The right way to use “cheat meals” and the ridiculous side of the fitness culture

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Hey, this is Mike Matthews from muscleforlife.com and in this episode of my podcast, I want to talk about cheat meals and how to do them correctly so you can minimize the amount of fat that you gain while still being able to enjoy yourself. And I want to talk about a couple of things that I don’t like about the fitness culture, a couple of things I think are a bit unhealthy and a bit ridiculous about it.

And how I try to. I could say mentally balanced, working in this industry and, avoiding some of these pitfalls, I guess you could say that I see other people falling into. So cheat meals. Let’s talk about this now. Realize or notice that I’m saying cheat meals. meals, not cheap days.

This is a big, important thing that you need to know. Whether you’re dieting for fat loss or whether you’re dieting just to maintain your current body composition, a cheap day can kill you, can completely, you can undo a week’s worth of fat loss and even gain fat in a day easily. And this is mainly because Not only can you eat a lot of calories in a day, if you really were going at it, you could probably easily eat 10, 000, at least 7, 8, 000 calories in one day.

If you start in the morning with a big breakfast and you just keep on going. And also usually, when people are cheating, that includes very fatty foods, which is even worse. And it includes alcohol, which is even worse. So a cheat day, I definitely do not recommend a cheat meal is what I recommend.

So when you’re cutting, for instance, you’re dieting for fat loss, take one meal a week where you’re going to be eating something that you wouldn’t normally eat. You’re going to basically be eating an excessive amount of calories, one meal a week. And if you combine that approach with some of these little tricks, I’m gonna, I’m gonna share with you here you can do that even dieting to get very lean.

Like I, I just finished my cut, now I’m starting my reverse diet and I’m about I’m calibrating at about six to six and a half percent and it looks about that looks about right I’m somewhere between six and seven percent probably a little bit under seven percent and this is where I’m happy.

I’ll stay here for summer and then in winter I usually eat a bit more, go up to eight or nine percent and then just rinse and repeat. So you can do this little cheat meal, these little cheat meal tricks even when you’re dieting to get very lean. You have to it, you have to use these tricks though in my experience.

Whereas when you are a bit when your body fat percentage is a bit higher if you’re just gonna do one meal a week, you really can just eat your normal stuff throughout the day, maybe go out to dinner. Don’t, binge, but eat, I don’t know. 1000 to 1300 1400 calories. Enjoy yourself and being a bit of surplus that day.

Maybe gain a little bit of fat by the end of the day. Your net get you. You haven’t lost that day. You gained a little bit, you lost enough during the week. It’s just not that big of a deal. But if you want to really minimize the amount of fact that you gain in your cheat meal, you can do a few things.

So one of the things that I really like to do is I save up calories for my cheat meal. And what that means is throughout the day, I usually have my cheat meals on Friday. Usually I go out to dinner with my wife and I don’t again, I can eat a lot of food if I want to eat. I could probably eat 4, 000 calories in one meal and that, that’s about my point where I really don’t want to eat anymore, but I can eat 2000 calories and really, feel at 60 percent capacity in terms of my stomach.

So I don’t go crazy, but I don’t want to have to, I’m not thinking about macros at all or calories at all. I want to sit down, I want to look at the menu, I want to order a couple appetizers and entree dessert. I don’t want to just want to eat what I want to eat and that’s it. So what I do is. I save up calories, meaning that throughout the day, I’m really only eating protein.

I have a little bit of carbs post workout, really a little bit, like 30, a banana, or a cup of rice milk, I have some protein post workout and my meals throughout the day are just protein. My lunch would be like Some salad and chicken with some balsamic vinegar. Of course, salad is a very small amount of carbs.

Maybe there’s 5 to 10 carbs in the salad. Not a big deal. And I’m not using very fatty dressing. I might use a little bit of vinaigrette. So I might get about 5 grams of fat and the rest is just balsamic vinegar. Very little bit of carbs. Again, maybe 5 grams of carbs. So I’m very carb light.

And then in the afternoon, I would just have a protein shake. And maybe a little bit more. Or maybe. I might do a little more chicken than I would normally do at lunch, because what I want to do is I want to come into dinner with about 30 or 40 grams of protein left to hit my daily number. And I want to basically have 90 to 95 percent of my calorie of my carbs and fats still available to me.

I just finished my cut and I was doing 2, 300 calories a day. At the end of this cut it was about, I believe, let’s just say, let’s just say it was about 200 protein 250 carb and about 60, 50, 60 fat were my final macros. And I reduced the carbs a little bit, maybe 230 or so.

So even then, that’s not that much food, but when I would save all that up, when I would come into dinner with. 200 carb and, 45, 50 fat left that’s actually a lot of food. Like you’d be hard pressed to eat more than that in, in one meal. Again, like I said, I can eat a lot, but that’s satisfying.

You know what I mean? That alone right there, that’s, 12, 1300 calories right there. And then you add some protein. So I have one serving of protein left, 30 or 40 grams left to hit my daily number. So that’s going to be some sort of protein dish. Maybe I’ll get some fish, maybe I’ll get some.

beef, chicken, pork, whatever. It doesn’t matter whatever I feel like having, which helps also with just fullness and satiety. And you just, you get that when part of the cheat meal is just the psychological enjoyment of, because if you’ve been restricting your calories for quite some time, after the six, seven, eighth week of doing it at least for me, I don’t get overly hungry.

I don’t really have energy problems, but the feeling of eating more food just begins to feel better and better. So there is that psychological benefit. So you get protein and a bit more satiety. That’s with only eating 2, 300 calories a day. When I was maintaining on my training days, I was eating about 3, 200 calories a day.

So now you can imagine, I come into dinner having only eaten my protein, and eating, and having eaten maybe about, 30 carbs and 10 fat. And now, so my total calorie intake is maybe at 1100 when I come into dinner. Or even less actually probably closer to 900. So now I have to eat about 2000 calories, 2200 calories just to hit my normal numbers for the day.

Now, of course, it feels ridiculous. If you come into dinner I don’t really get hungry for some odd reason. It really just doesn’t matter how I eat. I just don’t get hungry. I only will sometimes feel like I just would like to eat food, but I don’t get hunger pains anymore, which is strange, but I just don’t.

You might be hungry coming into dinner. And it feels like when, if you go sit down and you eat, 2200 calories in one meal, you feel like you just, you’re, you’re going to gain a pound of fat right there. But you’re not, you remember that dieting is just numbers and throughout the day you’ve been burning your normal amounts of energy reducing your calorie intake for over the course of nine, 10 hours does not slow down your metabolism.

So your metabolism just keeps running. You’re just burning more fat than you normally would throughout the day because you normally be eating food and there’s that balance of you burn a little bit of fat when you’re in a fasted state. Or post absorptive and then you eat food and then you gain a little bit of fat and then, by the end of the day, the amount of fat that you burned in the day is compared up against to the amount of fat that you gained through eating food, and then you have a net number there of fat loss or fat gain.

So what you’re doing is, you’re basically throughout the day, you’re burning a lot more fat than you normally would. Come dinner and then you’re just adding a lot more than you normally would in one meal, but you can, those can just balance out. So it, it feels like this has gotta be a terrible idea, but actually it works very well.

It’s something that you know I shouldn’t it, this doesn’t even necessarily need to be tested, per se, because it is that, that’s just how metabolism works. But it’s, I’ve been doing this for at least a year now. It’s been just a standard thing of mine, whether I’m cutting. or maintaining. I don’t really bulk much these days because I don’t really see a reason to.

I’m not trying to just put on size anymore. I’m happy with how my body is overall. That’s the first thing, save up calories. Another thing you can do is you can deplete glycogen stores before you go and have this meal. This is a minor thing. Like scientifically speaking and physiologically speaking, it’s something, it does do something Practically speaking, I’m not sure how much of a different actually a difference it actually makes, but it’s not a bad idea.

I will do it if it works on my schedule because basically what you want to do is glycogen is a form of glucose. It’s stored in your muscles and it’s stored in your liver. Your body uses this for energy. The what the glycogen in your liver is used when your body runs out of energy from food that you eat.

It’s done absorbing it. Part of the energy. Now it needs glucose in the blood. So it goes to your liver, pulls glycogen stores to converse them in the glucose keeps you going. Glucose in your muscles is used primarily in anaerobic exercise. So weightlifting it pulls heavily on glycogen stores. High intensity cardio pulls heavily on glycogen stores, whereas low intensity cardio doesn’t.

And when your body’s glycogen levels are low, when they’re depleted, it’s number one priority with glucose is it’s number one priority is to keep all the organs running. But then It’s second priority is to replenish glycogen stores. So when glycogen stores are low, and this has been scientifically proven, by the way, this is not just some theory.

When glycogen stores are low and you eat carbs, your body before it’s going to turn any of those carbs into body fat, glucose into body fat through a process called de novo lepidogenesis before that can occur it needs to replenish glycogen stores. So by depleting glycogen stores before you go eat a bunch of carbs.

I wouldn’t really call it a hack because I hate the whole biohacking type. It’s such a silly trend right now, instead of just sticking to fundamentals. A lot of people get lost in trying to hack their metabolism with all kinds of weird workout routines and weird supplement routines and weird diet routines that ultimately just don’t work, or don’t work nearly as well as, control your food intake, balance your macronutrients, lift heavy weights, use cardio accordingly, depending on your goals.

Anyway. So I wouldn’t say that it’s like a super metabolism hack or something like that, but it does buy you what you can think of it as. It buys you a little bit of a carb sink. It buys you a little bit more. It gives your body another thing it can do with all the food you’re about to give it besides store fat.

So you would deplete collection stores by, I would say what I do, Is the best way if I’m going to, if I’m going to do it, I have the time 20 minutes or so before before you’re going to be going out or whatever. You have to time it, but you need, you’re gonna need about 20 minutes. And really what you’re looking to do is you’re just, you can do like a whole body type workout, weightlifting where you’re just looking to, it doesn’t have to be necessarily heavy.

10 to 12 reps and we were failing at about 10 to 12 reps and that alone just doing that. So if you did a simple workout could just be stick to the compounds, just, do a set of 10 to 12 rep deadlifts, or do a couple sets of that, a couple sets of squats, a couple sets of bench press, a couple sets of military press.

There you go. And really actually you could probably be about the military because it’s a smaller muscle group. So if you really just focused on. Your push with bench press, your pole with deadlift in your legs with squats and you just stuck 10 to 12 reps to a few sets of each.

That’s all you’re really looking to do is just burn up some glycogen. You can also do it with high intensity cardio that does burn up glycogen as well. But the weightlifting workout would burn up a bit more. So that’s another little thing you can do and then you do that and then you go out and you eat and you your body will store less carbs as fat as a result of that.

Yeah. It, like I said, it’s not going to be a huge difference because that process whereby the body converts carbohydrates into fat isn’t all that efficient anyway, but it’s something you should just know about. And then that brings me to the next point, which is the worst type of cheat meal that you can have is a very high fat meal.

You want to your cheat meals. Like I said, I always like to include some protein. But you want to stick to high carb. That’s what you want your enjoyment. I could say stick to high protein. That would be best. And that’s true. But that’s not a fun cheat meal. You want to just go eat three steaks or something.

No, you want, pasta, you want bread, you want the carby stuff, you want desserts, you want whatever that tastes good. High carb is fine and it’s much better than high fat because dietary fat is stored as body fat very efficiently. Carbohydrates are not stored nearly as efficiently because they have to be converted from their form.

You, whatever you eat carbs, it’s broken down into glucose. And then that glucose needs to be turned into that type of molecule needs to be turned into a lipid, a totally different type of molecule. And that process costs energy. According to research, I believe it’s about 25 percent of the energy in a carbohydrate is utilized in that process of actually turning it into body fat and your body has more uses for carbs.

Like I said, there’s the whole glycogen matter, which especially if you’re lifting weights and your body stores glycogen and muscles in the muscles and the more muscle you have, the more glycogen your body can hold. So your body can do more with Excess Carbohydrate Than It Can With Excess Dietary Fat The Primary What Prime What Mainly Happens With Dietary Fat Is It Just Gets Turned Into Body Fat And That’S Not A Bad Thing Your Body Body Fat Is Necessary For Life I Mean If You Drop As A Guy If You Are If You Get Too Low You Die You Know Down If You Get Down To Three Percent You’re Dead And Where I’M At Right Now Six Or Seven Percent Is Really The Cut Off For Maintaining Health Because the amount of body fat you have on your body relates to hormone production and other things that just affect your overall health.

You don’t want to be too lean. So your body does have other uses for dietary fats. They are used in the synthesis of hormones. They are used in regenerating cells, but a big major role they play is just replenishing body fat stores. So you go out and you eat a ton of dietary fat. That means gaining weight.

Fat really is what that’s just directly going to be stored as fat and a pound. What’s a pound? I believe it’s like 400 and something grams. Let’s see

Yeah, I’m checking Google right now 453 grams That is a lot of dietary fat to eat, but you can do it. Depending on what you order, you’d be surprised how much fat is in foods, certain foods that taste really good. Full of just butter, cream, cheese. The butter and oil are, when you go to restaurants and you’re eating tasty stuff, it’s all over the place.

It’s very easy to hit 200 grams of fat in a meal. That’s if you are not quite If you just don’t care or you don’t know exactly what to look for on the menu, you can easily hit 200 grams. Think about 200 grams of fat, that’s a half a pound. If that were just converted directly into body fat, which is almost essentially what happens.

Compare that 25 percent energy cost to convert carbohydrates and body fat and research shows it’s zero to 3 percent to convert dietary fat to, to body fat. It’s because the molecule is essentially almost the same thing. It doesn’t need to be processed nearly as much to be stored as body fat.

She’s beat. Transported and change a little bit. , the, you want your cheat meal to be a high carb meal. That’s the most enjoyable way to do it without gaining a bunch of fat. You don’t have to completely avoid fats, of course, because that would be impossible. If you’re gonna go enjoy yourself, it’s gonna have, you are gonna have some fat, if you’re gonna eat some bread, you’re gonna probably want some butter with it.

If you’re gonna get a pasta, there’s gonna be some oil. Even meats, if you want to, if you want a burger or something like that, there’s fat there. So that’s okay. That’s why I save my fat. I want to save pretty much all of it. I save all the carbs too, but that it’s important that it’s more important that you save all of your fats for that meal.

So depending on what you’re doing with your diet you can also, once again, I don’t think about this all that much, but you also, let’s say you want to have a fattier meal Let’s say you want to eat 100 grams of fat, but you normally would only have 50 in a day. If you really wanted to, you could just do it.

It’s not that big of a deal. And actually 50 grams of fat. Okay, fine. But if you really wanted to be fancy with it, you could cut a little bit back on the carbs. So let’s say you had 200 carbs left and you want to go you want to eat a really fatty meal, 50 grams fat over your normal daily intake.

You could cut your carbs intake down to about 100 grams in that meal and just make up for the calories of it. So again, I do recommend don’t get too worried about it. Eat what you want to eat. Don’t go completely overboard. And if if you’re fine with it, I recommend sticking to a lower fat meal, high carb, enjoy the carbs include some protein.

And don’t worry too much about the numbers, but if you are looking at something that just, this has an insane amount of fat, like a tablespoon of oil is about 12 grams of fat, for instance, same thing with the butter, a tablespoon, that’s not a lot cream is about, is the same or more, actually, I’m not sure, but you start looking at certain foods and you can get an idea, you see this big bowl just filled with cheese and cream and butter.

And, pasta like, like a macaroni and cheese, a big macaroni and cheese thing that is a shitload of fats. Just know that so if you want to do that and you really want to, especially as you this matters a lot actually when you’re cutting to get really lean, like my cheat meals is as I was cutting down, I wouldn’t do that.

I don’t go out and have the the big macaroni and cheese. Like instead I would go out, maybe I get some calamari, which, has some carbs, has a little bit of fat. I’ll get some protein, I’ll eat some bread and I’ll save all my carbs for a dessert, for instance, like I’ll have some, I just last weekend, I went and had carrot cake because I love carrot cake, and yeah, the frosting has some fat, but I saved everything basically for that carrot cake, like I had some calamari, which is just some protein, a little bit of carbs, a little bit of fat, had some fish, low fat fish, and then I had carrot cake.

Okay, it works. So yeah, that’s that point. The next point is alcohol. If you’re going to drink alcohol, stay away from carb heavy drinks like beer and fruity stuff. Dry wines are good as well as spirits. I’ll link an article. I won’t go into all the reasons why. Instead, I’m just going to link an article below so you can see why I recommend this.

But to just give you a quick summary, basically the problem with alcohol is not the molecule itself. itself. The molecule itself isn’t converted into body fat. Basically it’s not at all like alcohol. The molecule does not turn in body fat, but what it does is it blunts fat oxidation. So it accelerates the rate at which your body stores especially dietary fats as body fat.

So that’s why the, the standard type of cheat meal like beer and pizza and wings, just tons of fat and some carbs in there, but tons of fat and alcohol is. That’s what you don’t want. And it also can mess with your carb metabolism as well. So I do recommend if, as you’re getting leaner and leaner, there probably is a, you probably are going to have to limit your alcohol intake.

Keep it pretty under control. I don’t drink at all. I never really got into it. I don’t care. I’m not against it, but it’s just not my thing. So I can’t really speak from experience on this, but I’ve worked with a lot of people and that has become a sticking point for a lot of people where it was just the alcohol intake.

And we got rid of the alcohol intake with the cheat meals. And then all of a sudden they’re losing fat again. So that’s something to keep in mind is don’t go crazy on the alcohol and stick to dry wines. Spirits are better. And yeah. I’ll link the article and you’ll see, I give some more tips on dietary why diet wise, what you want to do if you’re going to be drinking because your dietary fat intake is even more important if you’re going to be drinking.

So another thing here is you can reduce your calorie intake for the, over the next day or two if it’s necessary. So let’s say you overdo it or you want to overdo it. Part of succeeding in the long run in this game is, Just being flexible. Like sometimes if I’m at a restaurant that’s exceptional and I want to eat a lot of food, I don’t care.

I’m gonna eat a bunch of fat and I’m going to overdo it. That’s fine. And I do that. But then I just compensate for it by the next day. Maybe I cut my calorie intake by 1000 the next day. So I really just eat maybe not a thousand, maybe it depends on what I’m doing with my diet. It could be 500, it could be a thousand, but I get my protein in and I get, a bare, a basic number of amount of fat in for health reasons and just cut my carbs very low for the next day.

Is it particularly fun? No. Like again, I, again, as I said, I don’t really get that hungry, it doesn’t bother me. But one day of very low calorie isn’t going to cause any issues. Very low calorie dieting causes issues when you do it for a long time. That’s when it causes issues. So maybe I go for, I wouldn’t even say very low calorie.

I would say my intake if I were doing that right now, if I were cutting, still cutting 2300 calories a day, I really overdo it on my cheat meal, then maybe I eat 1300 calories the next day, just basically protein and some fats and keep my carbs to nothing. And, that then makes up for when you look at my, now you look at my calories burned versus my calories consumed over those two days.

It now works out, the cheat day or the cheat meal, the day that I had a cheat meal. Disaster. But then I make up for it by reducing calorie intake. The next day it works out on the deck on that next day. Maybe I do a little bit of exercise. Maybe I just do some like walking. Nothing all that intense.

I’m not eating that much food. But just burn a little bit of energy. And it probably wouldn’t even take a third day to balance that out. But if it did, then I guess I could do that. But you can do that. As long as it’s a day or two, it’s not a big deal. So those are all the major, those are all the major cheat meal little strategies that I use to really just enjoy myself.

It’s also psychologically , I could say soothing to to do these things and know that they work because then you just go to a restaurant. You’re not fretting over what you should order or if you should eat that, or is it really worth it or are you just gonna ruin your week’s worth of progress. You just get to go and you get to have the things you like.

Certain things, maybe you stay away from it. That doesn’t bother you. Okay. There are a couple dishes, yeah, that sounds good. But this other thing sounds just as good. Instead of the super cheesy, fatty pasta, I’m going to go with the pizza because, depending on how the pizza is prepared, it could actually not be that bad.

It could just be like 60, 70 grams fat, some carbs, and that’s it. And you’re done and you can eat a big pizza and feel quite satisfied. Although pizza is on the edge cause it is quite fatty, but you get the idea. And remember, stick to a cheat meal each week, not a cheat day.

Cheat days are killer. And now I think you see why. When you start looking at these numbers, you go and eat in a day, you can easily eat, 400 grams of fat, 400 grams of carbs. And I guarantee you, especially when this is usually on a rest day too, where you’re not even exercising, you’re not moving around and you had alcohol in it.

You can gain a pound of fat in a day easy or more. I got to get people to go on vacation and. Gain two and a half pounds a day for the first week or something like that. I’ve, there’s a guy who works for me that, that’s like we always joke with him. He just goes apeshit on food when he goes out and he gains about two pounds a day and then he has to come back and cut for four weeks just to undo it.

Yeah. That’s the, yeah that’s the cheat meal. That’s the cheat meal game, how to enjoy it without ruining your diet, without, putting on too much fat. All right. So now just kind of transition into the next thing I want to talk to, which is just their talk about which is a couple of things that I just, I just don’t like about the fitness culture and that bothers me about it.

And that ironically, there were a couple of things that kept me from wanting to ever work in the fitness industry and just, I didn’t like being around it. I liked being fit and I liked working out. But. I didn’t like a lot of the people that also were fit and into working out. And there are a few reasons why.

So one of the things is body dysmorphia where people, they get, this is where people think like with us guys, it’s normally, we never think we’re big enough from everything. We’re lean enough. How we see our bodies becomes twisted. In turn when you look at it in an objective sense, like a guy could be, in my shape and feel like he looks terrible, and nitpick his physique and everything that’s wrong with it. And yeah, my abs aren’t, they’re staggered and that doesn’t look good. And I don’t have a full six pack because for some reason only two of my abs are really all that developed on either sides of this four pack going.

And never lean enough because I have this, I can still grab this tiny little bit back here because it’s not, I’m not, 4 percent or something like that. And but it sounds funny but for some people it becomes like a very, unhealthy type of mental state where they become obsessed over this and it becomes quite a problem for them almost where these sometimes email with people that are to the point of being depressed about it.

And I think that, if you get too consumed with how you look and too consumed with your body and just, you’re with fitness in general, it just becomes mentally unhealthy. Even fretting over Because you’re holding a little bit more water today than yesterday and what’s going, what, then you’re thinking over your diet.

Did you overeat? And then we didn’t overeat. So what’s going on? I try to stay away. I personally, I don’t go down that road. I try to stay balanced and objective about my body. I’m happy with how things are. Also something to realize is the vast majority of people that you see on instagram and social media, whatever.

A lot of these guys that are big, it’s super lean. And the girls also that are, and have like super developed muscles very lean is they’re on drugs. And I know I harp on this and stuff. And the reason why though is more because of this point, I don’t care that people on drugs do all the drugs you want.

It doesn’t bother me, your body, your thing don’t care, but. It can be for people that are on the outside looking in and they don’t know that it can fuel this type of dissatisfaction with themselves because they look at these guys and girls and go like, why, how is that possible? I want to look like that.

And if you set that as a goal, but we need That’s fine, but you need to know how that person got there. If you’re not willing to do all the drugs, and you don’t know how to do all the drugs, you’re not going to look like that. There just is a look, there are things that you can do, with the physique, with drugs, that you simply can’t do naturally.

I would say, in terms of like overall impressiveness a natural physique, like a really well trained natural physique is 50 percent of a really well trained drug physique. You put them side by side, same weight, more or less same body fat percentage and the drugger looks twice as good and that’s just the way it is.

So just know that set realistic goals for yourself and just know that if you’re aspiring to look like a top tier physique competitor. Why? That person is on a lot of drugs. Just know that when you’re seeing a lot of these pictures and don’t judge yourself harshly because of what in these pictures.

There are plenty of guys and girls, on Instagram and such that are natural and that look great. But they just don’t look nearly as good as the drug guys ever. So that, that’s one thing that I think is, I don’t like this body dysmorphia type thing in the fitness culture. Another thing I don’t like is, It’s the kind of overblown sense of achievement and self importance that we see in this space.

You read some of the captions of these people’s daily selfies, and you’d think they just conquered a country or something. You’d think they just defeated an army in hand to hand combat or something like that. I’m all for motivating and being motivated and staying on track, but I think it becomes a bit cheesy and overblown.

Let’s look at it realistically. What do we do? We go and we pick up heavy things and we put them down and we control our food intake. That’s what we do. That’s it. There’s not, there’s really not anything else to it. We do that stuff. Our bodies improve. Voila. Magic, right? I think that It’s really just not that special.

Yeah, it takes discipline and it takes some know how, in the greater scheme of things. And I’m saying this as someone that this is what I do for a living. I’ve always been into fitness. I played sports growing up. I’ve always, I keep myself in good shape, but I’m not that person.

Thinking that I am such a special, amazing human because I know how to pick weights up and put them down and control my calories and stuff. I think it’s much better to look at it that way as something that’s really, it’s just, it’s something that we do is something that’s healthy.

It’s nice to look good, but it’s not like we have finally made it in life. Like we, some of these people are like It’s as if they’ve won in life, like they’re dominating life because they know how to lift weights and build some muscle. I just don’t agree with that. I think that, I think it it takes a lot more effort and a lot more discipline to build a successful career or a company to raise a family, to give back to communities, to do charity work to be a good friend.

And I think all those things are a lot more admirable, personally, than just, I picked the barbell up, I put the barbell down, I follow my meal plan, I get shredded. Okay. That is really all it is. Yeah, I guess it’s just maybe a little bit of a rant but I think staying humble and keeping what we’re doing in proportion to the overall picture of, life in general, I think is healthy.

And to not get too consumed with just this one little thing of getting in shape to the exclusion of everything else. And really not using it as a point to be arrogant or think that you’re, and I don’t say you personally, I’m saying because chances are you’re not like this, but you see it a lot where these people, they think that they’re, super human because they get in the gym every day.

And. Control their food. And in many cases, use drugs as well. So just my thoughts on the matter and keeping it keeping it downplayed for me definitely has just, I think, helped prevent me from turning into that type of person that I don’t like and focusing more on just how I can help others.

I do things, I do my stuff, but I’m more interested in just seeing other people Do well as opposed to getting all this attention for me and look at how amazing I am and like I’m not even into posting Selfies if I didn’t have to do it for my work just to prove that I know what I’m doing I wouldn’t even do it because I really don’t care to get the attention, honestly So that’s me.

All right. That’s it for this podcast. I hope you liked it Lots more stuff coming and be doing some more interviews for the next few and yeah, but I have a new book launch, new book coming out very soon Beyond Bigger Than You’re Stronger. That’s the sequel to Bigger Than You’re Stronger.

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

Hope you like 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 four to six new articles a week. And you can also find my books and everything else that I’m involved in over at muscleforllife. com. Alright, thanks again. Bye.