Ep. #425: Q&A: Should You Track Macros or Calories While Cutting? Why Different Rep Ranges for Men and Women? And more!

Hello friend. I’m Mike. This is the muscle life podcast and welcome. Welcome. This episode is the monthly Q and a episode, which means I’m going to be answering questions that people have mostly emailed me and DMD me on Instagram. I answer them privately, but then I choose ones that I think would be worthwhile answering.

publicly and make a podcast out of it. And so that means that this time around I am answering four questions. And they are one, why do I recommend women start lifting in the eight to 10 rep range in thinner, leaner, stronger, but men start lifting in the four to six rep range in bigger, leaner, stronger.

Two, should you just track macros when you’re cutting, or should you track your calories as well? And what if your calories and your macros don’t match? Three, how should you modify Bigger Leaner Stronger if you are no longer a beginner? If you have put in your one to two years of hard and heavy barbell work?

And four, how should you get back into working out after taking a long time off? So those are the questions for today’s episode. And if you have a question that you’d like me to answer, shoot me an email like at muscle for life. com or shoot me a DM on Instagram. And I will answer you privately. Most certainly if it’s an email, probably if it’s a DM, it’s a little bit harder to stay on top of DMS because it’s a pretty unsophisticated system.

It’s much easier for me to never miss an email than it is to never miss a DM. However, there’s a good chance, even if you DM, you’re going to get an answer. And if your question is something that many other people are also asking, or if it just strikes me as something that is worth sharing with everybody, then I will slate it for the next Q and A.

This is where I would normally plug a sponsor to pay the bills, but I’m not big on promoting stuff that I don’t personally use and believe in. So instead I’m just going to quickly tell you about something of mine specifically my 100 percent natural whey protein powder, whey plus. Now this is a naturally sweetened and flavored Whey isolate protein powder made from exceptionally high quality milk from small dairy farms in Ireland.

Whey Plus also contains no GMOs, hormones, antibiotics, artificial food dyes, fillers, or other unnecessary junk. And if I may say so myself, it also tastes delicious and mixes great. And all that is why Weigh Plus has over 1, 400 reviews on Amazon with a 4. 5 star average and another 600 on my website with a 5 star average.

So if you want a clean, all natural and great tasting whey protein supplement that’s low in calories, carbs, and fat, then you want to head over to www. legionathletics. com and pick up a bottle of Whey Plus 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.

And lastly, you should also know that I have a very simple 100 percent money back guarantee that works like this. You either love my stuff or you get your money back period. You don’t have to return the products. You don’t have to fill out forms. You don’t have to jump through any other hoops or go through any other shenanigans.

So you really can’t lose here. Head over to www. legionathletics. com now, place your order, and see for yourself why my supplements have thousands of rave reviews all over the internet. And if for whatever reason, they’re just not for you, contact us and we will give you a full refund on the spot. Alrighty, that is enough shameless plugging for now, at least let’s get to the show.

All right. So the first question here is why do I recommend in my women’s program for women to start lifting in the eight to 10 rep range, whereas in my men’s program, I recommend that they start in the four to six rep range. And it’s mostly just sexism and misogyny because women are weak, of course, so they just have to start with lighter weights.

No, I’m kidding. The actual answer is that while women can gain muscle fairly effectively, just about as effectively as men, contrary to what many people think, they start out with a lot less muscle than men. And due mostly to. anatomical reasons, they can’t gain as much muscle as men can over their lifetimes.

For example, one of the most reliable indicators of your potential for natural muscle gain is how much bone you have in your body. If you measure the thickness of your wrists and your ankles, for example, That can help you determine how much muscle you can gain naturally. And generally speaking, people with larger wrists and larger ankles have larger bones and they can gain more muscle over their lifetimes than people with smaller wrists and smaller ankles who have smaller bones.

And in the case of women, of course, the average woman is quite a bit smaller than the average man in every way, including their bones. So the average woman has quite a bit less bone mass than the average man, and that is a major limiting factor in terms of how jacked they can get over their lifetimes, regardless of how hard they work.

And so what all that means then is in a literal and physical sense, most women are starting out quite a bit weaker in terms of both absolute and relative strength than most men. For example, I’ve heard from many women over the years who in the beginning of their weightlifting journeys struggled to bench press just the bar for a few reps.

Yeah. Whereas most men quickly work up to, let’s say 135 to maybe 155 pounds with a body weight of maybe on average 160 or 170 pounds. And while I am a big proponent of strength training, everybody knows that, I’ve found that Telling women to start out with pretty heavy weights. If you’re going to work in the four to six rep range, you’re going to be handling loads somewhere around 80 percent of your one rep max.

Maybe even upward of 85 percent of your one rep max is just not very practical. You see the primary. Driver of your strength is the amount of muscle that you have. It’s not technique or form. Those things do impact your strength. Getting better at exercises does help you get stronger, but the majority of your strength is determined by the amount of muscle you have.

And so what you’ll find is if someone doesn’t have very much muscle, which is the case with most women who are first getting into weightlifting, it is very difficult for them to train with heavy loads in the lower strength dominant rep ranges. It is also very intimidating. It is hard to learn the exercises.

It’s hard to learn proper form. It’s hard to really feel the muscles that you’re trying to train work. And again, it’s just not very practical. I’ve tried it many times and just concluded that it is better for women to first focus on building some more muscle, which you can do in any rep range. Of course, you can build plenty of muscle working in the eight to 10 rep range.

And so it’s better for women to first learn proper form and build some muscle working with lighter weights that are easier to use, also safer to use. And then after they’ve gained a fair amount of muscle and they have more potential strength, and you can look at muscle gain as that the muscle that you gain in higher rep ranges won’t necessarily immediately translate into better one rep maxes.

But it does increase your potential for strength. What you can do then is you can take that muscle that you’ve gained working in a higher rep range and then start working in a lower rep range to calibrate it to those heavier loads and to unlock the strength potential, so to speak. And that’s all my advice for women is to start in a higher up range with lower loads.

You will just get better results over time than if you try to jump into the deep end of the pool and load the bar with very heavy loads and work in those lower up ranges. Now for men, I’ve found that because most men are starting out with quite a bit more muscle and strength than most women, they don’t struggle with the heavier weights in the same way.

It’s a bit awkward at first. And yes, they do need to learn proper form, but within a few weeks, most guys are in the groove working in that four to six rep range with 80 to 85 percent of the one rep max. And then ironically, what I recommend for guys is after they are over their newbie phase, after they are solidly into their intermediate phase as a weightlifter, They start adding higher rep training into their routines in addition to the lower rep training.

And as to why that is a topic for another discussion, maybe that’d make a good video. I’m also diving into it in detail in the new book that I’m working on, which is an updated second edition of beyond bigger, leaner, stronger, which is the sequel to Bigger than you’re stronger. Okay. Let’s go to the next question.

This is a fat loss question. And they ask, is it important to hit daily macros or eat fewer calories than you’re burning? And I wanted to answer this question because I do often get people asking about calories versus macros when they’re cutting. And I’ll probably just roll another question into this and answer them both because they’re related.

And that is, should I hit my macros or hit my calories when I’m cutting? Let’s start with the first question. The number one thing you got to do if you want to lose fat is be in a calorie deficit over time. Regardless of your macros, it is the calorie deficit that drives the fat loss, not the high protein or low carb or low fat or high carb or high fat.

So the key is to hit your calories. That is the fundamental. Rule, as far as fat loss goes, you need to not overeat. So assuming you have calculated a reasonable calorie deficit, probably something around 300 to 500 calories per day on average, you got to hit that if you want to lose fat. Now macros are important because they influence your body composition.

Whereas energy balance, which is the relationship between the calories that you’re eating and that you’re burning. And when you burn more calories than you eat, you are in an energy deficit, a calorie deficit, while that drives your weight loss and drives your fat loss and mostly determines whether you are going to lose weight and fat and how much.

And I say mostly because research does show that. Protein is a bit special in that regard because a high protein diet is more effective for fat loss than a low protein diet. Even when calories are matched the macros of your diet, how those calories break down into protein, carbs, and fat is going to heavily influence whether you lose a bunch of fat and a very little bit of muscle or maybe no muscle or a bunch of fat and a lot of muscle.

And so that’s why if you’re going to do everything right, when you’re cutting, you are going to hit both your calorie targets and your macro targets. And there shouldn’t be any disparity between those things because to turn your calories into macros, you are simply taking your calories and then you are divvying them up percentage wise to each individual target.

macro. So for example, you have 2000 calories per day, let’s say, and you’re going to follow a very standard 40, 40, 20, 40 percent of your calories are going to come from a protein at 40 percent that come from carbs and 20 percent come from fat. So what you’re doing then is you’re taking 40 percent of 2000, you’re taking 800 and you’re dividing it by four to determine how many grams of protein you should be eating.

I know that’s. a bit shorthand because there is research that shows that protein may have something more like three to 3. 2 calories per gram. But there’s also research that shows it could be upward of four and four works. So let’s just keep it simple. Okay. So that’s 200 grams of protein per day. A gram of carbohydrate also contains about four calories.

So 40 percent of 2, 800 divided by four. Okay. That’s 200 grams of carbs per day. And then you have the remaining 400 calories to a lot to fat and fat contains about nine calories per gram. So 400 divided by nine, and you’ve got. 45 or so grams of fat per day. So then what you can do is just follow your macros, just track or plan your macros and the calories will work out.

Now I know it won’t exactly work out if you were also scanning in all the foods that you’re eating because again, the math that I’ve just shared is back of the napkin. It’s rough. And also the calorie counts on food Fact panels are not always right. They can be wrong by up to 20 percent and still pass FDA inspection.

And so to keep it simple, then you’ll work out your calories, your target calorie intake, your daily intake, and then you work out your macros and you just plan and track around the calories. Your macros, knowing that while you’re probably never going to hit your target exactly, or if you do, it’s going to be a fluke.

That’s not the point. So long as you’re within, let’s say 50 to 75 max, a hundred calories of your target. And that’s when you’re cutting. I bulking, you can be a little bit looser. You can be up to a hundred calories. Maybe you’d want to air on the high side. Obviously when cutting, I generally try to be within about 50 calories of my daily target.

And obviously if I’m going to air, it’s probably gonna be on the low side, but again, I don’t worry about it too much because I work out my calories. I work on my macros. I then plan. I like to follow meal plans. I don’t like to just track on the fly. So I’ll plan out my food. And I will be looking primarily at the macros and knowing that if I hit my macros very accurately that my calories are also going to work out.

And so I’ve really already answered now the other question, which is, should I hit my calories or hit my macros? If you set everything up right, you just hit your macros and your calories take care of themselves. Now, one other thing that is worth mentioning is if your macros get screwed up, let’s say you eat too much carbohydrate or too much fat, that’s often what happens.

And now to hit your protein target, you are going to have to go over your calories. I would say just hit your calories for the day and Just get your protein as high as you can get it. Given your calorie allotment, your calorie target, and try not to make that mistake often though, if it’s just here and there every once in a while, really not a big deal, but if it’s several times per week, that is going to negatively impact your cut.

And so a corollary of sorts that is, if you know that your macros are going to be screwy for a day, for whatever reason, try to hit your protein target and then let your carbs and fats fall where they may obviously try to hit your calorie target as well. Don’t. Eat a bunch of extra food if you can avoid it.

But if again, let’s say normally you’re following a higher carb lower fat or moderate fat, high protein diet, which is what I generally recommend for those of us who are not very overweight and who are exercising regularly, training our muscles, blah, blah, blah. And for a day that you’re going to have to eat quite a bit more fat, then that’s okay.

Just try to hit your, Hey,

quickly, before we carry on, if you are liking my podcast, would you please help spread the word about it? Because no amount of marketing or advertising gimmicks can match the power of word of mouth. So if you are enjoying this episode and you think of someone else who might enjoy it as Please do tell them about it.

It really helps me. And if you are going to post about it on social media, definitely tag me so I can say thank you. You can find me on Instagram at muscleforlifefitness, Twitter at muscleforlife, and Facebook at muscleforlifefitness. Okay. Next question. How should my men’s program bigger, leaner, stronger be modified for more advanced lifters?

And my full answer to this question is this new second edition of beyond bigger, leaner, stronger that I’m working on. This is the sequel to bigger, leaner, stronger, which I wrote years ago and which I like. I think the program is good, but I have. More knowledge, more information, more understanding now. And also I have some cool ideas.

I like the modifications that I’m going to be making to the program. And really the book on the whole is being reorganized and rewritten from scratch. Much what I just did with Bigger, Leaner, Stronger in this new third edition. That is currently live everywhere online, at least, but I have not officially announced yet because there’s still some logistical things that we are sorting out with Amazon product pages are screwed up and I want to make sure that existing.

Inventories of 2. 0 are fully sold out because there still is the occasional person I’m talking about hard paperbacks right now who still gets a 2. 0 even though I would have thought that Amazon would have fully cleaned out their supplies like honestly two months ago. So I just want to make sure everything is perfect before I do the whole launch.

And so anyway, to the question, the main modification that you’re going to have to make to the program is you’re going to have to work harder to continue gaining muscle and strength after your first couple of years or so, BLS will serve you well for your first couple of years, maybe up to three years, but then there’s a point where it’s going to require more training.

Volume to continue gaining muscle and strength. There’s a point where BLS becomes more of a maintenance program. And that’s what it has been for me. I’ve been running what is basically BLS 3. 0 for many months now, because I just want to make sure that I had plenty of experience with the programming that I’m recommending to other people before calling it a job done, moving on to the next thing.

And so the thing is with BLS for me, considering that I have now about seven years of proper weightlifting under my belt, I have about seven years prior to that, but that was not very productive. It was a lot of just bodybuilding magazine workouts, very high reps and very little. Progressive overload, a lot of isolation exercises, blah, blah, blah, is that BLS is not enough volume for me to really make progress.

It is a maintenance program for me. And to get specific, BLS has you doing about 12 hard sets per major muscle group per week. And for me to really progress, I need to do upward of. 15 to even 18 hard sets per week per major muscle group. And that means longer workouts and more difficult workouts and more to recover from and so forth.

And that’s fine, but it just is what it is. And so that is the primary change is you got to make these workouts harder. Now, the way that I am going to do that in Beyond Bigger Leaner Stronger, which is going to be reflected in my personal training soon because I am going to be switching off of BLS 3. 0 to I guess BBLS 2.

0 as I’m calling it, is periodization, meaning I’m going to be including a bit more higher rep training than you find in BLS. In BLS, it is only in a few instances with exercises that just tend to work better at higher rep ranges like this. Side raises and rear raises. For example, in BBLS 2. 0, the main modification is we’re still going to be doing heavy squatting, heavy, pulling heavy pushing and pressing, but we’re going to be doing more higher rep work.

And the main reason for that. That is higher rep training is easier on your joints, your tendons and ligaments. If theoretically you could recover just fine from and do just fine with you take BLS, which is again, mostly four to six rep, 80 to 85 percent of one rep max training. If you could take that program and just over the course of it.

You can, you could program it where the volume is higher in the beginning of a training block, which is what I like to do. And then as you progress into a training block, the volume goes down and the intensity goes up. So you could take BLS and say you added an extra Three to six hard sets per workout.

And you did that for probably about the first half of a training block of a, it could be a four, six, or even eight week training block. And then start working with even heavier weights while bringing the hard sets down to somewhere around nine, 10, 11, 12 per major muscle group per week.

then that would be fine. But what many people will find is if they are only training with very heavy weights. So now I’m talking about, 90 percent of one rep max, maybe even up word of 95 percent and very heavyweights, 80, 85. They are going to fall behind in recovery. They are going to deal with joint issues, tendon issues, ligament issues.

It’s just annoying. And of course it increases the risk of injury. So instead then it is smarter to use high rep training to cram in some extra volume while reducing the amount of stress that is placed on your joints, tendons, and muscles. Ligaments. Now, it’s not necessarily reducing the stress that is placed on your body because ironically research shows that volume is tougher on the body as a whole.

It is systemically more stressing than intensity than load, but it is easier on these critical points in the body and tissues that limit what we can do in the gym. And so what you’re going to find in BBLS 2. 0 is very similar workouts to BLS, but in the beginning of a training block, the volume is going to be a bit higher.

So you’re gonna be doing more hard sets per workout. The workouts are going to get a bit more difficult and you’re going to start out working in higher rep ranges, not super high, but somewhere around eight to 10 is probably what we’re going to do. Do, and then as you get into the training block, the workouts are going to look a bit more be less workouts, where now the volume is going to come down a bit and the intensity is going to go up a bit.

And we are probably going to include some very heavy work right in the end of a training block where you go for PRs. And I say we because while I’m working on this programming, I’m also consulting with some very smart people to make the program as effective as possible. All right. So that’s that question.

Let’s go to the last question, which is how should I get back into working out? I get asked this fairly often people who were once in shape or once going to the gym regularly, long time off. Now what? And the good news is this is pretty simple. You don’t have to make this more complicated than it needs to be.

But when you get back into it. I do not recommend trying to do what you were doing previously because you do start losing muscle after a month or so of not training and strength starts to notably decline after a few weeks of not training. So if you’ve been off for quite some time, you do not have the capacity, the performance capacity that you had before.

And that applies to both intensity, so load and volume, the amount of hard sets that you’re doing. If you try to jump back into the same weights, you might hurt yourself. And if you try to jump back into the same amount of volume, you are not going to have a good time. I’ve tried it before in the past.

For example, when I was in my twenties, I fractured my wrist playing football and I was in a full arm cast for, it was almost six weeks. And I was working out in the beginning. I was doing some lower body stuff, what I could do, but then my cast started smelling like absolute shit. So I stopped that and I just didn’t, I didn’t train for probably about a month.

I think it was after one or two weeks of training that I nixed it. And when I got back into the gym, I figured, okay, I’m not going to be as strong, but I can still do the same. Basic workouts that I was doing, I could still do I was doing quite a few sets per workout. Then it was probably close to 15 or 16 hard sets per workout.

Cause I was doing again, a lot of bodybuilder stuff, a lot of isolation exercises, drop sets, super sets, giant sets, blah, blah, blah. And so I jumped back into that and almost puked at the end of my first workout and found the next few workouts were just as grueling. And I just had to dial back the difficulty of the training.

And so when you get back into it, just, I wouldn’t say take it easy, but do not just do what you were doing the last time that you were in the gym. And if you want to, again, not take it easy, but if you want to ease back into your training, then just start with something simple like a, Push, pull legs, routine three days a week.

Let’s start working on your whole body strength and let’s get you back into the habit. If you want some routines, some push, pull leg routines. If you just search for legion athletics, push, pull legs, you will find an article that I wrote on it. Hopefully the Legion article is up by the time that this video goes live because currently it’s a muscle for life article, but muscle for life and Legion are merging.

So all the content that is currently on muscle for life is going to be moved over to Legion. So hopefully that’s done by the time this video goes live. And if Googling Legion athletics, push pull legs does not find it, then just search muscle for life, push pull legs. And that will find it. I think it’s also smart to reevaluate your form when you get back into lifting after you’ve been off for a while.

Make sure that you have that mind muscle connection, meaning that you feel the muscles working that should be working and things don’t feel off or awkward before you start loading the weights again. All right. That’s it for this Q and a, I hope you found it helpful. And if you want to have your question answered in the next Q and a again, just email me Mike at most of life.

com or DM me on Instagram. Those are the best ways to get to me. And I will answer your question privately. And if it’s a question that I get asked fairly often, or that I think would be helpful for all of my followers, then it might make it into the next Q and a. Hey there, it is Mike again. I hope you enjoyed this episode and found it interesting and helpful.

And if you did, and don’t mind doing me a favor and want to help me make this the most popular health and fitness podcast on the internet, then please leave a quick review of it on iTunes or wherever you’re listening from. This not only convinces people that they should check the show out, it also increases its search visibility.

And thus helps more people find their way to me and learn how to build their best bodies ever, too. And of course, if you want to be notified when the next episode goes live, then just subscribe to the podcast and you won’t miss out on any of the new goodies. Lastly, if you didn’t like something about the show, then definitely shoot me an email at Mike at musclefullife.

com and share your thoughts on how you think it could be better. I read everything myself and I’m always looking for constructive feedback. So please do reach out. All right, that’s it. Thanks again for listening to this episode and I hope to hear from you soon. And lastly, this episode is brought to you by me.

Seriously though, I’m not big on promoting stuff that I don’t personally use and believe in, so instead I’m going to just quickly tell you about something of mine. Specifically, my 100 percent natural whey protein powder, whey plus. Now, this is a naturally sweetened and flavored whey isolate protein powder made from exceptionally high quality milk from small dairy farms in Ireland.

Whey plus also contains no GMOs, hormones, antibiotics, artificial food dyes, fillers, or other unnecessary junk. And if I may say so myself, it also tastes good. It’s delicious and mixes great. And all that is why whey plus has over 1, 400 reviews on Amazon with a four and a half star average and another 600 on my website with a five star average.

So if you want a clean, all natural and great tasting whey protein supplement that’s low in calories, carbs, and fat, then you want to head over to www. legion. com. Athletics. com and pick up a bottle of way plus 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.

And lastly, you should also know that I have a very simple 100 percent money back guarantee that works like. This, you either love my stuff or you get your money back, period. You don’t have to return the products, you don’t have to fill out forms. You don’t have to jump through any other hoops or go through any other shenanigans, so you really can’t lose here.

Head over to www.legionathletics.com now. Place your order and see for yourself why my supplements have thousands of rave reviews all over the internet. And if for whatever reason they’re just not for you, contact us and we will give you a full refund on the spot.