Ep. #120: If You Think “Clean Eating” Is Stupid, You’re Doing It Wrong…

[00:00:00] Boys and girls, welcome to another episode of the muscle for life podcast. I am your host, Mike Matthews and this time I am going to make a bit of a case for quote unquote clean eating because I really don’t think it deserves all the ridicule that it gets online and especially among the cool crowd the guys and gals on Instagram that love to showcase not only how good their bodies look, but also how downright heinous their diets are.

Now I don’t know about you, but if I had to choose between the diet of your average clean eater that thinks sugar makes you fat and gluten causes leaky gut and the diet of your average IAFYM er that doesn’t like to waste calories on stuff [00:01:00] like fruit and IAFYM I’ll take the former every time, and in this episode I am going to quickly explain why.

I’m also going to talk about a style of dieting that gives us the best of both worlds. The quality of clean eating and the adaptability of flexible dieting. Something that I have very creatively dubbed flexible clean eating. This style of dieting is perfect for not just improving your body composition, but your health and vitality as well.

And it also makes you a better intuitive eater and helps you develop a healthier relationship with food, which ultimately is going to make it easier for you to maintain a lean muscular physique without having to count and track every little thing that you eat. Now, before we get into this episode, I’m sorry, but I have to shill for something to pay the bills.

No, I’m just kidding. I’m not big on promoting stuff that I don’t personally use and believe in. So instead, I’m just going to [00:02:00] quickly tell you about something of mine. Specifically, my 100 percent natural fat loss supplement, Phoenix. It has sold over 100, 000 bottles in the last several years. And it helps you lose fat faster in three ways.

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legionathletics. com and pick up a bottle of Phoenix today. And just to show how much I appreciate my podcast peeps use the coupon code podcast at checkout, and you will save 10 percent on your entire order. Thank you. All right, that is it for the pitch. Let’s get to the show. It’s pretty trendy to sneer about quote unquote clean eating these days.

If you spend any time on social media then you have undoubtedly seen all of the people that love to boast about the trans fatty sugary pre packaged delights that they can quote unquote fit into their macros and still look good. In many cases, I think this is merely an attempt to virtue signal to the fitness intelligentsia.

I think that these people are trying to just prove or demonstrate that they quote unquote get it and just lord it over everyone else that doesn’t, so they can feel [00:04:00] superior to the great unwashed masses. that think that you have to eat a restrictive diet to lose fat and gain muscle. I also think it is stupid because the wholesale rejection of clean eating isn’t a disavowal of dietary ignorance and dogma.

It’s really just a childish denial of our body’s most basic need for food, and that is nutrition. Stuff like high quality protein, vitamins, minerals, and healthy fats. The quote unquote little things that we need to stay mentally and physically robust and to fight off disease and dysfunction.

Things that we unfortunately won’t find in Fruit Loops, Pop Tarts, and Talenti ice cream. Which is unfortunate because it is truly delicious. So I want you to remember something the next time you are browsing the IFYM hashtag on Instagram. And that is, body composition is [00:05:00] not a foolproof barometer of health.

You can have a killer six pack and a whole host of nutritional deficiencies that if allowed to fester may literally one day kill you. This is why if I had to choose one end of the spectrum, I would rather be a clueless, clean eater who’s obsessed with coconut oil and kale and afraid of gluten and GMOs than a rabid, incorrigible, quote unquote, IFYM Who refuses to waste calories on stuff like fruit and vegetables because it would mean less fast food and Oreos.

Yes, it’s true the clean eater may never be as lean and muscular as the IFYM er, but he also won’t be as likely to get sick and die. And that kind of matters too. This is why the meal plans of smart, flexible dieters look a lot like those of the clean eating crowd. My own meal plans, for example, are primarily [00:06:00] comprised of nutritious proteins, all kinds of fruits and vegetables, various types of whole grains, sometimes some legumes, and usually some nuts and oils for healthy fats.

Any kind of indulgence, which for me is chocolate, I know it’s not that much of an indulgence, but hey, I like it. 150, 200 calories of chocolate a day is very satisfying to me, but that kind of stuff is always an afterthought. In other words, I truly practice what I preach. I get the vast majority of my daily calories from relatively unprocessed and highly nutritious foods and I leave a small caloric buffer for treats.

Now eating like this has obvious benefits. The more nutritious your diet is, the better your body is going to perform and feel both inside and outside of the gym. Now I know there’s diminishing returns here, and that’s true up to a point after which continuing to make your diet more nutritious isn’t likely to make any difference.

any noticeable difference, but let’s be real. Most people are probably never [00:07:00] going to get to that point, especially considering how awful most people’s diets actually are. Now, there are other big benefits to this smart, flexible style of dieting that many people don’t realize until they’ve done it for a while for themselves.

For example, eating like this teaches you how to be a good intuitive eater. And that really matters because if you ever want to be able to maintain your ideal physique without having to plan and track every single thing that you eat, then you are going to have to get used to eating a lot of relatively unprocessed and nutritious foods.

This really is the secret to effortless weight maintenance because Most quote unquote healthy foods tend to be lighter in calories and very filling and nutritious. In short, these are the types of foods that your body’s natural mechanisms for regulating appetite work best with. One of the many problems with highly processed foods is they tend to be very light.

High in calories yet not nearly as filling or [00:08:00] nourishing, which short circuit these mechanisms, which makes it much easier to overeat. Smart flexible dieting also ensures that your body gets at least most of the nutrition that it needs. Eating a lot of nutritious foods isn’t necessarily enough to provide your body with the entire spectrum of micronutrients that it needs to perform optimally, which is one of the reasons why I recommend and personally take a good multivitamin.

but it can get most of the job done. So you need to remember that in the end health and vitality just matter a lot more than muscle and body fat percentage. You’re probably not going to care how big your biceps are when you are having a heart attack. And the bottom line is, Smart, flexible dieting will significantly reduce your risk of chronic disease and of heart disease in particular, which is the number one killer in the world.

And that, in my opinion, really is one of the biggest reasons to fuss over all of this diet and [00:09:00] exercise stuff in the first place. Smart, flexible dieting also minimizes your exposure to various chemicals, hormones, and other substances that can be harmful to your health. Now you probably know that we are exposed to an overwhelming number of chemicals every day through simply eating, breathing, and drinking.

This list is long and includes all kinds of things like tobacco smoke, herbicides, fungicides, insecticides. Transcribed by https: otter. ai disinfection byproducts, plasticizers, heavy metals, parabens, surfactants, phthalates, and now what you may not know is just how seriously this chemical load can affect your health.

For example, research shows that our daily exposure to endocrine disrupting chemicals commonly found in stuff like plastic bottles, metal food cans, detergents, toys, cosmetics, and pesticides increases the risk of heart disease. Hemophilia is a myelitis, a disease that occurs under the influence of neurological and behavioral disorders, male infertility, birth defects, endometriosis, [00:10:00] obesity, diabetes, and some cancers and can even lead to diminished IQ scores.

That same study estimates that these chemicals are responsible for at least 340 billion with a B in annual healthcare costs here in the United States alone. Think about that. 340 billion in healthcare costs here in the United States and that’s just one class of chemicals out of many that our bodies have to deal with every day.

Many of those conditions develop slowly too, you might not notice the gradual decline until one day. It’s just apparent that something is very wrong. So we can and really should attack this problem in two ways. First, we can keep our bodies as healthy and functional as possible, and second, we can reduce our exposure to these harmful substances as much as possible.

The first one is best accomplished by the things that most everybody knows, but very few of us actually do, and that is exercising regularly, not being [00:11:00] overweight, not smoking, and not abusing alcohol. And as far as the second one goes, eating mostly unprocessed foods and choosing organic produce, if you can afford it, and also using quote unquote, clean cosmetic grooming and cleaning products are big.

We will never be able to get our exposure to these chemicals down to zero, of course. But fortunately, we don’t have to. If we just take good care of our bodies through healthy lifestyle habits and thus maintain a strong immune system, we can live in today’s modern, polluted environment and remain healthy, vital, and disease free.

Another big benefit of smart, flexible dieting is it helps you develop a healthy relationship with food. And this is a rather big one because a lot of what goes on in the fitness space really isn’t healthy or desirable. For example, you see a lot of yo dieting, you see a lot of food abstinence, starvation, dieting, binging, and purging and emotional eating.

None of this is normal. [00:12:00] This is not the way that it’s supposed to work. In fact, in some cases, what you’re looking at is a legitimate eating disorder that can really actually ruin someone’s life. life. So if you want to look and feel great for the long haul, then you’re going to have to cultivate and maintain a healthy relationship with food.

You know you’re on the right path if you generally eat until you’re full and then stop. You don’t have overwhelming psychological or emotional desires to eat individual foods or just food in general. You don’t seriously struggle with cravings. Food mainly as a source of nourishment. You enjoy eating nutritious foods that give you energy and fuel your daily activities.

And you don’t feel guilty when you eat the occasional quote unquote unhealthy food. I’d even go as far as saying that if you don’t check most, if not all of those boxes, then flexible dieting on the whole, maybe isn’t for you. You might be better off with a more restrictive quote unquote clean eating style [00:13:00] of dieting because for you, flexible dieting may just degenerate into the eat junk and be lean if it fits your macros game that I was talking about earlier.

Yes, any food can fit your macros, but what about cancer and heart disease, chronic fatigue, and stuff like that? How do those fit into the macros? Now of course that is flexible dieting taken to the extreme and when clean eating is taken to the extreme you’re looking at orthorexia which is an unhealthy obsession with eating healthy foods and of course that also is very unhealthy.

So the idea then is to be flexible and intelligent about it and naturally develop a positive eating mindset that is enhanced and not perverted by dietary flexibility and freedom. Here’s the bottom line. More and more people are ridiculing clean eating these days, probably because it just makes them feel better about their shitty diets.

And I say, don’t listen to them. Maybe even pity them, [00:14:00] because their neglect of the nutritional side of dieting is going to catch up with them someday, and in many cases, probably sooner rather than later. In the final analysis, here’s how it looks. Clean eating guarantees nothing in the way of muscle gain and fat loss because that dimension of dieting is ruled by numbers, calories and macros.

And flexible dieting, on the other hand, guarantees nothing in the way of nutrition and health because that dimension is ruled by the quality of your food choices. And that’s why the best style of dieting, in my opinion, really is the best of both of those worlds. You could call it flexible, clean eating, if you will.

And I like that. Maybe it should become a thing. Hey there, it is Mike again. And I just wanted to say that I hope you enjoyed this episode and found it interesting and helpful. Now, if you’d like to read about all this stuff as well, then head over to [00:15:00] muscleforlife. com that’s muscle F O R life.

Dot com and legion athletics.com, L-E-G-I-O-N athletics.com because I’ve published over a million words of free articles on the blogs, on those websites, on all types of things related to building muscle losing fat. and getting healthy. New articles go up every week on both sites as well. So if you like what you read, then definitely hop on my mailing list and you will be notified when new stuff goes live.

My email subscribers also get exclusive deals on my products and services and other goodies. So there’s that too. Thanks again for listening to this episode and I will see you in the next one. Oh, and before you leave, let me quickly tell you about one other product of mine that I think you might like.

Specifically, my workout app, Stacked. It has tens of thousands of users and close to 400 reviews on the Apple Store with a four [00:16:00] star average. And it helps you get more out of your training in several ways. It helps you quickly and easily plan out your workout routines. It gives you quick access to useful tools like plate math and one rep max calculation.

It allows you to visually track your progression in your workouts as well as your body measurements and much, much more. It’s free to download too. So if you want to check it out, then head over to www. getstackedapp. com or just hit the iOS app store and search for stacked workout and you will find it.