and how geeky you get with your nutrition and the numbers. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. Yeah. I totally agree. Just on that point, even if like with cheat meals, quote unquote or whatever it’s very easy. Just this simple little tip just for the listeners I’ve talked about this before, but if you’re going to, if you’re going to go out and you need a bunch of food and you know what I do personally is I just save up a lot of those days calories.

So like I’ll just eat protein throughout the day, perhaps some vegetables at lunch or whatever, but I’m saving the majority of my carbs and fat for my dinner. So I can go eat, two or 3, 000 calories and really enjoy myself. That’s what I want to do. And and really have no difference in terms of not that you can even store or, it’s hard to, if you’re going to, let’s say to gain a pound of fat in a day, it’s hard to eat 35 ish, a hundred calories over expenditure.

And a lot of that’s going to have to be from fat. That is, it’s hard to do that as it is, but just as a tip for people that especially if you’re dieting [00:19:00] and you don’t, and you’re lean and you don’t want to set yourself back at all, it’s an easy way to, you can just save those calories. I do that, depending on what I’m going to do.

Ben Coomber: It’s exactly the same as what I do. We have Nando’s in the UK. Nando’s. I went there last night with my girlfriend for dinner. I knew that a full platter with chips and stuff was gonna be 1, 800 calories. I just saved it. I ate light, I ate two light meals during the day. High protein, low fat, low carb.

And then I’ve just nailed it at night. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, I actually, and I’ve come to, I tend to do, I like to eat larger meals at night anyway. So I tend to do that as it is. I like it for working as well. I like not having a lot of food in me because you’re probably the same way. I’m sure. Cause our, we have to think and do and I like that when I’m not, you eat those large meals and there’s definitely some lethargy that comes with it. I think 

Ben Coomber: definitely. And you want to carry on working. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, 

Ben Coomber: like eating a big meal takes a lot of time. 

Mike Matthews: True, actually. You’ve got to 

Ben Coomber: cook it as well. Yeah, so if I can graze during the day and then feed at night, it helps.

It definitely helps my work pattern for sure. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, and [00:20:00] obviously, I think most people listening are going to know this, but there’s no downside to eating. I don’t care how much How many carbs? I don’t care what you eat when you eat it, there’s no downside to that. I eat on average just for the listeners.

My, I’ll eat maybe about 250 to 300 grams of carbs at 10:00 PM at night. ’cause I like, I’m doing these baked oatmeal dishes, which I’m like basically obsessed with this at this point ’cause they’re so good. But, that’s just ’cause that’s how I like to eat. And sure it’s not like you’re gonna gain fat by, by doing that as long as your numbers are right.

Like what Ben’s saying. Definitely. Cool. So I think I think that, that’s good on that. Let’s move on to this next point here, which is you want to talk about, which is people that are under recovering and hitting their training and life at 80 percent all of the time. So what are your insights on that?

Ben Coomber: Sure. I do an awful lot of public speaking seminars. I do a lot of seminars for trainers and I always sit in the room. These are people that have come to listen to me to learn more about nutrition, training, lifestyle, et cetera. And I’ll look into the eyes of [00:21:00] people and most people, I’d say at 80 percent of the room, usually you can just see That they’re just not quite well slept, they’re not quite recovering enough, they haven’t got the vitality they want, you can just see it in their eyes.

And because we’re individuals that are always chasing a goal, we’re always trying to think about the next training program, the next day’s training, nutrition, our goals, and while that’s fantastic, sometimes we don’t stand back and think about the rest of our life and how this is affecting the quality of our life as well, because after all, we get fit, stay fit, look good to enhance our life.

Outside of fitness, bodybuilding, whatever you want to call it, we all have a life. We’re only in the gym five or six hours a week, et cetera I’m always questioning people. I’m saying, are you going into your training pro Are you going into the gym at 80 90%? And there’s so many people that are going into the gym and it’s just not quite fresh.

They’re not 100 percent there. They’re trying to take a really strong pre workout just to feel with it and put the [00:22:00] reps in, the timing. So for me it’s, again, it’s about people stepping back and going. Maybe you’re actually in the gym too much and you actually recover from it. Is your sleep consistent?

Do you get a lot of bad night’s sleeps? Do you wake up during the night? Are you at your desk at work or on the site if you’re a physical laborer or whatever? Are you there just not quite with it? And it’s probably because we’re just doing all too much. And I really appreciate that people are pushing towards their goal.

They’re trying to do the next thing, but you’ve got to look after your health. Because when that’s in order, that’s when you can push hard with your training. I’ve just taken a week off. I went away for a long weekend with my girlfriend. Got, got my shit together. Monday, I was absolutely chomping at the bit.

Monday, I was just so ready for the gym. Whereas 10 days ago, I wasn’t. I was like, I’ve got to get this workout done. I’m looking forward to it. And I pushed it a bit too hard. I just want people to stand back. Because I hate those days where I go into the gym at 80 90%. It’s just not as fun.

Yeah. 

Ben Coomber: You can’t [00:23:00] feel your muscles as well. You can’t drive as well. You can’t hit that PR. It’s all affected. And it’s because I think we’re just not paying attention to the kind of lifestyle and recovery factors outside the nuts and bolts of training and nutrition. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, I totally agree. I’ve experienced that myself.

I usually, depending on how heavy I’m training and depending on what I’m doing have to take, I usually don’t take a full week off. I usually, what I’ll do is I’m normally training Monday through Friday. So every, like it comes down to four to eight weeks, depending on what I’m doing. If I’m doing a lot of really heavy stuff, it’s probably closer to four, but I’ll take off.

I’ll probably get in there. On Wednesday or Thursday, and I’ll do a two or three day lighter, just a deload like maybe push, pull legs or, an upper lower if it’s just two days, but it’s not super heavyweight. It’s just practicing working on the movements and as much as I, I don’t like Doing it like something that’s fun.

Like I’m driving to the gym to do this little weak ass workout that is just whatever. I like training hard and training heavy. I found it super necessary though. Cause if I [00:24:00] don’t, it, I just what you’re saying. It just, the workouts become harder and I don’t like them. My dislike for them gets grows larger and larger.

And so cause I hear from people that have that mentality, like I don’t want to take a week off. I haven’t taken a week off in five months. Why do I feel like shit? And they’re in a calorie deficit. I’m like, That’s why. 

Ben Coomber: Yeah. I’m a big fan of a D load and I get, I do it sometimes, but a lot of the time I just say to people, cause most people like to go in the gym and they just like to push.

Yeah. It’s very hard to go in the gym and train at 70, 80 percent if you have that kind of mindset. So a lot of the time I just say to people, look, just take a week off. And the reason why I do it myself is I usually tie it into a break away. Maybe I’ll take some time out to go do some gardening because I haven’t done that for four months or it’s a new book and I want to spend more time reading it so it allows me to flex to my other interests and go out and do some other stuff because, in a normal day, once you’ve worked, you’ve been to the gym, you spent an hour or two with your other [00:25:00] half.

You’ve done some jobs. That’s your day and a lot of the time It doesn’t actually leave that much time for your hobbies And I have a lot of hobbies and that break allows me to go Do you know i’m going to spend a whole week doing my hobby? Whatever that might be.

Yeah, I think Yeah, 

Mike Matthews: no, I agree. I know how that is too where i’ll just get Working so much. Sometimes I’ll look and I’ll be like, I don’t do anything. I don’t have any, like I have, I play a little golf on the weekend, but that’s around working. So sometimes I’ll realize that I don’t, I take time to read.

So that’s good. But that, that speaks to me. 

All 

Mike Matthews: right. So let’s move on to the next one here. And this is overcomes overconsumption of caffeine and relying on it, which is when we were just talking about this before the podcast. So I’m curious in your take on this. 

Ben Coomber: Yeah, I think I love 

Mike Matthews: caffeine. 

Ben Coomber: Okay. Who doesn’t like caffeine?

Come on. But it, it’s a modern social. Drug, 

It’s got an even more so in America more so than the UK I think you know everywhere you go, you’ve got like refillable coffee cups coffees Just like the thing you do [00:26:00] you have a breakfast habit. Yeah, exactly. It’s all day and we’re putting And an excitory agent in our bloodstream for literally 16 hours a day and people are sitting there wondering why they can’t sleep While when they take their pre workout, it doesn’t work as well as they thought it would you know all this stuff and I’ll hear from 

Mike Matthews: people like that sometimes because with my stuff they’ll be like I didn’t feel like And then to find out their normal caffeine take Caffeine intake is like a gram a day.

I’m like that’s probably why you didn’t feel the caffeine in the pre workout. 

Ben Coomber: Exactly. All right. And apart from, my original comments, we’re all performance minded individuals. When I go in the gym, I want to kill it. And I want that caffeine, pre workout bolus to work really well for me.

So the more sensitive I am to caffeine, the less I have in my blood. When I take that pre workout, bam, it’s going to really work, but it’s not going to work if I’ve already got. 200 milligrams constantly circulating in my bloodstream. Most people don’t sleep properly. They’re [00:27:00] never quite mentally on the ball.

So I’m a real big proponent of a kind of minimum caffeine lifestyle. A lot of people have their mental energy as a result of their caffeine. They don’t actually know how food makes them feel like if they ate breakfast. How does it actually make you feel all the way to lunch? Most people don’t know because that energy has been driven by caffeine.

It’s a kind of a modern drug and I’m a big fan of getting people to just realize how other factors in their lifestyle make them feel. 

Especially sleep. If we’re, we all know how we feel on a bad night’s sleep. The next day just sucks. So what you do You get a bad night’s sleep, you wake up the next day, shit, I’ve slept crap, I need more caffeine, you take more on board, and then you sleep shitty again, cause And you just get into this massive cycle of never feeling yourself.

And that sucks. Yeah. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. No I, personally, I don’t have much experience with that because like we were talking before we recorded my body processes caffeine very [00:28:00] quickly. So I’ll have a couple hundred milligrams and it’ll get me going. I’ll notice a difference for maybe about an hour and then I just feel normal again.

And I can go a day without caffeine or with caffeine because of the effects are. Are just so trans transient. I don’t, it, it doesn’t really make a difference for my day. It’s more like for that hour that I’m working out, I feel something and by the time I’m at the office, I just feel the same as I would have if I didn’t work out in terms of caffeine.

You know what I mean? But when I see intake I I wrote an article about this a bit ago. So I did a bit of research on it and from what seemed to be sensible to me and just reviewing a lot of literature on caffeine. That the general kind of ever just across the board, if you keep your intake at or below 400 milligrams a day, and it’s also, I believe it was recommended that you take, you reduce that occasionally as well and ideally reduced to nothing.

Then there are no health risks associated with that. Whereas you start getting in, in some people, they, I know that there are definitely instances where some people [00:29:00] can go as high as six. to 800 milligrams a day with no at least negative effects observed in, in the research. But, that’s, those were, that was not the average person that’s, over six, 800 plus milligrams a day.

It’s not healthy and in time it could. Become a problem 

Ben Coomber: good leads excites blood pressure heart rate, so if you’re predisposed to all this kind of stuff it’s not going to lead to a positive outcome 

The 

Ben Coomber: funny thing is yes coffee drinkers do live longer usually about five to six years longer But it’s nothing to do with the caffeine.

It’s everything to do with the antioxidants that are found in caffeine coffee So you could get the same from a good organic decaf. I actually pains me to talk about American coffee because I know how bad the coffee is that you drink and that’s why I hate coffee. I actually 

Mike Matthews: wish I liked it. I hate the taste.

It’s disgusting. I fucking hate it. I’m actually jealous when I hear coffee drinkers like talk about their deep love for coffee and how enjoyable it is Like I don’t I don’t get that experience from any like i’d have to eat You know a couple [00:30:00] donuts or something to Get that type of Oh my God.

Ben Coomber: See, I have people around my house. People come around, for a coffee drink and I say to people, what do you usually drink coffee wise? I’m like, and they, we start talking about caffeine. I’m like, let me make you amazing decaf and I’ll make and you won’t want to put sugar in it. You won’t want to put milk in it.

And every time people are like, Oh my God, this is really nice. I’m like, yeah, that’s because you drink shit coffee. 

Mike Matthews: I wish I could like coffee. I’ve tried it, but even like tiramisu I don’t the Just the hint of coffee taste is gross to me, my stupid palate, but I like dark chocolate. And why does that make any sense?

They’re similar in terms of taste. 

Ben Coomber: Yeah, true. Oh, I love dark chocolate. I know. Anyways. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. All in all, I think I agree. And I think we’re speaking to people that are mo there are a lot of caffeine abusers. They’re listening. No question. Oh yes. Again, going back to if you keep your intake, I know Ben, you said you do what?

A hundred, 200 milligrams. That’s for your training and then otherwise. 

Ben Coomber: Yeah, I’ll have none in my [00:31:00] diet and then I’ll take about 200 milligrams pre training. Yeah, that’s me a treat And then I’m good and then on the days you don’t train no caffeine Usually no caffeine if you know for some reason sometimes you’re like, I just want a little bit Yeah, it’s I rarely do it.

The only time I usually do it is if I’m doing Load of writing and I locked myself away. I’ll take laugh caffeine a low dose probably about 80 to 120 milligrams 

Yeah, 

Ben Coomber: and that gives me a real gentle real clean focus if I don’t have that already. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. Yeah same I like it for writing as well. Do you pair it with theanine by the way?

Have you tried that? 

Ben Coomber: Yes, I do. Yeah, 

Mike Matthews: it’s great. 

Ben Coomber: It’s fantastic. This is a one reason why I like people drinking things like white tea. It’s got great combo of caffeine and theanine. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. Yeah. I’m a big fan of theanine. It makes a big difference for the listeners. If you try if you just go one to one in ratio.

So if it’s a hundred milligrams caffeine pair it with a hundred milligrams of theanine and The, I remember the first time, ’cause I have it in my pre-workout, matched with the caffeine [00:32:00] where the first time I tried that I was like, holy shit I almost felt euphoric. I don’t necessarily get that euphoria now, but it’s definitely a mood booster and it gives it a smooth, I think for me it smooths out the, like I get a smooth, like the caffeine rush or whatever.

It’s just smoother, no crash and it totally. 

Ben Coomber: Totally agree. And this is, for me, one reason you get the jitters from a strong coffee. There’s no theanine. You have to, and it’s great that it’s in your pre workout. I 100 percent recommend that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I’m a fan. 

Mike Matthews: I like tea as well. 

Ben Coomber: One thing I will just say before people go, Oh, actually, I might think about dropping my caffeine intake.

Whatever you do, just don’t go cold turkey. 

If you’re drinking 5, 6, 7 cups of coffee a day, if you go cold turkey, you’re gonna feel like a junkie. Withdrawal, 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. 

Ben Coomber: Yeah, big withdrawal, big headaches, big low mood cut it down slowly, otherwise you’ll feel like you’re literally dying.

Mike Matthews: Good point. Yeah. Alright, great. So let’s move on to this point here. The next point, which is, so [00:33:00] this is a note from you, so why your results are predicated on your input and reflection on what is going well and what’s not. 

Ben Coomber: Yeah, so this kind of topic is probably answering a lot of the kind of questions that we will get on a regular basis as kind of practitioners in the field is to, people will say to us, why am I not getting results?

I followed this, I did that, and. Again, it’s a critical point of are people standing back and looking at everything that they’re doing rather than you know Because some people focus so much on let’s say they bought one of your workouts They’re focusing so much on the workout and the result of the workout They’re not looking at the input from everything else lifestyle recovery diet supplements, etc and most people focus on that their expectation is predicated just on that, and they’re not looking and tracking at the other variables.

People’s input of what they’re doing will directly have a result on their output, 100%. So if you’re putting a lot of effort in one or two areas, and you’re not happy [00:34:00] with stuff, then you need to match that input. With all the other factors that contribute to the results that we promote all the time as coaches and, we talk so much about real simple things like balance protein, getting all these basics, right?

But, and people are bored of listening to it, but people are still not doing it true. So I’m going to keep telling you to do it. Until you do it because you’re still complaining that you haven’t got the results that you expect, but you’re not doing the fundamentals You’re not getting a good night’s sleep You’re not busting your ass in the gym when you do it You haven’t got your protein intake consistent your carbs and fats all over the place You’re cheating too much on the main bulk of your foods all this kind of stuff if you don’t get it Don’t complain about your results.

Mike Matthews: And don’t think that some random weird little new thing is going to preempt that or allow you to, ignore the fundamentals and still get the results that you want, which goes back to some of that fad dieting stuff. If you’re not, if you do not understand energy balance. And you don’t [00:35:00] want to and whatever, then there’s a, it doesn’t really matter what diet you do.

The only really, it’ll only work for a, maybe work for a bit if it, just means like you’re trying to lose weight. And if that, if the diet you try restricts the foods that you like to eat, that you overeat on. Yeah, it’ll work to a point. But yeah, that’s just, that’s a very good point.

I think it applies to anything really is like anything I don’t know that I’ve gotten into that I’ve gotten good at and had any success with is it’s always come back to the fundamentals. The vast majority of being good, whether it be a sport or weightlifting or writing or anything is just doing a small handful of things really well.

And then, then you have that, that brings you above the majority of. People in terms of skill and results. And then, of course, if you want to, okay, you want to become super at something, then that’s where a lot of the other little random things can come into play. But you have to have those fundamentals or the other stuff, the more quote unquote advanced stuff just doesn’t matter.

Ben Coomber: Oh, definitely. I think it comes back to being critical again as well, as people looking at [00:36:00] the stuff they’re doing, because the human mind is always going to look for an easier route, an easier option, and something A shinier widget. Yeah, a shinier widget. And you and me are both still looking for that.

But we have a massive bullshit radar and other people have a very small bullshit radar. We’ve developed our minds to be more critical. So it’s not to say that we won’t accept a great new theory, a great new product, great new technology, but we will do our due diligence on whatever comes out and make sure it’s backed and rational.

And I just want other people to do more of that rather than looking at the shiny objects because the shiny objects. I literally five, 10 percent as there’s nothing that is going to be more than five or 10%. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. And that’s probably high. A lot of them are very small. Yeah, I think that, and also just looking at, this is my experience with speaking with thousands of people that are in my orbit.

Where the majority of the people that read my books and follow my websites and whatever, [00:37:00] they’re not trying to make fitness their life. They’re not trying to be a fitness, not trying to be a professional bodybuilder. They’re not trying to be a professional physique competitor. And really like in there, in a lot of these people’s cases, they don’t even need to know more than.

They could read a book of mine and maybe 10 or 15 articles. And for their goals to, to build muscle, they want to get into a good body fat range. They want to look good. They want to feel good, but they don’t want to obsess over it. You don’t need to know, like you could learn everything you need to know in two days in terms of diet and training and literally never read another thing ever again, and just go do that stuff.

Understand how to set your diet up. Understand how to set your weightlifting programs up. And so you don’t kill yourself. And so you get a good return on your time in the gym and just do that. And within a year you have more or less the body you want and you can still enjoy it and work at it.

But I think there’s something to be said for not, it doesn’t matter if it’s my stuff, it could be your stuff, but you understand what I’m saying. That it could be a couple days of studying. And you go apply [00:38:00] that. And if you never knew another thing, you could be that person in the gym at some point where people come up to you and they’re like how do you have that body?

How did you do that? And you’re like I don’t know. I read like a few hundred pages of stuff and I’ve just been doing it for five years. And that’s about it. 

Ben Coomber: A hundred percent. I’ve got a podcast episode 117 on my show. And I say, look, do you want to know how to set up a diet for life? Just follow this hour’s worth of nutrition information and you could be done.

Yeah. 

Ben Coomber: That’s it. If your goals are just be happy, be healthy, look pretty decent and sometimes that’s all it takes. And again, it’s just the fundamentals, man. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. It’s 

Ben Coomber: just fundamentals. 

Mike Matthews: Totally. Yeah. That’s great. All right. So last point here is sleep. Why, which you had already touched on earlier, but the importance of sleep and importance of.

Bedtimes and why not enough sleep sucks. And cause again, like caffeine, a lot of listeners and I’m guilty of it as anybody else abuse caffeine or a can. I try, I actually try not to, I tend to be pretty, pretty good on that. But sleep I don’t know. I tend to wake up after about [00:39:00] six hours.

I just don’t like sleep more than that period. That’s just the way it’s been for years and years now. But I know that’s not. And I don’t like that’s fine for me. I don’t know, but I know that’s not normal. And that wouldn’t be necessarily that the normal, that wouldn’t be the general recommendation.

Maybe I have you see that research count recently, the genetic polymorphism that some people have where they, like some people sleep two hours a night and they’ve done it their entire life and it has no negative effects on them. There’s a genetic, Okay. thing in play. I don’t know. Maybe I can’t say that.

That would kill me. But 

Ben Coomber: that is a minimal amount of people. I’m similar. I’ll sleep 6. 5 hours and my body just wakes up. I’m done. That’s all I need. And that’s great because if I’ve slept nine hours I’d get a hell of a less lot less shit done. 

Mike Matthews: I’d be so mad if I had to sleep a lot. 

Ben Coomber: Yeah. The thing that people just need to understand is that sleep does literally affect everything, like physiologically, like people, and this is a big thing, people that struggle with cravings, if you don’t sleep enough, it plays havoc with your blood glucose levels, [00:40:00] your hunger signals, when I’ve had a bad night’s sleep, it’s the only time I crave something sweet.

And usually I don’t have a sweet tooth at all, but your body will just look to try and get more energy. It also 

Mike Matthews: messes with leptin and ghrelin. Like it messes. It makes your body say, give me food 

Ben Coomber: now. Oh, exactly. And I could just literally eat all day when I’m, when I sleep and it doesn’t help that I’ve got an ex fat man living inside me, I used to be an obese man.

So he wants to eat cake. Trust me. Sleep’s then going to affect your workout. If you don’t get enough sleep, you’re not going to feel as good in your work life. And this is something that I think people don’t take enough time to appreciate is how much it affects your family and your loved one’s environment.

If you’re tired, you’re agitated with each other, you’re short with each other, you don’t enjoy your relationships, you don’t spend time, you might go out for dinner and you want to go home early. Like this factors into your relationships so much. I know that when I go around, my family’s for dinner, if I’m not on the, on my [00:41:00] ball, I’m not as enjoyable to be around, and no one wants to be that guy, this is why we live life to get the best out of what we do, family, love, that kind of stuff, so it’s really important, so I’m really dogmatic about sleep ten o’clock on the clock, I’m like, To my girlfriend, I’m like I’m up to bed.

You can stay and watch TV if you want, but I’m gone. We’ll wind down, we’ll always be asleep by half ten at the latest kind of thing, because I know how much it affects the next day. If I stay up late, that means I’m going to get up late. It means I’m not going to get as much work done. I don’t want to work late because I want to go and enjoy myself.

I want to go to the gym. I want to enjoy myself later. So it all rumbles into one. And, a lot of the time there isn’t anything unless you’re going out. There’s nothing good happening past 10 And nothing that can’t be recorded on TV now, we’ve all got recordable box sets, put it on record, watch it at the weekend, but be in bed for ten, please.

Mike Matthews: Yeah, I think that I agree on all points it’s one of those things that’s easy, just how it’s easy to, to Inject to consume too much caffeine. It’s just easy. It’s a, I have another [00:42:00] coffee. I have another, so it’s easy to cut back on sleep. It seems, Hey, I’ll just stay up 30 minutes later, 30 minutes later, 30 minutes later.

But yeah, the effects are cumulative. And for me, I start to feel that if I sleep five hours, which I don’t intentionally do rarely ever, but sometimes I just don’t, I don’t know if you’ve had that. I’ll get to bed and I’m just like, not very tired. And I’m like, fuck, this is not going to be a good night’s sleep.

I can just feel it. You know I just feel it. I was just like, something’s off. And then I wake up in the middle of the night or whatever. But yeah it’s just, if I were feeling like that every day, and I know a lot of people do. You look at the research on sleep, it’s like ridiculous.

It’s 30 something percent of people, at least here in the United States. This was like as of 2010, I think reported falling asleep like in middle of the day, just like sitting at their desk falling asleep or falling asleep while driving, which is obviously dangerous as shit. Yeah. That’s bad.

I don’t even get that tired. If I sleep five hours I’ve had, I’ve done that several days in a row. I don’t get to the point where I’m falling asleep. I just don’t feel so great throughout the day. That’s severe sleep deprivation. 

Ben Coomber: Yeah. That’s chronic adrenal [00:43:00] fatigue. And if you’re in that place, that’s not a good place to be in.

It means your body is in, and that will lead to chronic fatigue as well. People that can just literally fall asleep anyway. Anyway, and I’ve known people. I remember coaching my first guy who could did this and he fell asleep in the consultation 

shit 

Ben Coomber: I’m like, you know I just put him he was in that much of a relaxed state or as a relaxed as ever gonna get and just fell asleep And he’s yeah, I do it all the time I’ll get to lunch time and I’ll have to pull over in a lay by and go to sleep and I’m like, dude That’s not normal.

Yeah, this 

Ben Coomber: is why I value sleep so much if I sleep my productivity the next day is literally double Yeah, it’s just astronomically different. And there’s someone who’s self employed, like my income is related to what I put in. Yeah. And no one’s there 

Mike Matthews: to tell you that you got to get up.

You got to get in front of that computer and do it. No one’s going to tell you it’s easy just to be like, Oh, today, 

Ben Coomber: exactly. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. 

Ben Coomber: So that reminds me, it’s everything to me. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah same. I was just driving home the other day and there was a dude light screen. He’s not going. I’m next to him.

So I’m driving by. I look over and it’s an old [00:44:00] guy either passed out like something. I was like, is this guy asleep? And I, so I slowed down and someone’s honking behind him and nothing’s happening. I’m like, dude, this guy have a heart attack. So I turn around Cause I’m going to go and see is this guy fucking dead?

Like what is going on? He was pretty old and someone ran up to the car and was like tapping on his window and he was asleep. But he was the guy, not even a horn blasting woke him up. Like somebody had to go and bang on his window. Is this guy, do I need to call 911? What is going on? Wow, jeez.

That’s, that, Florida. That’s bad. Florida drivers are so bad. It’s just a known thing here. Gee, 

Ben Coomber: hope the guy made it home. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah, no, he woke up and he drove off. Holy, that guy’s on the road, dude. Yeah, 

Mike Matthews: What the 

fuck? 

Mike Matthews: All right. So cool. That’s everything we had on the, on, on the agenda. I think it’s a good length too.

Yeah, I appreciate you. It’s always fun talking with you. I appreciate people that like you that are you’re fun to talk to and you’re talking about. I appreciate you coming on the show. Where can people find you and your work? [00:45:00] 

Ben Coomber: Sure. Firstly, thanks for getting me on after you came on my show, which was really cool.

My name is Ben Coomber, C double O N B E R. People can find me all over the internet if they search Ben Coomber. My show on iTunes is number one in the UK, health and fitness. We’ve done 155 episodes so far. So if you put in Ben Coomber Radio into iTunes or whatever podcast, Doodah, you use, then you will find me download me, listen to one of the shows, hey, maybe even download the show that me and Mike did and get that as your first listen, and then otherwise on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, I am Ben Coomber but if that.

It dazzles you. If you hit vancouver. com, you will find everything that will link to my stuff there. 

Mike Matthews: Cool. Awesome. And what do you have coming up? What are your projects you have in your plate right now? 

Ben Coomber: My big project that keeps revolving is I run a online education course. We have an intake every six months.

We take a big group of people. We take them through a year to two [00:46:00] years worth of learning on nutrition. It’s a full blown certification. So I do a lot of education.

Mike Matthews: Yeah, I’ve looked at your stuff, but I didn’t realize it. I didn’t realize it’s that long, actually. That’s what I didn’t know. 

Ben Coomber: Yeah. The first bit’s two, two months, which is our foundation level. Then there’s a years learning, which is very practical, very hands on, very in depth. And then there’s a 10 month advanced level for the true geek, but that’s really tough stuff.

You got to be ready for that. And then I’ve just brought out a couple of books and stuff. But if people head on over to bencumber. com, it will link everywhere. So if you want to geek out on my work please do head on over and have a look. And, again, after this show, hit me and Mike up on Twitter, start a conversation, tell us what you thought of the show.

I love to hear about people. 

Mike Matthews: Yeah. Yeah. All right, man. Thanks again for taking the time and we’ll have to do it again. We’ll come up with a reason to do another one. Sure. All right, man. 

Ben Coomber: Reason to run.