Ep. #510: How Cheri Used Thinner Leaner Stronger to Drop 46 Pounds and 12 Sizes

Mike: Hey, Mike here. And if you like what I’m doing on the podcast and elsewhere, and if you want to help me help more people get into the best shape of their lives, please consider checking out my VIP one on one coaching service, where we can help you get in the best shape of your life. life. My team and I have helped people of all ages, circumstances, and needs.

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Go ahead and schedule your call now. Again, that URL is legionathletics. com slash coaching. Hello and welcome to another episode of Muscle for Life. I’m Mike Matthews and this time around I interview Sherry who read my book for women, Thinner, Leaner, Stronger, and then used it to completely change her body and life.

Now when she first started on her fitness journey, Sherry was about 187 pounds and well over 30 percent body fat, and she had tried many diets. things to lose weight and keep it off, including high and low volume and intensity training programs and even the HCG diet. Remember that one where you starve yourself on about 500 calories per day and then supplement with a hormone that is supposed to take away all your hunger and preserve all your muscle?

And of course it doesn’t. You just starve. After years of frustration, though, Sherry read my book, Thinner When You’re Stronger, and then got started with proper and effective training in nutrition, and she started seeing results almost immediately. And then, in the span of about a year, she not only dropped to 141 pounds, so she lost about 46 pounds.

She also dropped 12 sizes and completely transformed her body composition by adding muscle in all the right places. And that also taught her first hand why what In the mirror is far more important than what on the scale and that is particularly meaningful for women who have been indoctrinated to live and die by the scale.

And Sherry was so happy with her results that she has since gotten several other women to start the thinner, leaner, stronger program. And she’s even created a fit over 50 Facebook group for like minded women to join a community. and hold each other accountable. And in this interview, Sherry and I chat about her story and the important lessons she’s learned along the way, including how she learned to use the gym equipment properly, which can be an obstacle that many people who are experienced weightlifters maybe don’t remember what it was like.

But if you can think back to when you first stepped into a gym it’s daunting. And when you first tried to squat and deadlift and bench press and overhead press, it’s tricky. And we also talk about how Sherry found a balanced approach to her diet and how she became a certified personal trainer and why and more.

If you are looking for a jolt of inspiration and if you like motivational stories, I highly recommend this episode. And here it is. Hey, Sherry. Thanks for taking the time to do this. I appreciate it. 

Cheri: Oh, you’re so welcome. I’m so excited. 

Mike: Yeah, me too. This is great because your transformation’s great. Your story’s great.

And it’s always fun to see the fruits of my work. And of course you put in the work too, but I got to show you the way at least. 

Cheri: Yeah, absolutely. Oh my gosh. And so many other people since then from my little post on Facebook and things like that. So many of my friends are doing your program.

At one point I had. Four girls in the gym with me, and we all had our big workbooks out. And I took a picture of us standing there, like with our notebooks on our knees, writing down our numbers and shared it on social media. Cause I was like, look, it just takes one person to pick up a program, to get other people motivated.

Like it’s amazing. 

Mike: Yeah that’s so true. And I see that more often with women than men. And I think that’s just because, I don’t know, I think women are, More interested in what other women are doing. And I think women are more likely if they like something to tell their friends about it. It just seems like more word of mouth, not just with books, but in with Legion and yeah, with everything that if you can make women happy, you’re going to get a lot more word of mouth from that than men.

Cheri: In general, if you just make women happy, period. End of story. 

Mike: Imagine a world where women were on the whole completely unhappy. If there were no women or no happy women working to make the world prettier and more enjoyable, everything might be over by now. But if not, it would be so disgusting.

Imagine a world of just men. 

Cheri: It’d be like the barbarian thing. A lot of grunt and breaking stuff. 

Mike: It would just be one big frat house. That’d be the world. It’d be a complete shithole. 

Cheri: I love it. Oh my gosh. 

Mike: But that’s not what we’re here to talk about. We’re here to talk about you. And so why don’t we start with where you were at before you found me and found my work and what you had tried up until that point and what was working and what was not working, what was going on?

Cheri: Nothing was working and I was literally working with a trainer at lunchtime and then I would come home at night and work with a trainer and I know you say, things about overtraining or whatever, but I tried under training, middle training, overtraining. I tried everything. I didn’t have success.

I was. Send them my pictures of my food and my trainer. And at one point one of them was like, are you not sending me certain things? I tried shots in my stomach. I had tried drops under my tongue. I had tried the cinnamon stuff that gets y’all jacked up and makes you almost die. Like I literally tried everything.

That’s why I’m so passionate about it because I was like, okay, if this can work for me, who’s tried everything and I’m in my middle forties at the time. It can work for anybody because a lot of people just think, Oh, it’s, she’s young. No, I’m not young. I just look younger. Now everything about me is better.

Like my skin, my hair, like everything, obviously my body. But so I seriously had tried it all. It was 187 pounds. 30 something percent body fat. I want to keep thinking it was like 37 or 38, but I can’t remember the exact number. I just know I was in a size 18 when I started. The crazy fact that I bought your book back in 2017, I didn’t even start the challenge for seven months after that, but I read it.

How 

Mike: come? 

Cheri: Just excuses. It’s just excuses, and then what changed? Nothing else worked. I don’t know. I just, I kept following your stuff online and reading your articles. And I love how one article you can click on something. It takes you to the next one. Like you’ve got all those links in there.

And one of them led to something. About hormone balance, intermittent fasting. And that was the first one. And I was like, okay, I can do this intermittent fasting thing. I surely I can do that. So I just started making up really dumb rules. If I was at the office and people put food there, I’d say, okay, if it’s there in an hour, I’m eating that donut.

Mike: That’s actually smart in that it’s just intuitively smart. It’s been shown in research. And it’s one of those little psychological hacks, so to speak, that people who talk a lot about habit building will usually talk about. And that is if you feel like. You impulsively want to do something that you shouldn’t do, or it would be counterproductive.

Give yourself 10 minutes. Just say, all right, I’m not going to do that for 10 minutes. And if in 10 minutes I still really want to do it, I’m going to do it. But oftentimes what you’ll find is if you can just wait out the first five minutes or so the urge will subside and then that’s it. 

Cheri: I’m pretty sure I read it from something you said, cause I wouldn’t have even thought to, I will tell you this though, when an hour was up, if I saw the food again, I would go, I’m That’s disgusting.

People that don’t wash their hands have touched it. Now I would never touch it. So it was all a mind game. So I’m like, you can always trick your mind into helping you get through stuff. You just have to get the right trick. I’m like, I’m gross about germs and people not washing their hands. And so an hour later, I’m like, Oh, you’re nasty.

But that when I first saw the food, I just was like, okay, one hour you can wait this out and just go back to work and take your mind off of it or whatever. So that was huge for me. So the intermittent fasting is what spearheaded the whole thing was the article you did on that. So then I bought the book, but I’m like, I’m doing intermittent fasting.

We’ll see how it goes. It’s just like one thing led to another and I read the book all the time. I said if I could burn calories reading Mike Matthews stuff and watching him online, I’d already be skinny. Because that’s how involved I was with it. The path I’m on now is because everything I’d ever researched to death.

You know how like you can go down a rabbit hole and research it? Everything I’d ever done I saw in that book and I was like, oh my gosh, he’s right. You put it in a book and you put the study references. Of course you’re right. But I felt like nobody else was agreeing with the things that I was finding online.

Like I just kept finding this junk and junk and the magazines that are paid for by the other company. You know what I mean? I’m like, that’s junk. That’s not true. That’s, I don’t find that’s true. But everything in your book went right along with the stuff that I’d spent. All this time, rabbit hole in for a couple of years before, like it was ridiculous how much time I spent trying to find the exact answer because nothing I did work. The fact that you go to where you’ll stick a shot of something in your stomach, like that is where, you have reached the, 

Mike: I would say rock bottom is probably like a weight loss surgery, but yeah, you’re getting there.

Oh, you’re getting there. What’s this shot in the stomach. I feel like I haven’t even heard of this. 

Cheri: I feel like it was another woman’s, a pregnant woman’s hormones, they said. 

Mike: Yeah. Yeah. HCG. Yeah. 

Cheri: Yeah. Yeah. And I ended up throwing them out because I couldn’t even I did it twice and I was like the panic attack that set in after I’d get that needle out wasn’t worth it.

Mike: Yeah. Yeah. That’s the hardcore way to do it. Many people, they would just get the droppers and it was, it’s just a starvation diet. And most of those products, I would bet a lot of money actually had nothing basically in them. And so it was just a placebo effect if it did have any impact on diet whatsoever.

But it was eat 500 calories a day. I think it was like mostly protein and take these little HCG drops. And supposedly, of course the pitch was that it was the supplement. It was the little drops that were, that’s the real magic. If you just starve yourself without the HCG drops, Oh, it’s going to be terrible.

You’re going to. Have crazy hunger pangs and cravings, and you’re going to lose all this muscle. And yeah, it was a thing for a while. I remember. 

Cheri: Yeah. I tried it all. 

Mike: How did you officially start doing it the right way? Did you start with diet or exercise or both? Or what was that point? I 

Cheri: started with the intermittent fasting.

And then you interviewed somebody that was talking about hormone balance. And so I talked to my mom who uses essential oils for like everything and I wonder if they have anything to fix my crazy. Cause I felt like I was losing my whole mind and to balance my hormones. Because all my tests showed that I was normal.

I was like, there ain’t nothing about me that’s normal. My hair was falling out and stuff. I had problems. And so she gave me some stuff that just happened to make me drop my first pound. And that had been after years of not dropping a pound. And I was like, Whoa, okay. So I went back and was retested and it turns out I was not everybody else’s normal.

But then I thought, okay, if I can lose a pound now, then I know I can train and lose another pound. Like I knew then there was hope. Does that make sense? 

Mike: Sure. What did you find that was abnormal? What? 

Cheri: My thyroid. 

Mike: So 

Cheri: everybody else is normal between one and six and I was at a five. And for me, that wasn’t enough.

And when I started using that oil, and I don’t want people to think it’s a magic pill. It’s not, but when I started using it, my number dropped by three. And then that’s how I lost a pound. I was like, Oh my gosh. So I’m just not everybody else’s normal. I got to be on the lower end. To be able to lose any weight.

And that’s why I was like, okay, so if we’re going to help wasn’t working for me at that time, like I don’t know if it was, I was doing it wrong or whatever else. I just know when I lost the first pound, I was like, okay, I’ve been reading this dang book and following this guy for seven months. Let’s go put it to the test.

And so that’s when I stepped in the gym with the link to the videos, that thing that you have when you buy the book and then it links to the videos. Do you know what I mean? Like in the table of content. 

Mike: Yeah. The bonus content, like the PDF that you download. Yep, 

Cheri: Yes. That thing is life changing because I’d have to watch the video to do it.

A girl came into the gym yesterday. I was working with and she laid down on the bench backwards with her head where the behind goes. And I was like, Oh my gosh this is why I want to do what I’m doing because I can make you walk into a gym and feel like, Oh yeah, I got this. Where with me, it was just like, you were in my ears.

You were in my book. Like you did it with me. So now I just do it with other people. I was like, no, Mike got me here, but I’ll take y’all 

Mike: there. How did it go in the beginning? 

Cheri: Oh, it was awful. I like, I got under the bar. I was like, okay, bench press. So let me just get under this bar. And I was like, Oh, so I’m going to have to start with dumbbells.

I’m devastated at this point. And it was a lot of it. 

Mike: That’s actually a change that I made in the third edition because I’d gotten a lot of feedback from women over the years on the second edition, which you read. And that was one of the points was it was an oversight really. And it actually makes more sense to just have women start with dumbbell pressing first, because that’s very common.

There are some women who just jump into it and they can work with the bar, but More often than not, the bar is too heavy to get eight to 10 proper reps. And so that’s, for example, a change that I made in the among a number of changes, but 

Cheri: I heard 

Mike: Roman saying, we’re going to send you one. Yeah, that’d 

Cheri: be cool.

Mike: Yeah. So 

Cheri: that was a lot of ego stuff. And for me, that’s where my problems usually fall is in the ego zone. That’s I’m like, Oh, of course I have a problem with that. It’s ego related. But I just stuck to it. I was like, whatever, I’m warming up with the five pound dumbbells. I’m barely doing anything with the tens.

And so somebody else might look at it now and go, Oh, so you only bench 75. And I’m like, but you don’t know where I started. Okay. It was a long road. 

Mike: That’s still pretty strong. 

Cheri: Oh, thank you. 

Mike: When Woman gets to, and she starts approaching body weight. That’s like impressive. That takes a lot of work.

And 

Cheri: I will agree with that. It took a lot of work. And so in a lot of the times when my other girls would fall off or whatever, I didn’t have anybody to spot me and I’m working out in a gym by myself or whatever. I just wasn’t able to push to the point of failure and stuff. So I’m like trying new things and whatever.

So I didn’t grow much for a long time and I just got it up by five pounds recently because somebody did spot me and I started doing just heavier, more like some of your stuff, it comes out and I’m like, Oh, wait a minute. That wasn’t in the book. Okay. I’m going to try that. And then this recent one you did was like you don’t have to fail every time.

And I was like, Oh, you don’t. Okay. Because I go in there, like I brutalized my body and I’m like, Dad. 

Mike: Yeah. Which is. I guess in the scheme of things that might be better than drastically under training, but yeah, the sweet spot is, I wouldn’t even say in the middle necessarily. It is more toward the end of the extreme over training end, but yeah, you don’t want to go too far in that direction.

And that ironically also is something that I think I make more clear in the third edition is exactly how hard should you be working in your sets, in your hard sets, working sets. And for anybody listening, who’s not sure in one I’m wondering, this doesn’t just apply to women or my women’s program.

It’s really just in general, the rule of thumb is, and most of your working sets about a rep or two shy of technical failure. And that’s the point where your form starts to break down. Not even absolute failure. Absolute failure is where you actually can’t continue anymore. If you’re squatting, absolute failure is you get to the bottom and you’re not coming back up.

Like you’re sitting that weight down on the safety arms, whereas technical failure is where it’s hard and you might. Be a few reps away from absolute failure, but if you’re training to technical failure, it would be okay. You’re grinding a rep out and you start to feel your form break down a little bit.

Maybe if you are squatting, you start to waver side to side. Maybe you feel that your knees are starting to buckle in again, where now you are aware of impaired form. And so that would be the point of technical failure. And you can Go to that point now and then it should be probably part of a programming though, not just randomly.

And that’s, again, that’s more relevant to intermediate and advanced weightlifters than complete newbies, which, I don’t know, actually, how long have you been Doing it right for how much proper training do you have? 

Cheri: Okay. Is proper training from you or from the certification? I’m not sure which one you mean.

Mike: Doing it right in the gym. So that means putting a lot of your efforts into compound exercises, focusing on progressive overload, the basic things that you learned in the book. 

Cheri: Oh, okay. So probably right, maybe a little over a year now. 

Mike: Okay. You’re getting to that point now where you’re definitely, you’re in the beginning of your intermediate phase.

And so what you’ll find is that all the basic principles still apply, but you have to start working harder. To continue making progress. 

Cheri: Yes. I read that just recently that where you said that, where you were like, it was in the post with you and your skivvies Oh 

Mike: yeah, 

Cheri: I think you’re going to do a lot more work with a lot less results.

And I’m there now. And that is so frustrating. And I’m so glad I read that when I did, because I’m like, Oh, that’s what he was talking about. I see a picture of me from last year when I thought I was all that and put myself up there in a bikini. I tagged you in it and you were like, Hey, you want to come on my podcast?

And I was like, Nope, not ready. And then I saw it this year. And then you said, Hey, when I was like, actually, yes, because I’m never going to think I’m ready. Not ever, the difference in my body was still drastic, but not enough to where somebody else would go. It took her a year to do that extra, or whatever.

Mike: And that’s totally normal. No matter how optimal your training is, no matter how optimal your diet is, things slow down. It also depends on what your goals are too. With guys, it’s pretty straightforward. They usually just want to get bigger. That’s it. I just want to be bigger, never big enough, right?

Women though, that’s often not the case. I want a certain amount of. Muscle and muscle definition and muscle tone. But there is a point when most women are generally happy. And then maybe it’s more about, Oh, I’d like a little bit more of this specifically, as opposed to just, I want everything just to be bigger.

Or maybe it’s, I’d like to be a bit stronger or oftentimes it’s, I’m pretty happy where I’m at, actually. I like exercising. I want to enjoy my workouts. I want to stay lean. And otherwise though, we all have things that we could go. I could use a little bit more than that. But women seem to get to a point of happy maintenance faster than men who often are never satisfied basically with, they always feel too small.

So that point of taking most of your sets to the point basically, where you feel that you got a good rep and your form was good. But it’s getting a little bit shaky. And your next rep is, might be a little bit ugly right around there. Is that’s a good rule of thumb of where you then can just end the set.

You don’t need to go to the point where your form starts breaking down. And you certainly don’t need to go to the point where you simply can’t even move the weight anymore. And as far as what to do and what to change, at least as you become an intermediate weightlifter, that’s what I have. So currently I only have a sequel.

to bigger, leaner, stronger. So I only have the, a book for men that talks about that. And I’m in the middle of rewriting that book. So it’s going to be a new second edition. And the reason why originally I didn’t produce one for women is I wasn’t sure where to go with it. Because again, with guys, it’s pretty straightforward being a guy.

I know like bigger, leaner, stronger. We’ll take you so far. It’s maybe it’ll help a guy get probably his first I don’t know, 20, depending on his genetics, let’s say 20 to 25, maybe 30 pounds of muscle really depends on a number of factors. At that point though, it becomes more of a maintenance program. You got to work harder than bigger, leaner, stronger as you work.

If you want to gain the last, let’s call it 10 ish pounds of muscle that are available to you. And so for guys, it’s very simple. Most guys, they just want to get those last 10 pounds of muscle. So I know exactly, okay, this is then here’s the next phase of your journey basically. And here’s what changed.

Whereas with women, I wasn’t sure at the time what that looked like because many women really honestly don’t need more than what’s in thinner, lean, or stronger to get to where they want to be again, because most women are not. In the same headspace as guys. So not just I just get me as jacked as possible.

And that’s it. That’s why I’m here. But now having worked with many women over the years, I have a good idea of how I can make that book productive and still in service of the goals of most women who are in the gym, not just maybe the extreme ones, the outliers who are just super into building muscle or getting strong.

And so that book will Come and fortunately, many of the principles of the men’s book will apply to women similar to how the books are. Beginners books are right now. So when the new men’s book comes out. Like you and other women will be able to read it and actually learn quite a bit and adapt quite a bit of what’s in there to what you’re doing, but it won’t be as female specific, obviously, as the women’s version is going to be.

But if you or anybody listening is wondering. You have to work harder. And really what that means is, yes, you do have to continue making sure that you’re getting stronger over time. That’s always the key is adding weight to the bar, adding weight to the dumbbells over time. It becomes a slow process though.

Don’t expect it to be anything like it was in your first six months or even year or so. And then you have to often, Do more volume than you’re currently doing to be able to achieve that. For example, if you’re currently doing nine or 10 heavy sets per major muscle group per week, that’ll get you so far in terms of strength and muscle gain, then you’ll get stuck.

And the. Major change that you’re gonna have to make is not so much your exercises that you’re doing or the rep ranges that you’re working in. You can optimize that a bit, which I will do in the book, and I will lay that out, but the primary factor that is going to keep you moving ahead is doing more.

Hard set. So it might turn into 13 or 14 hard sets per major muscle group per week. And that alone is going to be enough to keep you going. Maybe it could be further optimized, but again, if you are feeling stuck around nine or 10 sets, Per major most group per week, simply doing a bit more is almost certainly going to unstick you and allow you to continue making progress.

And again, the primary benchmark of progress is whole body strength is that your weight is going up on your key lifts. And again, even if it’s. Slowly, even if you’re only adding weight to the bar every month on your big lifts, that’s okay. Progress is progress in the beginning. It’s there’s so much progress that it’s easy to fall into the trap of, or the have the attitude of Oh yeah, I’m progressing, but I’m not progressing fast enough.

You have to change your mindset as you become an intermediate and certainly as an advanced weightlifter where any progress is progress. That’s good. You’re not stuck. You are moving. You might be able to move a little bit faster, but if you are progressing, chances are you probably won’t be able to move that much faster because it becomes more binary of you’re either progressing or you’re not.

So anyways, hijack the conversation there. Hopefully I shared some helpful information. 

Cheri: Absolutely. Because that’s where I am right now. It’s like, why did that only increase by that much? I used to could do this in two months. Like when it took me You know, this long to do, but that book that you did, the, it was even bigger, leaner, stronger, 

Mike: Beyond bigger than your shoulder.

Cheri: That’s what it is. No, I read that one too. And there, it’s funny that you say that you’re going to do that for a girl, because while I’m reading it, there’s certain things I’m like, dang it. I wish this was more about a girl, but I get it. That’s the guy one. So I’m so excited to hear that one. Maybe that’s the one I’ll be in.

Yeah, 

Mike: actually, 

Cheri: Goals. 

Mike: Like I said, your transformation is book worthy for sure. 

Cheri: I love it. 

Mike: All right. So let’s get back to you. And so in the beginning, it was tough, but you fought your way through it. And once you got into it, was there a point where you realize oh, wow, this truly does work where you go.

I think all I have to do is keep doing this and I’ll get to where I want to be. 

Cheri: Yeah, it wasn’t long. Seriously, I remember it wasn’t probably even a month when I was in the gym and I was doing a curl and looked at my bicep because I read in the book where you say, if you focus on the muscle, you get 20 percent more results and the studies back it up.

So I’m like looking at my muscle, like one of those dudes that I never understood why they did that, but I did it anyway. And I was just like, Oh my gosh, there’s a little muscle want to pop through that fat right now. Look at that. And then I was like, okay, so if I can do this in this little amount of time, imagine what I can do if I really stick it out.

And it makes me emotional because that was when I was like, I really believed in myself and that I could do it just like those other girls in the gym, which, I was mortified by. I’m like they’ve been doing this forever. And that comparison is the thief of joy is so true.

And then I was like, they had to start somewhere. I just get out of your head space, focus on the fact you just saw muscle, pick that up, put it down again and get your shit together.

Mike: Hey, before we continue, if you like what I’m doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, and if you want to help me help more people get into the best shape of their lives, please consider checking out my VIP one on one coaching service. Now, my team and I have helped thousands of people. of all ages, circumstances, and needs.

So no matter how complicated or maybe even hopeless you might think your situation is, we will figure out how to get you the results you want. Every diet and training program we create is 100 percent custom. We provide daily workout logs and we do weekly accountability calls. Our clients get priority email service as well as discounts on supplements and the list goes on and on.

To learn more just head over to legionathletics. com slash coaching and if you like what schedule your free consultation call. Now there’s normally a wait list to work with our coaches and new slots do fill up very quickly. So if this sounds even remotely interesting to you, head over to legionathletics.

com slash coaching now and schedule your free consultation call. And let’s see if our program is a good fit for you. As you went through the process, what were the obstacles? Did you run into any issues with hunger, cravings? 

Cheri: Yeah, so this is where again, where I relied heavily on essential oils for that kind of thing, like sugar cravings and sugar balance but all this stuff that I know diabetics were doing to balance their sugar levels and stuff, I was like, what if I do this?

To keep me from eating all the chocolate cake. And so that was tremendous. And then just not go into certain functions. I limited some stuff that, I would go to bed by eight o’clock so that I couldn’t go out or I couldn’t be up and I couldn’t be near the kitchen. So there were like sacrifices I made along the way.

That now, if you ask me to make them, I’m like, but why? I already did that, and so this weekend I had pecan pie and banana pudding for dessert because I was like, because now I’m living again, so I have to like, and there’s balance, right? Like I gave a lot of stuff up, but I’d get a few things back here and there.

And it’s totally made it worth it. 

Mike: And that’s really the end game that we’re going for is how being able to enjoy that balance where you can have the desserts and know that it actually doesn’t matter at all. There are no consequences physically or emotionally, this is not going to lead to a binge. Or it’s not going to lead to fat gain and where you then naturally are just drawn to where you do the most important things, mostly right, most of the time.

And you know that so long as you’re doing that, so long as you have 80 percent it’s similar to what I constantly talk about with calories, make sure you just get most of your calories from good stuff. And if you want to give a bit of them over. To nutritionally bankrupt food, who cares? It doesn’t matter.

That also applies in the bigger picture as well. So long as you are doing most of the things, the most important things, at least most of the time, occasional lapses have no impact whatsoever. No objective impact. The only way they can have an impact is if you allow them to, if you just don’t sweat it and just keep calm and carry on as the Instagram influencers say it actually does work out. Like you’re totally fine. 

Cheri: The one thing I will say that you recommended that book, the one thing, which is funny. I started the sentence like that. And so I’m currently reading that one, but there was another book called the compound effect.

And I watched a YouTube video on it where he like drew a chart where this guy, these two guys are both obese and one decides to just start parking further from the door at work. And one of them changes nothing and it shows their trajectory over time. And over the year, the one guy lost weight, the one guy gained weight.

Point being there wasn’t even that drastic of a change, but he stuck to it. And so that’s what I do. I look at stuff when I have a day, like I did on Sunday, I just go, this is not my big picture if I am 75 percent of the time on it. And then, and that’s a pretty big thing for 25 percent of the time, because that’s what happens on my weekends is sometimes I’m not the person that I preach to be, are you 

Mike: though?

Cause if that’s part of the sermon, then again, it’s not that you have to be perfect. You don’t, it’s impossible to be perfect anyway, but it’s completely unnecessary too. 

Cheri: Yeah, I agree. I agree. So I guess I should even cut myself some slack too. Sometimes I 

Mike: get that sometimes too, where people don’t quite understand.

If they don’t know me all that well, they just know that I’m like in fitness and I’m a fit guy and I’ll be out to dinner and I’ll eat dessert. And some people they’re actually confused. So wait a minute, how do you. Look like what are you doing? And I understand it’s just because foods sugar in particular has been so demonized.

Carbs are so demonized. And of course, if you don’t understand the basic principles that you understand, and many people listening, understand about just energy balance, that alone changes everything. Once you truly understand that. And when you understand just the perspective that if you do a good job providing your body with all the nutrients it needs.

Let’s just say, even if it were a day, so six days a week, you are even five days a week. Let’s say you do a good job providing your body, all the nutrition it needs. And then one day a week, not as great. You don’t eat any vegetables that day. And then the next day you do the same thing. Maybe it’s no fruit or vegetables.

Maybe it’s just I would say if you’re just eating a bunch of junk food, that’s Probably a bit weird, but for example, I’m asked to be personally. So on Saturdays, usually I’ll just skip breakfast because I’m not as active on the weekends. I do a little bit of cardio, but I just skip breakfast just because I’m not a big breakfast person.

Anyway, I don’t really care. So around 11 or 12 or so, I’ll have some like Icelandic yogurt. So I get better than Greek yogurt. I’ll mix in some protein. So just get a fair amount of protein and then. A couple hours later, I’ll have an apple or something. A couple hours later, if I’m going to be at home or around the home in the afternoon, I’ll cook myself a hamburger.

And then at night I’ll usually have, depends what, if my wife and I, if we’re going to go somewhere, I usually get some vegetables in at night, one way or another, sometimes we’ll go to a salad place that’s nearby, or sometimes I’ll make some stuff, something at home and then I’ll have some ice cream. And these days I’m eating, it’s Dolcezza.

And I don’t. Believe the calories. It’s too good. I don’t know. I don’t know what to say. I would be a little bit surprised because they’re a big company. 

Cheri: I’m writing this down now. 

Mike: Try Dolcezza and it’s the butter pecan. I think there’s another word in it for their version of it, but it’s the butter pecan.

And the whole pint is like 480 calories according to, and there’s always going to be obviously some wiggle room, but and they can fudge it up to, is it up to 20%? They can fudge the numbers a little bit, but let’s just even call it 600 calories, but it tastes like real ice cream. 

Cheri: I didn’t know they could fudge the numbers that much.

That’s insane. 

Mike: Yeah. It’s at least 10%. I don’t, I’d have to look it up again. It’s been a while since I’ve looked at that, but they don’t, just also to, you’re never going to be able to hit the exact number every time. Probably ever that’s on there. So it, it does make sense. There’s a little bit of leeway.

Oh, okay. It could be within 10%. It might be up to 20 percent though. I’d, again, I’d have to look, spend some time since I looked at that. However, even if it’s 600 calories, it tastes so much better than enlightened halo top or any of these other like skinny ice creams, which can be up to 400 ish calories.

Per pint, depending on what flavor, I think you can get in the maybe around 300, maybe in the mid 200s. I remember like halo top pistachio was probably two something when Hannah, that was actually okay. But this Dolcezza is way better, 

Way better. And I like ice cream. So anyways, I’ll have a pint of that ice cream.

So that for me would be like, not so nutritious day. The weekdays eating, let’s say five or six servings of vegetables a day, two servings of fruit a day, some whole grains, some lean protein, basically no sugar, a little bit of dark chocolate. That’s my normal routine. Now, Sunday is usually the same ish thing.

Maybe not the ice cream again, maybe not the hamburger. Sometimes I just get back to my normal on Sunday, but that’s my personal routine. And like nutritionally speaking, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with that. There’s just because I’m giving my body less nutritious foods two days a week, but I’m not filling it with just trans fat and like disgusting microwavable dinners and shit.

I’m still eating real food. I’m just not eating the way I would eat. Every day, there are absolutely no consequences to that. It is an enjoyable way to just change it up and eat some stuff that I like, but I’m not going to eat a lot of and have no reason to feel quote unquote bad about it. 

It sounds like you do something similar.

Cheri: Yeah, I do. But I made a hot tilia is all I can call it last night with a low carb wrap and half a hot dog weenie and some chili. I was like, it’s a hot dog with not that there’s anything beneficial about eating a hot dog. Let’s be real. But I wanted one. That’s 

Mike: the point though. It doesn’t matter when you’re doing so many things, right?

Just have the hot dog. And if you want to have your favorite, whatever your dream hot dog is, have your dream hot dog. It does. It actually doesn’t matter. 

Cheri: Because it’s a weekday and I try and reserve my other big decisions for the weekend. That’s why I made it the hot tea on weekend. 

Mike: So I missed that point.

Okay. I get it. I get it. I 

Cheri: totally have the hot dog on the weekend, but on the weekend, generally, because I am, I’m a single girl. I go out with my single girlfriends. And we’re having drinks and stuff like that. So I generally eat nothing but protein on Saturday and Sunday. 

Mike: It’s not a bad adjustment to make.

Cheri: And it’s not like I’m going out, going all out and then, coming home and getting, tacos at 2 AM. So I eat a lot of beef jerky and drink shakes and still try and do some kind of cardio. And when I say cardio, I mean Mike Matthews style, like I don’t mean beating my face to death or anything like that, or some sprints, just something that makes me.

feel skinnier when I leave the gym. Do you know what I mean? 

Mike: Yeah. Yeah. Or just activity. That’s why I do it on the weekend. It’s not, there’s no like great reason why I do cardio other than, it’s 30 minutes, a steady state because I’m not cutting. If I were cutting, I might do some high intensity stuff, but it’s just, it feels good and it’s good for the body and it doesn’t impair recovery.

In fact, if you keep it moderate, which both of us are doing, it’ll help you recover faster just by increasing blood flow. So there’s just no reason not to do it. 

Cheri: Yeah. And I just love it. I’m like, you can do anything for 25 seconds. If I’m doing 25 second intervals or whatever, and then, resting in between that, I’m like, you can do anything for that amount of time.

The first time I did it though, I got to tell you, I was like, I’m going to write him and let him know. I almost puked in the gym. But after that though, then I was just like, Oh, I can totally do this. But I really did. I almost threw up. I got a cool towel. I’m sitting there am I going to do this again?

Am I really going to do this again? I was like, Oh, hell let’s do it again. 

Mike: I realized that you haven’t shared where you’re at now, like as far as your numbers and how things were going, we know you’re before. What does your after look like? 

Cheri: So here’s the thing. I had dropped 53 pounds, but as I gained more muscle, so now I’m at 141.

So I ain’t mad at the number. The reason I’m not. Is because I took a before picture a couple months ago, like even trainers use trainers. I hired a macros coach. I’d actually done a meal plan through y’all that worked for me for quite a while. And I loved it. Just like a little plug for that there.

And then I hired somebody else. It was, talk to me twice a week and we did all these things. And during that time, I was like, okay, she said, send me pictures. And I was like, I don’t want to. But I’m so glad I sent those pictures because a couple of months later when I weighed a little more and my body was, I can’t remember if it was 26 inches different, I could not believe it.

So now I show that picture to everybody. I’m like, throw out your damn scale, throw it out yesterday. I hear people say it all the time, but I never would do it until I saw that picture. And I was like, Oh God, I’m so glad you met. And I even said, but maybe it’s just better lighting in that one. She goes, go measure yourself.

And I’m like, okay. So it’s funny though, like along the way, the more things that happened, the more things I tried. And I do wish in your next one, if you have even more breakdown of how macros and just changing them by one or two, it’s hard, I’m not even doing that right now, cause I just can’t wrap my head around it at this moment.

But to include more about macros, cause it’s so confusing when you start talking to a new client, and they’re like, what count of what? 

Mike: I think you’ll like the third edition of both the women’s and the men’s books. They were really rewritten from scratch. It’s all the same basic information, but everything is reorganized.

I think it’s all explained better. There are things that. Didn’t need to be in there. Maybe interesting information that I took out to be able to put stuff that is more important and more in line with the questions that people were asking me after having read the books. 

Cheri: Gotcha. So 

Mike: yeah, no, I think it’s a bit bigger and If I do a fourth edition, I can’t go bigger than it currently is.

I’m going to have to figure out if anything, how to shrink the word count, but it’s not a doorstopper, but it’s like getting there. However, I’ll say that I think it reads easily and things flow logically. And you’re learning. I did really try to only put stuff in there that is highly practical and highly relevant to what you’re going to be doing and the likely obstacles you’re going to run into and the likely questions that you’re going to have.

And that has been borne out in the. Feedback that I’ve gotten from people, especially people who have read previous editions, and they’ve really appreciated the evolution of it. And then people who are reading the new third editions for the first time, I’m seeing a lot less of in some cases, questions I would get fairly often where things weren’t entirely clear.

I don’t get those questions at all. And in general, just there wasn’t much in the way of criticism previously, but there were points that people bring up that were valid points that should be addressed. And so there’s very little of that now. Now it’s like there are a couple of typos that will get fixed in the next print run.

Or there are an image for some reason, an image like didn’t line up correctly with the tech stuff like that, which is nice to see because that was really my goal was to make it as thorough as it needs to be for somebody to really feel like. They have a handle on everything that they need to know to get started, get going.

Of course, I want to hear from people, but I don’t want them to have to reach out to me because stuff wasn’t clear or it’s not working as it should work because there’s something missing or whatever. 

Cheri: Absolutely. I’m telling you though, the book, it’s drastic for anybody that reads it, if they really, if they don’t let it sit back seven months, come on, if they can do better than that and not just read it for seven months and actually do it and then they’ll seven months later, like if they started right then you look at it and you go, that book changed my whole life.

Can you imagine In the first seven months of when I was doing it compared to, like somebody starting right now and it’s if you would have started, there’s a saying about that. If you would have started, then you’d be where you’re at. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I can’t remember, but that whole fact that I took seven months to read it, like just, not to read it, to start the challenge is mind blowing because the book, it’s got all the stuff in there.

So I can’t even wait to read the next one. 

Mike: Yeah. I look forward to hearing your feedback. Definitely. Let me know what you think once you’ve gone through it. 

Cheri: Yeah. But now I’m a solid size six, by the way, that’s what people ask me. And so I can get online, I can order whatever pants I want in a six and they come in.

So I used to just think those stores are just expensive stores. So they say it’s a six, but it’s not really a six, but now I can buy jeans off Amazon if I want to. And there’s that six. To go from like an 18 to a six, I’m not concerned much about the number on the scale. When I find out my friends weigh less than me and I’m going, huh, Wait, what?

Oh, you do. Okay. I got to remember that. It’s not that number. And I can’t tell you how many times people said that over the years, and it wasn’t until I saw the pictures of myself that I went, Oh, 

Mike: yeah, it’s body composition. That’s everything. And muscle is dense. Muscles dense. It is. So a pound of muscle takes up less space than pound of fat.

So as you add more, and that’s very common for women to be surprised at how much they weigh when they get to a point where they’re like. I’m actually pretty happy with how I look. This is cool. And then they look at the scale. They’re like, what, really? Because I would have normally never been happy with this number.

Cheri: I might get on it once a week or so and just gauge where it is. 

Mike: Which is not a bad idea, actually. It’s not a bad idea just to keep an eye on it when you’re doing it. It’s smart to pay a little bit more attention to it when you are so far as weight loss goes, you want to see that your average weight is going down over time.

The daily fluctuations don’t really matter, but if you take weekly or bi weekly averages and just look at that, it’s good to keep an eye on. It’s not the only thing that matters. Measurements matter. What in the mirror matters. Matters. And then on the flip side, if you were to go, all right, I want to add a bit of muscle to, let’s just say it’s your butt.

And if there maybe it was one other muscle group, but if it’s just your butt to do that, there is a point where. You would need to maintain a slight calorie surplus, you’ll get as far as you can get without having to do that, but then to go any further, you would need to maintain a slight calorie surplus to maximize muscle growth.

And so if that were the case, then it also makes sense to watch your weight a little bit more closely again, not the daily fluctuations, but you would want to see your average weight going up slightly over time. And that would mean gaining some fat, but you don’t really worry about it because you can just get rid of it.

Cheri: I love how you say that you can just get rid of that. Yeah. 

Mike: That’s the reality though, right? Nobody likes at least very, most of us do not like having to gain fat to quote unquote lean bulk. It doesn’t mean it has to even bother us, but if we could have it our way, of course we wouldn’t, of course we would just, you would maintain our Optimum body fat percentage.

And we would just continue to gain muscle, but that only works really in the beginning. And then as you become an intermediate and more, just more experienced weightlifter, the problem is when you’re in a calorie deficit, you don’t gain muscle nearly as effectively. And there’s a debate as to like, How big that effect really is like maybe you actually can gain a little bit, but practically speaking, what you can assume is if you’re in a calorie deficit, just assume you’re not really going to gain any muscle after you have made it through your first year or so of weightlifting.

And so what that means then is if you’re not consciously maintaining a calorie surplus, intentionally overfeeding yourself a little bit, which is how it feels like your body does just basically want to get fed what it’s burning. And that’s what feels normal. And when your body’s. Appetite of mechanisms are working correctly.

That is what feels good. So to speak is just eating around your energy expenditure. And when you consistently eat more, you do feel overfed. Like it’s definitely just how when you’re in a calorie deficit, even though it doesn’t have to be grueling. There’s a feeling that you can just feel your body is, doesn’t have as much energy as it wants, right?

That’s what it requires on the flip side to maximize muscle growth or at least optimize muscle growth and if you don’t make a point of Systematically doing that and that means again, the best way to do it is by Put together a meal plan, treat it as if you were cutting, but now you’re just eating more.

What will happen is you’ll just tend to eat around your maintenance. Some days you might be a little bit over, but then some days you’re going to be under. And so what can happen is you can go many months where you’ve spent half of those days or because of your habits, maybe even more, maybe even two thirds of those days in a slight deficit.

Maybe it’s just a slight deficit, but still, that’s just not optimal for you. Out of a three month period to spend, let’s say 60 of those days in a deficit is not going to work for really trying to move the needle on muscle gain. You’d want it to be the other way around, or ideally you’d be able to just stay in a slight surplus the entire time and not have gained so much fat that you had to cut it short.

And so anyway, that just, that’s just some comments on weight and when it’s. More or less relevant when you’re in a kind of a maintenance mode. Yeah. Just hop on the scale. That’s what I do. I hop on the scale every few days or sometimes I’ll go a week or even two weeks without even weighing myself because it’s pretty much the same.

It’s always, it’s one 98 to two Oh one. There you go. There’s my weight at any given time. 

Cheri: And it’s somebody I follow on Instagram recently said, you know what, if you weigh yourself every day, then fine, but average it out at the end of the week. And that’s your number. 

Mike: Yep. And I talk about that explicitly in the new third edition too.

I might mention in the second edition, but I make it very clear. And some people even like to do bi weekly averages and that’s okay too, actually, if you just watch it every two weeks. 

Cheri: So right now that’s where I am as far as, and I also read something you recently wrote about muscle imbalances and I’m like, okay, good.

Cause my left cheek is smaller than my right cheek. And and I’d always wondered, should I just do more rips on that side? Or is that weird? Am I going to make it. Off balance. So when I read that, I was like, of course he knew, I don’t know if you know this, like when I’m Google searching anything about fitness, I Google search what I want.

And then I do the little plus sign and put Mike Matthews, because I already know I’m not gonna have to read 80, 000 things. Cause if your name’s attached to it, you already read those 80, 000. I’m just going to get the answer. 

Mike: Yeah. And now I’ve have so many things that I think I have close to probably a thousand articles over at Legion.

And I don’t know, a few hundred podcasts and I’m doing a couple of podcasts a week and usually an article, a new article every other week. And then I’m updating existing articles as well every other week, just because in some cases things change. In some cases, like if I wrote something three or four years ago, maybe research newer research has come out or I’ve just learned things since then.

And I think I can do a better job. Explaining or give even better advice. And so that’s also for anybody wondering on the website. I have a couple of people who work with me on that as well and help with okay, finding articles that are worth updating and doing some of the initial legwork and so forth.

But we put a lot of time into keeping all of the information there or as much of it as we can as Current as possible. So yeah, there’s at this point for a lot of questions that you and other people have, the answer is just sitting over at legion in a, in an article or a podcast. 

Cheri: Oh, I know. I know. I find it all.

I’m just like, this is crazy. Like it’s just almost too easy for now for somebody to be able to go, I don’t know why I can’t lose weight. I’m like I Okay, let me just, let me give you this book, and I can’t tell you how many people seriously are using your program now, just because I started sharing it.

You know what I mean? Nothing like the stuff you get, obviously. I’ve got a group. As a matter of fact, we’re starting a Facebook page, because I’ll be 50 in two years. 

Mike: You should send me a picture. If you have people that are doing it all together, that’d be fun. I’ll post it to social media. 

Cheri: Oh, I’ve got, I’ll send you the one where we were all doing it at the same time, but no, now I’ve got like a girl in Atlanta that does it.

And girls that are like on my business team who also do it in different States around the play and they’ll send me their pictures and go, look what came in today and I’m like you should tag Mike in it. Just hashtag him, do whatever. So we’re starting a group on Facebook called fit is about 

Mike: 50.

Cheri: Oh yeah. So there’s so far, there’s 40 something people. We just posted the other day, 40 something women that want to join it and be part of it. And I was like, we’re not charging anything for it. We’re just like, we’re going to put our stuff out there and your stuff will be obviously part of that.

And then I’ve got a spin instructor who’s, she’s had a lot of luck with weight watchers, which that’s neither here nor there. I’m just saying she’ll have something to offer. That’s different than what I have. 

Mike: Weight watchers is fine in that it really is just a way to control calories. I’m assuming it’s still though microwavable dinner and type food, or are they, 

Cheri: oh, no, they do about points.

Now you can eat regular. Just everything has a point. 

Mike: It’s just a proxy for calories. That’s all it is. 

Cheri: But it’s easy. So for somebody like me, I don’t like frozen meals, but I like fresh cooked meals that I can pick up. So I found a service here that I just go to the gym and grab my meals and I’ve got till Friday to get through those.

Yeah. And so that’s what I do. So just so we’ll have different women in there from different takes of how they’re doing things. And then, so we’re all aiming to be our fittest by 50 that’s, the goal is, and I was like, it also gives me something to push towards too, because now with training people and doing my oil business, like I am the last on the list.

And I’m like, Oh my gosh, am I really going to go to the gym? It’s nine 30 and I just finished working. Am I really going to the gym right now? And then, it’s I only worked out twice last week. I was like, Oh my gosh, I’ve got to come up with other ways. And I was like, this is the perfect way because when I’m encouraging other people and inspiring other people, that’s what drives me, which is the whole reason I went through with the personal trainer certification.

Cause I’m like, all the things you said, it’s like, are you really just going to pay for somebody to tell you to do this? And I’m like, Nope, but I’ll tell you what I will charge for. I’ll charge you through 10 sessions and I will show you exactly what you’re going to read in the book that I just told you to buy and I’ll show you your proper form and then you’ll go into the gym and you won’t get on the equipment upside down.

And so that is my goal with everybody. I’m like, here you go. Here’s 10 sessions. Let’s do this. And then I started the thing called the tidbits in my notepad and I just got to put it on paper. So it’s like a lot of the stuff that they’re going to read in your book and they’re going to hear out of my mouth.

But so that they go back to it, like the calves thing. And I think you even have something like that in the front of the workbook. That’s like the, don’t forget these things, because when you’re saying, okay, you’re going to do 12, 10, four, then one at 50%, 50%, 75%, 90%. You know what I mean? You’re in one minute rest, one minute rest, all those things, somebody that you’ve only got 10 times with kind of, they’re like, 

Mike: It’s a lot of moving parts.

Yeah. The new, I don’t know if you also, there’s a new workout journal to go with the new women’s book, which I can send you as well. And it’s even better in that regard. Like we put together, just put more stuff, like here’s a cheat sheet basically. And also some stuff on the exercises just to, at least on the key exercises to remind them of proper form and stuff.

And, you mentioned that, yeah. On the size. That is an issue. My thought on that is I’m gonna have to think about it. Like I would like to make it smaller. The only problem is I’m not sure how I have to see. Is that possible while still having the 3, day routines in the book? And if that’s not possible, 

Cheri: No, no fitness.

Like the, like it being the eight by 11, like all of us walking around the gym with our big old books, but I was like, at this point you can probably just have it on your app. 

Mike: Oh, no, for sure. It’s going to be there. But some people, they just like having a hard copy. 

Cheri: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. And I did.

And in the beginning that’s absolutely, I was just like, man, it’s not. thing is big. There was a guy that goes to the gym that he came in with a notebook and I was like, what? I’ve never seen anybody except my people walking around with a book. Really not. I can tell looking throughout the gym, like who’s worked out with me before because they’ve got their book.

But the guy had one, I was like, look at him writing stuff. Good for him. 

Mike: You don’t see it much, but a lot of people do use their phones, but a lot of people are not using your phones for that. They’re often just on Instagram on the leg press machine or something, which I saw today. That’s when you know, you’re not working hard when you’re on Instagram while you’re doing the leg press.

Cheri: Exactly. I’m guilty. I’ve had my watch go. Are you finished working out? I’m like oh, no, not. I’m not. Okay. Sorry. 

Mike: We’ve all strayed into our phones now and then, but I can say that you’re probably the same way. Most of us, though, are pretty good about it. So then where can people find you if they want to work with you, if they want to hire you?

Cheri: So you’re going to love this, my email, because I don’t, my website is really more geared to my oil business, but my email for working out as I know, Mike Matthews at gmail. com,

Mike: that’s funny, 

Cheri: right? And it’s so much easier than my name. My name is C H E R. You’re like, how do you spell Sherry again? 18, 000 times. So I’m like, just email me. I know, like Matthews at gmail. com. I just created it. 

Mike: Yes. I don’t have that problem. My name is simple and you can’t spell it wrong. 

Cheri: Yeah. So I was like, this will be perfect.

So when they come to me at that email, then I can direct them to a different site. Cause I’ve got several groups on Facebook. One that focuses on balancing your body. from the inside out. One that focuses on, working out. One that focuses on, so I’ve got different platforms. I don’t want to overwhelm people.

So I’m like, you just tell me what you need or if you just want to chat or if you just need somebody with good energy in your ear to tell you that you can get through this, you will not die. I promise. Like just reach out to me. That’s what I do. It’s what I love. And I walked away from a, a really good.

career path. If you look at, numbers or whatever to do something that’s totally different than anything I thought I would ever do. 

Mike: Was that hard to do? Or was that like, 

Cheri: Oh yeah, it was terrifying. Like I seriously was terrified and I was just like, okay, because at first I just left, I’m like, I’m going to do my oils business.

I’m going to talk to people about weight loss and I’m going to do this. And a lot of people just saw my before after pictures and I’d send them a link to the book and that’d be that. But as time went on, I’m like, I just need to be able to show them what to do. Let me just, in my mind, go get this certification thinking that was an easy feat because it’s it’s books, it’s fine, I can do that.

And then I went, Oh, wait, what that took some doing just because all the information that you never think, I don’t need to know this body part. Do I need to know what that is? Really? And so my test on that, it took me 15 hours to complete my exam. And I have never tested that even in my degree in college was not an exam that took me 15 hours.

So I did it for a purpose. So I was like, they’re going to trust what I say more. If I’ve got this behind my name, like it’s just gonna, then I can change more life. It’s worked out, and I don’t charge people an arm and a leg at all. I make them pay enough where they’ve got skin in the game, and I make them pay for the 10 sessions up front, just so that I go, okay, you’ve committed, now you’ve paid for it.

Chances of you not showing up are slimmer now than if I just did it for free like I had been 

Mike: doing. Totally. And are you on Instagram? 

Cheri: I am. I’m Sherri Lynn underscore live the life you love. But again, it’s C H E R I L Y N underscore live the life you love. So it’s just harder. And I’m like a selfish grammar on there.

My stories, a lot of people just follow my stories because they’re ridiculous, but I don’t post a lot of things. Like I’m not, not even a millionth of a person. Like what you can do on Instagram. 

Mike: I’m not even a good example of that. I’m active. 

Cheri: You’re so much better. Your stories.

I don’t know. Like you’ve got stories every day. There’s some good content. You got your kids on there. I’m like, Oh, that’s so cute. Put letting people see a little bit of your family. That’s the whole thing. I’d read a book from a girl who is in the oils business and she’s uber successful called getting noticed.

After that, I just said, whatever, what, the time’s going to pass anyway, whether I live out loud, so to speak or not. So I just started doing what she said. And I was just like, I’m putting my stuff out there, not negative stuff. It’s all positive and silly and ridiculous. And, I use a lot of Snapchat filters and do faces and whatever.

And that over time has led to a lot of people wanting to hear what I have to say, which blows my mind every single day. And then, I’m just going to keep going down that road. Like you said, things will change and there’s ebbs and flows, but for the most part, you’re sharing your life and, People want to see that if it’s going well, they want to know what you’re doing and I’m happy to tell them. 

Mike: That’s awesome. That’s great. Sure. It’s a great story. I appreciate you coming on to share it and queue up the good work. I love it. 

Cheri: Thank you so much. I can’t even I can’t believe it because I wrote it down. But it’s still unbelievable, I guess I should say. 

Mike: That’s actually one of the reasons why when people, when I first interact with people, I kind of plant the seed of taking pictures and keeping track of their progress and reaching out to me when they’re on their way, basically is because it’s a lot of people have told me that they just found that motivating.

And that was something where they’re like, I’m going to do that. I’m going to take my pictures and I’m going to do this. I’m going to stick to it for six months. And then I’m going to send them to Mike because that sounds fun. And it’s neat. And that’s where we get hundreds and hundreds of success stories over at Legion is where they’ll write the blog.

And they were all just through initial email interactions. Sometimes there are people who just come out of nowhere and just say, Hey, check this out. I read your book a year ago and I did it. And look at me now. Many of them are. People who read the book and then they had a question or they downloaded the bonus content.

And then there are a couple of automated emails that go out. Like one of them just asks if they have any questions and then I get to see those. And so there’s an initial interaction and there’s like a little part where I’m just letting them know Hey, I’d love to feature on the website at some point.

I started doing the podcast, these types of interviews after. So I suppose I could even add that in there, but it’s yeah, I’d love to feature on the website at some point when you’ve reached your goal. And many people. Come back later. 

Cheri: That’s what I did. 

Mike: Yeah. To be like, Hey, check this out. I did it.

Cheri: I was like, no, not yet. That was last year. And so when I said it this year, when you did it this year, I screenshot it, put it on Facebook and I was like, because when are you ever ready? You’re never going to feel totally ready. So I’m just saying, yeah, 

Mike: I like it. Sherry, thanks again. Keep up the good work.

Cheri: Thank you so much. 

Mike: Hey, Mike here. And if you like what I’m doing on the podcast and elsewhere, and if you want to help me help more people get into the best shape of their lives, please consider checking out my VIP one on one coaching service, where we can help you get in the best shape of your life. My team and I have helped people of.

all ages, circumstances, and needs. So no matter how complicated or maybe even hopeless you might think your situation is, we will figure it out, and we will get you results. Every diet and every training program is 100 percent custom, We provide daily workout logs and do weekly accountability calls. Our clients get priority email service and discounts on supplements and other products.

And the list of benefits goes on and on. So to learn more head over to www. legionathletics. com slash coaching. That’s l e g i o n athletics dot com slash coaching and schedule your free consultation call. I should also mention that there is usually a waitlist and new slots do fill up very quickly so do not wait if this sounds even remotely interesting to you.

Go ahead and schedule your call now. Again, that URL is legionathletics. com slash coaching. All right. That’s it for today’s episode. I hope you found it interesting and helpful. And if you did, and you don’t mind doing me a favor, could you please leave a quick review for the podcast on iTunes or wherever you are listening from?

Because those reviews not only convince people that they should check out the show, they also increase the search visibility and help more people find their way to me. And to the podcast and learn how to build their best body ever as well. And of course, if you want to be notified when the next episode goes live, then simply subscribe to the podcast and whatever app you’re using to listen, and you will not miss out on any of the.

new stuff that I have coming. And last, if you didn’t like something about the show, then definitely shoot me an email at Mike at muscle for life. com and share your thoughts. Let me know how you think I could do this better. I read every email myself and I’m always looking for constructive feedback. All right.

Thanks again for listening to this episode. And I hope to hear from you soon.