Ep. #347: How Luke “Recomped” on my Bigger Leaner Stronger Program

Luke: This program that you put together, I’ve really never seen anything like it. You really have the guideline for, if you want a specific result, getting lean, getting bigger, getting stronger, the blueprint is there. So people that have come to me for advice a lot of times in the past, I’ve just referred them to you because.

I think you’ve pretty much nailed it on, what it takes to get a great physique.

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That is enough shameless plugging for now. At least let’s get to the show. Hey Luke. Thanks for taking the time to come on the show and share your story. Yeah. Thanks for having me. Absolutely. As it usually goes with these episodes, why don’t we start with just a quick snapshot of your before and after in terms of results.

So people can understand what you’ve been able to achieve and over what timeframe. 

Luke: Sure. So I started lifting weights in 2014. I was watching YouTube videos on how to gain muscle and I was six foot two, 150 pounds. So I was just really skinny and it’s always been a hard gainer. People had always said that I wouldn’t be able to gain a lot of muscle because my family’s full of skinny people.

And so I started just teaching myself form videos and started lifting weights a few times a week, but I was doing jujitsu at the same time, like four to six days a week. So I was getting lean, like really leaned through that. And so even skinnier and I started to see like different cut lines and that got me really inspired.

So I started looking into more about how to get bigger and how to gain muscle. Yeah. And so after a while, I started dedicating myself to go into the gym. I stopped doing jujitsu. I started lifting days a week, but I ended up in this beginner’s purgatory. So I gained the first 25 pounds of muscle in the first year, but then I just yo-yoed back and forth, like cutting and bulking and losing muscle and then gaining fat and really didn’t.

I didn’t know how to go from that point to the intermediate stage or beyond that. So I started getting personal trainer certifications and just learning more about nutrition, but there was just a lot of nonsense out there. I just became disillusioned by the fact that people are saying so many different things that were contradictory.

And so I just got into this state of. Thinking maybe I, this is as good as I can get and I’m just, genetics or whatever it was the issue. So I was consuming a lot of information like podcasts and books and things like that, but never really found anything that had a clear blueprint until I found bigger, leaner, stronger.

And so I found that in 2016 and I just started listening to that on an audible, like on repeat, I must’ve listened to it like a dozen times. And. I had, by then I’d been starting to track calories for about six months on my fitness pal. So I was able to start implementing the macros from the book and I switched my lifting program from the higher rep range to the four to six rep range.

And then I found your podcast as well. So during that time I was just immersing myself in everything that you taught. So listen to every episode twice. It just, it really changed my life. I had control over my goals in a way I’d never had before. I had gone from eat like cavemen and don’t eat any sweets because the way that we ate in the past was we didn’t need calories.

We didn’t need to know about calories to stay lean in the past. And so if we just focus on the way we ate in the past, then we’ll stay lean. Is that a pitch out there? Is that is that part of the paleo pitch? There was a book that was promoted. I remember listening to podcasts about the calorie myth, and it was just saying we didn’t know what a calorie was a hundred years ago.

So why, and we were all skinny, like nobody was fat. So why do we need to know calories now? And it was basically but the thing is, you’d have to know what 

Mike: That’s 

Luke: such a 

Mike: simplistic, Sophistic argument. Like how do people. Find that convincing. How do you hear that? And you’re like, yeah that’s a really good point.

All right. I’m, I am convinced you are in, you are a guru. Teach me now. 

Luke: Yeah. I guess when you’re starting out, like everything just seems like who knows what is what, right? When I didn’t know anything about nutrition when I started, I remember when I first started, I didn’t even know that there were three macro nutrients, like fats, protein, carbs.

Like I just, I thought. It was just completely black space from a knowledge standpoint. So I guess, when you know nothing and someone tells you something, it just becomes your first data point. And so I guess I had to just, I basically consumed so much information that I was able to, at some point decipher which things were bullshit and which were not.

And so getting perspectives from you and from other nutritionists and just hearing a wide range of people’s advice, I guess you just, over time I just developed a little bit more of a better. Bullshit detector, but it took a long time. I was being pushed around by a lot of people that seemed confident.

That’s a big factor. I think these gurus, they just seem very confident. Like they’re very well spoken. And so it’s if you don’t know anything and you’re like, this guy seems he’s jacked, he, like Mike Chang was probably one of the first people I listened to and he’s like big and muscular and he’s promoting a system.

And I guess I think when I found your stuff, That was probably a big determining factor as well. Like the way you looked, I said you accomplished what I want to accomplish and you’re giving advice about it. So assuming you’re ethical and honest, then me following your program should lead me in the same direction that you’re going.

So I think that was probably a big turning point in just that you had very. Solid advice that actually led to results. And so I started implementing it a year and a half, two years later, I’m basically a hundred and 90 pounds and I. And much leaner. I think what the before photo I sent you, I was like 180 5 at maybe 20% body fat, and my last cut, I finished up around 180 2 at probably 10, 10 or 9% body fat.

So I really developed a control over like how lean I wanted to get I can. I, after doing three cuts through BLS, I know that in eight to 10 weeks I can be as lean as I wanna be. And be ready to bulk again. So it gave me a level of control that I never had before. I see so many people dieting and they’re just dieting for months on end.

They don’t really look that different at the end of their book cut. And I’m just like, that it really doesn’t have to be that difficult. You don’t have to go through four months of dieting and have a really Like mediocre result. If you just track your calories for three months and you lift weights, like your body will change, but most people don’t want to do that.

They think they’re really afraid of tracking calories. And so they get into this state of just basically wanted to avoid the hard work of tracking calories, even though it calories tracking calories makes it easier. 

Mike: Yeah. It’s a minor inconvenience when you look at it logistically, really.

You’re just weighing food and that’s about it, right? It’s just adding, it’s adding the step of putting together a meal plan, which I understand in the beginning can be intimidating if you’ve never done it before. Again, let’s again, how I explain it in the books, especially in I give it a bit more time in these new third editions that are coming out a bit more words, just saying creating your first meal plan might take a bit longer than you think it should, and that’s because you have to muddle your way through figuring out which foods that you like to eat will actually work because when You have somebody that has never looked at calories or macros before, and they just like certain foods.

They make a list of the foods that they would like to eat, and they start really looking through them. I’m like, I don’t really know how to make a meal out of, I don’t know how to make, I don’t know how to hit these numbers, especially for women. When they’re cutting with half of the foods that, that I would like to eat at least a fair amount of.

So I understand the beginning that meal planning can be, it can feel clumsy and feel a bit awkward, but it doesn’t take much. You do it once, you do it twice. I’d say by the third time. It’s fast and easy. And then, yeah. And then there it’s just making sure that you stick to those numbers.

So how, I like to do things if I’m going to be weighing, if I’m cutting and I need to get, be very strict, I like to just use metrics. So however many grams of this, that, and whatever you just weigh and that’s about it. So it’s not hard work really. I think. 

Luke: Yeah. And once you do it for a while, you start memorizing portion sizes and calorie numbers.

And so I think most people think that. They start tracking calories and it’s very difficult in the beginning, like the first couple of weeks or the first month or two, they’re like, wow, this is taking a lot of mental energy. But what they don’t realize is that after you get past a certain point, that initial effort you put into it pays off and it becomes almost unconscious.

Like I, I’ve been, I have 840 days consecutively on my, in my fitness pal. And when I make a meal plan, like I wake up in the morning and I spend three minutes in the app, just, Plugging in different things and then my meal plan is done for the day. And then pretty much all stress is taken away from that because I can just pull the app open, like in the morning when I’m ready for breakfast and I don’t even have to remember what I was supposed to eat.

Cause it’s just all plugged in there. So it becomes easier to actually easier to meal plan from like a, a meal plan. Stress standpoint, I know a lot of my friends are thinking, what am I going to eat for lunch today? I have no idea and they’re just they’re basically just trying to figure that out on the spot But if you do a little bit of planning and you stick to it for a while It becomes so much easier.

Mike: I mean i’d say you’re probably saving mental energy Maybe it’s a bit more it feels like a bit more expenditure in the beginning because you are going from your normal routine of Yeah, always on the fly. What am I going to eat for this meal? What am I to eat for the next meal? What am I going to eat for dinner?

What am I to eat for my snacks versus having to pre plan, but by creating a plan, then you are removing all of those decisions. There is some research. I think it was cited in the book mindless eating, which I know some of the author’s research has been Yeah. Called out I think there was something in the New York Times about funding biases, but it doesn’t mean that all of his research was bad, but there were a few studies in particular that were those were the marquee studies that were, that the book revolved around that have been severely criticized.

However, there was some research that was not, because not all of his research is bad. And it showed that I think the average person Makes, I want to say somewhere around 200 food related decisions per day, and that requires energy, mental energy. And if you then consider that with research that shows that the more mental energy we expend, the lower our.

Willpower reserves generally fall. And, that even has been shown to decrease physical performance. So let’s say you have a kind of a high stress job that requires a lot of decision making, or if that’s just your lifestyle requires a lot of decision making, a lot of expenditure of mental energy, and you were to train after work, you may find that your performance is actually a bit worse than if you were to train first thing in the morning.

But Anyways, my point is by Putting a bit more of that work in initially, and you’re absolutely right. You just eventually get used to it and you can start eyeballing portions, especially with some foods. If I’m cutting, I’ll eyeball my vegetable portions cause it doesn’t have to be accurate to the gram.

Although with other foods I guess you probably can’t get to a point where you can eyeball most everything, but I still am in the habit of weighing, if I’m going to do a refeed when I’m cutting and I’m going to eat a bunch of pancakes, I’m going to weigh the. Flour, I’m gonna, I’m gonna wait just to make sure that I’m not like eating 30 percent more calories than I want to, but by removing all of those food related decisions, you’re actually freeing up quite a bit of mental energy that you can invest into other things and that will help keep your.

Willpower reserves higher, which of course, decreases the chances of going off the rails. 

Luke: Definitely. I remember when I first started meal prepping, it was such a labor. Like I remember it took so much mental energy to put together these, different types of meals. I’ve got really complicated with it where I was making these really complex meals and it took five hours on Sunday and to prep everything.

And during the week I was spending a lot of energy Just making sure I got my calories and all that stuff. And so people saw that and said, wow, that’s just way too much work. Like I wouldn’t want to do that, but they don’t realize is that now they see me doing kind of similar work. They’ll see me like weighing food and stuff, but to me, it’s no work in my brain has adapted to it.

So it seems to them like I’m doing the same amount of work that I was three or four years ago. But in reality, from a mental energy standpoint, it’s like effortless. Doesn’t take a lot of energy to do it. And same with weightlifting. Like I, my brain isn’t such a habitual pathway. Like I’ll try to move my schedule around.

Oh, I’m going to do weight deadlifts with a friend on Saturday or something. So I’m going to not deadlift on Tuesday. And then I’ll wake up and just like almost. Autopilot my way to the gym and be like, wait, I’m, I was supposed to not do this today. So it really is, I’ve done that before. Grab my straps and then realize, Oh, wait a minute.

I’m not, I’m like in the deadlift area, like setting up and then realizing that I’m not, that I’m not supposed to do that on a day. So it really is like literally put the plane on autopilot. It does its own thing. And then you have all that energy that you used to put into that can now go into something else, which is amazing.

Cause then you already have, you’re able to juggle these different balls in the air. And then you can add more to it and it just becomes more and more complex, even though it seems as simple as it was in the beginning. Absolutely.

Mike: 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 well, 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 muscle for life fitness, Twitter at muscle for life and Facebook at muscle for life fitness. What have you learned through, you mentioned you’ve done a few cuts now, any kind of key lessons, key takeaways that.

You want to share with listeners that maybe are not just the obvious things that I’ve written and spoken a lot about, or even more, even maybe things that are more specific to you and your circumstances, your lifestyle. 

Luke: I think if you haven’t gone through a cut before, it’s hard to know that. At the end of 12 weeks, things are going to be amazing.

So I spent quite a bit of time in the beginning getting to like week three or four, and then I don’t know, feeling demoralized Oh, I don’t know if this is going to work out or I wouldn’t be able to see the prize at the end of the rainbow, so to speak, especially in the beginning of cutting.

Like hunger is higher and you’re adapting to a new diet. So there’s a lot of like willpower and a lot of at least for me, mental kind of jujitsu that I had to do to keep myself from sabotaging the results. What worked for you? Like 

Mike: specifically what tactics did you use to stay on track?

Luke: I think that. When I started tracking calories, it became a lot easier, definitely. 

Mike: Oh, so in the beginning, you were trying to what, just do it intuitively or just eyeball? 

Luke: I would track out, I would basically put a meal plan together at the beginning of the week or something, and then I wouldn’t track during the week.

So I would just say, Oh, these are my meals. And so it didn’t give me the same quality of metrics that I have now. I think I also was, I was tracking on a day to day basis. And now I track on a weekly basis. So that’s huge for understanding how, if you need to eat 17, 000 calories or 20, 000 calories in a week, and you mess up on Tuesday or something, if you’re just thinking like 24 hour period, you’re like, wow, I totally screwed my diet up today.

And you don’t look at it from a bigger picture standpoint. So I started looking at it from a perspective of. I have five days to fix this. So if I made a mistake on Tuesday, I can lower my calories a little bit. Wednesday, Thursday, Friday to be at the point by the end of the week where I hit my total calories.

Mike: Yeah, that’s a good point. Actually. It’s something that I have not written about or spoken about. I guess that’s not true. I, of course. Talked about in the context of weight loss, but I haven’t shared it directly as a here, do this weigh yourself every day and then average it. Don’t just weigh yourself every day and obsess over fluctuations or weigh yourself once a week and have a bad way in because of, you had too much sodium and then you think You messed up.

But just to clarify for anybody listening that you didn’t quite follow that. So let’s say you know that you burn approximately 2, 500 calories per day and you are going to eat you then 2000 calories a day to cut. Now you can look at it that way. You can track it day to day or you can go. Okay. So I have 2000 calories per day, seven days per week.

Okay. 14, 000 calories per week and your energy expenditure. Okay. Okay. Is going to be, what is it? 17, 500 or whatever. It’s going to be 2, 500 times seven. And you could look at it in terms of, you just need to, you need to make sure that you have that 3, 500 calorie deficit by the end of the week.

And you could get there by eating more or less the same calories every day. That’s fine. But if you, yeah, if you slip up, or maybe it’s not even a slip up, maybe you there’s like a surprise party or something and you go. Yeah, I’m going to eat 500. I’m going to eat 500 more calories today than I normally would.

And then, though, that, yeah, sure. Fine. You were over for one day, but so long as you can, by the end of the week, be where you need to be. If you can be right around 14, 000 calories, the fact that you ate more on one day or even on two days doesn’t matter because you can then look at how many days you have left in the week and adjust accordingly.

Now, my only like caveat with that is I would recommend. And this is what I’ve always done personally. I would recommend paying attention to the daily intake, just like how you should pay attention to your daily weigh ins. You should record them, but then what’s more important is that seven to 10 day average.

Similarly, I would say pay attention to your daily because what you don’t want to do, if you’re only looking at your weekly, you don’t want to get into a situation where you’re coming in, let’s say you have two or three days left in the week, and you have. eaten far too much on the days leading up to that.

And now you’re like to hit my number for the week, I’m going to have to eat like below BMR for the next couple of days. Now, not that you can’t do that for a couple of days, but ideally you wouldn’t get into a really rollercoaster type of pattern because it’s not going to be very enjoyable. So I would do pay attention to your daily intake and I would say Most people are probably going to do best if they try to hit their daily targets.

However, if they are too high, if you’re a bit low, I don’t know if you necessarily would need to compensate by increasing. I guess you could, but I probably wouldn’t. I would just go, okay, find a little bit more fat loss, but if you’re too high on a day or two days, it’s more just. Keeping your eye on the bigger picture and not telling yourself you ruined your diet or, not just don’t make it more than it needs to be.

You can adjust for that just by eating a bit less in the days that follow. 

Luke: And I think tracking in general is a huge benefit from a psychological standpoint, because you bring out all the, you take out all of the emotion around your progress. So if you weigh yourself every day, you track your food every day, you just look at it and say here are my results based on the inputs.

That I have. And if I’m not losing weight, then I just need to adjust my calories or adjust my exercise in order to make my fat loss goal. Another thing is setting goals like I’m going to lose 12 pounds the next 12 weeks. And so you have a very tangible result in line. And then I think having a coach is also a big thing because it’s.

If you haven’t gotten really lean before and you have a coach that has, then throughout that process, they can say, okay, look, you only have eight weeks left. Like it’s, I know it’s tough first couple of weeks or three weeks or whatever, but just look at, the different, all these different results that I’ve gotten in such a short period of time.

I have, I’ve clients where I can tell them, in 12 weeks I got from this point to this point and you can too. And so it sells them on the dream of what three months out will look like. And so if someone’s getting really caught up in the day to day or the week to week, then as long as you make it a short period of time that they have to stay focused and you set their eye on a longer term or a shorter term milestone, it can be easier to overcome those like daily hurdles of Oh man, I want to eat this donut, but it’s only like 12 weeks.

So I can hold out for a little bit longer. 

Mike: Yeah. Yeah. In that point of taking the emotions out of it by tracking, some people would probably say that paying attention to numbers, though, it makes them feel more anxious about it. Have you experienced that yourself? Because there are definitely people out there that would say you shouldn’t have to track everything.

You shouldn’t have to weigh everything and you should be able to just eat intuitively and just move. What you were saying earlier that pitch of where it’s more just rules of thumb as opposed to prescriptions and protocols and like regimens. What are your thoughts on that? I 

Luke: think that if you have a client that doesn’t wanna track calories, then they can spend the rest of their life not tracking calories.

It’s not like something you have to do indefinitely. done it for over two years, just because maybe I’m obsessive and I like tracking things, but it’s someone that doesn’t like doing that. I would just say, it’s just, it’s a short period of time to prove a point. Almost. It’s like this works and in three months you’re going to get this result.

And then after that you can stop tracking calories. You can eyeball it, you can do whatever you want, but you always know that you can go back to that. At any time to get back to where you want to be. So somebody that got really lean on my program and then went off the calorie tracking and just lived their life, if they ever get through a holiday season and they’re, they’re not as lean as they want to be, they know I’ll just track calories for a little while and get back on track.

And then. I can go back to doing my typical lifestyle. So I would look at everything as almost a temporary thing. It might not be a temporary thing for me. I maybe thought in the beginning, I would just track calories for a little while. And then I fell in love with doing it and just really stuck with it.

But for most people, it’s, you’d only need to do it for a little while to get a lot of the major insights that you get from tracking, like understanding what portion sizes look like and getting a better idea of what’s in food. And then from that point forward it’s much easier. Even if you stop tracking.

Mike: Yeah, I agree. Something I tell people is they’re not tracking calories now. Let’s say they’re not. And they’re not happy with their body composition, but it is pretty stable. Most people probably slowly. Most people just by the nature of the statistics, they are slowly gaining weight over time, but usually it’s like a stable.

And then you have holiday spikes where they add a few pounds. And that’s that’s the new The new normal, and it also weekends tend to be the fat gain periods where you have small amounts of fat gain that occur over the weekends. Then you have spikes on holidays. There’s been some research on that, but for the most part, their weight remains fairly stable.

And so what I also often tell people is. To that point where, yeah, it might be a pain in the ass one way or the other. You don’t have to track calories, but you’re going to have to be in a calorie deficit. You understand that you understand why. And that experience is not going to be grueling.

It might be a little bit annoying. However you get there, you’re going to have to get there, but realize that once you have the body composition that you want, you can. Just go back to eating intuitively, especially if you stick to, if you get most of your calories from nutritious foods, it’s much harder to grossly overeat when you’re eating a couple servings of fruits and vegetables every day, and you eat grains and lean protein, and you reserve only a small amount of your calories for random shit.

You can go back to what you’re doing now. And you will be in the same position where you’re more or less going to look the same. If you tone it down a bit on the weekends and you pay a bit more attention on the holidays, you actually don’t even really have to see any increases in body fat percentage, at least anything significant, anything that you can’t just undo with Intentionally eating less for a few more days.

If you have a Thanksgiving blowout, you don’t even necessarily have to go back to tracking calories. What I’ll do is I’ll just simply, you should probably do the same, or you have your set meals and you’re just going to now intentionally reduce portions in some of those meals, or you’re just going to cut a meal out.

Like maybe you have a morning snack meal. You just cut that out for a week and lose a little bit of the fat that you gained in the few days of Grossly overeating and you just go on with your lives. So you have that, like that as a tool you can always go back to, but it also is, it’s very easy to maintain a, I would say, for most people, a pretty optimal body composition.

If you’re a guy and you want to try to stay 6 percent body fat. You’re going to have to be OCD. You’re not going to enjoy it unless you have a lot of drugs. You’re just not going to enjoy it. Or if you’re a, if you’re a woman and you want to maintain 15 percent body fat. Yeah, you’re going to have to track and weigh everything.

It’s going to be a pain in the ass. But if you want a guy, if you’re a guy and you want to maintain 10 percent or if you’re a girl, you want to maintain 20%, which is where most people like to be. It’s really not that hard. You really, you can have a flexible, more rule of thumb, just intuitive approach to eating.

You can track everything if you want to, but I, and I’m speaking from experience I’ve been maintaining now for some time and I follow a meal plan. I tend to eat the same foods every day. That I change over time as I get sick of things, but that’s just how I, whatever. I don’t care that much about food, but I’m not weighing my apple that is sitting on my desk.

It’s a big apple. I’m going to eat it. And sometimes it’s a smaller apple and I’m going to eat it. So I also tell people that maintaining is very easy. You’re doing it right now. Let’s just get you to the body fat percentage you want to be at. And then you can go back to what you’re doing right now, but you’re just going to be happier with what in the mirror.

Yeah, I agree. With your cuts, is there any, anything else that any obstacles that you like unforeseen obstacles that you ran into that you had to deal 

Luke: with? I’m a hard gainer. So I get lean like really quickly if I reduce my calories. So the majority of my struggles with dieting were mindset related.

And it was just like not being able to see the it. The end result in my mind and not being able to work my way out of these different dietary restrictions. I guess we’re coming back to that same issue. It’s just not being able to look at 12 weeks down the road and say, this is going to be worth it.

At the end, and that comes from probably a lot of failed diets for people that are have gone through diets before and had them not work. There’s a level of skepticism that comes in where it’s I’m going to be slightly leaner in eight weeks and it’s not going to be that great. So I don’t feel that bad about cheating on my diet because the end result is not good.

So I would say. Finding a system that works and then believing in that system is, huge in diet compliance. I believed in your system. The more I listened to your podcast, the more I listened to your books, the more confidence I had in your system. And I think a big part of, Sticking to a program is also like ignoring a lot of other people’s advice, because when I was doing your program in the beginning, I had friends saying, Oh man, you should add a higher rep stuff, or you should do this with your diet or change this or blah, blah, blah, like so much advice from different friends.

And at the end of the day, do you have to have one cook in the kitchen, choose one path and stick to that path. There’s the constant, like fuck around itis that can be a factor. If you’re not sure what you’re doing, being uncertain about what path you should take. Leads to changing plans all the time.

So you get four weeks into a program and not see any measurable results right away, and then be like I’m going to try this other program instead then, and just jump from program to program. So I would say being patient, even if it’s like not the optimal program, if you just stick to the program you’re on for 12 weeks or however long.

And just commit that you’re going to do that program, regardless of what people say to you throughout that process, then it becomes a lot easier to at least test that program to see if it works. Yeah, absolutely. 

Mike: I would say four weeks is probably enough time. If you’re tracking your body composition and for that, for people listening, I’d say check your weight again daily and take seven to 10 day averages, pay attention to that.

And if you Want to pay attention to, especially with body fat percentage in particular, I recommend just tracking your waist measurement. That’s a reliable indicator of whether you are gaining or losing fat. And if you are really wanting let’s say you’re trying to gain muscle as quickly as possible.

You also could add a couple body measurements. But again, if you are quantifying your progress, Okay. Four weeks is plenty of time. Like a good program should produce real results in four weeks. 

Luke: Yeah, 

Mike: I agree. And then you may not be anywhere near to where you want to end up, but you should see real results in four weeks.

Luke: Sure. And if you track your weight. You’ll know that you’ve made that progress. And instead of just looking in the mirror, if you have the numbers to back it up, it’s definitely a more state of confidence. Look, I gained, I lost four pounds the last four weeks. That’s great. 

Mike: Yeah. My waist shrunk an inch or something.

And the mirror is great. And the mirror obviously is ultimately what I guess will determine the effectiveness of a program, right? Cause we want to see what we want to see in the mirror, but to your point that you had brought up. Earlier is in the beginning, there can be positive changes that are happening.

But what can happen is if you’re only going by the mirror, take fat loss, right? And obviously, this, but for anybody listening that doesn’t know this, your body does not lose It does not burn fat proportionally in all the areas that it stores it. There are certain areas that it goes to before others for fat burning.

And this is the whole stubborn fat phenomenon. And if you’re only paying attention to the mirror, chances are. You are focusing in on one, two, maybe three areas of your body, and chances are those are the areas that take the longest to get lean. So for guys who’re obsessed with abs, and so we’re always looking at our and love handles, right?

It’s like the lower back kind of AB areas where we’re always looking. And in four weeks you might not see that much of a change there, and you might not even notice that your face is a bit leaner, your shoulders are a bit leaner, your arms are a bit leaner, maybe your legs, because you’re only looking at.

Your abs or your, the love handles are still there and you’re getting discouraged. Or if you’re a woman, you’re paying attention to your hips, your thighs, your butt. And if you’re not seeing a significant change in the mirror, which you very well may not in the first four weeks, depending on where you’re at and depending on your body and how it responds, you don’t notice that again, your upper body has actually looks a bit leaner.

So that’s why I think also taking Pictures is important taking front backside pictures, at least front pictures, same lighting, in the morning, no pump. And once a week is probably good. And then you can see that as well, because when you look at yourself every day, you also, when all you have in your mind is like, this is how I want to look.

And you’re only focusing on a few areas of your body. It’s easy to think that things aren’t changing when they are. It’s just Not in the way that you maybe expected or wanted or not as quickly as you expected or wanted, but things are changing. 

Luke: I definitely take weekly progress photos when I’m cutting.

It’s like one of those books where you flip the pages and the bigger changes slightly. Yeah. You get, you really do see that it’s very interesting how you really don’t pick up on the daily changes, but when you look at the photos, they really do bring out the differences. Absolutely. So 

Mike: what 

Luke: are you doing now 

Mike: in terms of your training?

Luke: Sure. I’m bulking right now. So I’m in the middle of a six month bulk and I’m doing BLS. I’m working with Harry and your coaching program. So we’re modifying a little bit. I’m subtracting a few sets to make my program a little bit more manageable because I also do a hip hop dance. So that kind of puts a strain on my, my bodybuilding stuff.

So I have to keep track of my volume. So I don’t. Overtrain basically just focusing on getting stronger. I’m trying to get to the milestones that are for beyond bigger leaner, stronger. So I can switch the advanced program. I got to a 315 pound deadlift at RPE 10. So like rate of perceived exertion, I couldn’t have done any more reps.

Basically. Now what I’m doing is I’m working my way back up to three 5315 with an RPE six. So essentially making it I’m trying to get to a point where I’m all like, all my lifts are like. Okay. Easier at the same weight. So working my way up through there and then just getting all my lifts to the BBLS metrics.

So I can do a more periodized training with like higher reps and lower reps. Nice. And how’s that going? 

Mike: Have you have you come across any obstacles or struggles, anything that you guys have had to Adjust for beyond the cardio, which of course makes sense, 

Luke: right? I guess I’ve had to be a lot more stringent with my tracking as I’ve gotten on like actual work workout tracking as I’ve gone along because the gains get smaller and smaller, as and if I’m adding like one or two reps a week to each exercise, I just have to be conscious of this today. I want to get. One more rep on this exercise and that’s going to be progress. 

Mike: That matters too. Obviously it’s something I really punch up actually in the third editions of BLS and TLS that are coming out, but for everybody listening, it gets, it’s so important to track your workouts when, cause in the beginning, If you have a decent program, you gaining 25 pounds muscle, I’d say for a guy in the first year, women are not going to be able to do that.

I don’t think at all, period. I don’t know if there’s a woman out there that’d be able to do that. You’d have to have incredible muscle building genetics if it’s even possible, but women have probably about half that, but for a guy to gain 25 pounds muscle in the first year that I’m assuming you were tracking, you were following.

Some sort of regimen, right? Cause that, that generally doesn’t just happen Oh yeah, I’ll just I’ll just do some bodybuilding workouts. I’ll look at that 25 pounds. 

Luke: Yeah, I was really consistent with meal prepping, which is a big fact. I think diet has probably been my biggest strength from the beginning, just from a planning perspective.

So I always had I always had my calories, I always had a bunch of meals prepped at the beginning of the week from the very beginning. So I did really well with that. And then I would just. Lift in the gym. I wouldn’t track my workouts nearly as well as I do now, but because I was getting enough calories and because I was, being conscientious with that, I think I made decent progress.

And I honestly, I didn’t, I don’t think I made the best progress my first year. Maybe it took a year and a half or two years to gain that 25 pounds, but it was hard to tell because I wasn’t tracking as closely and my weight was fluctuating a lot. I was going up and down a bunch. And it might’ve taken longer than I thought, but I would say now the biggest change is looking at small progress.

And I think it really relates to life in general. It’s if you make a small amount of progress, it is progress. And instead of being like I should be going up 10 pounds a week on each lift or something, the expectation of progress changes. As I become more advanced and I think that makes me feel a lot better, like psychologically as well.

Maybe in the beginning I had these extreme expectations that I’d be able to gain like, 50 pounds of muscle or something in just a couple of years. And just that I’d be where I wanted to be really fast. And I think people have that attitude on a lot of things in life that they can just make really fast progress and just reach the top of their field.

And just, a few years or whatever, but the lessons I’ve learned from bodybuilding are that the. Incremental gains over time actually have a massive impact on the way you look and the habits that are created in just the last year. All of these like weightlifting habits and diet habits have started to compound, I was talking about mental energy decreasing and not needing as much time or energy spent on these different things that it really is like.

You front load all of the effort and that’s just to pay off more and more, even though progress will slow in weightlifting, like you’ll be getting fewer reps added every week. It’s like the more work you put in, the less progress you make for bodybuilding, but it’s like a microcosm of life. And I think what’s interesting, it’s like bodybuilding is almost harder than life because in life you, the more you put in usually results will start to exponentially grow like your business with legion and muscle for life.

You put out a lot of energy and progress is slow in the beginning, but then it speeds up. It’s like bodybuilding is the opposite direction. You put in a lot of energy in the beginning and then your progress slows down over time. So bodybuilding is a harder thing than life. But it teaches you a lot of lessons about putting effort in every day and making incremental progress that adds up to a really big change over time.

Mike: Yeah. It’s very true. Ironically, in business it’s generally harder to continue growing the larger you get because the competition gets stiffer. You’re up against bigger companies that are more savvy, have bigger. Advertising and marketing budgets. So it’s, I’d say in business, at least my experience so far has been similar, where it’s different in business and life is and where there’s no real analog in bodybuilding is with the right creative idea, you can totally change that.

You can grow exponentially no matter how large you are with the right idea. That can radically accelerate your growth. Whereas in bodybuilding, there is no equivalent. Like you are just going to have to work harder and harder to get less and less. And yes, I think that it’s a good, it’s one of those experiences that I think conditions your mind and conditions you positively.

I think it’s a good lesson to learn. Just so your expectations are, if you can look at. The other areas of your life through a similar lens, if you can go into something saying, I’m going to expect that this is going to be a lot of hard work, it’s going to be much harder than I think it is going to be when I’m starting out and it’s progress is going to probably be slower than I would like it to be.

It’s going to take a lot longer to get to where I want to be, but that doesn’t discourage me. And I still feel energized and ready to go that is very positive as opposed to being completely diluted, getting into something and hoping that it’s going to be a lot easier than it actually is, et cetera, et cetera.

Yeah, I totally agree on that. And just to finish up what I was saying on tracking. So in the beginning, if you don’t track your workouts, you can still make enough progress to be motivated. And, it’s most people. Are so hyper responsive to resistance training when they first start out that they’re adding reps and weight almost willy nilly.

Almost. It’s just every week. Even if they’re not tracking stuff, they just go, wow. If they have some basic rules of progression in place, let’s say it’s like a double progression model. Like in my programs, where you’re just supposed to hit let’s say you’re doing starting strength. You’re supposed to hit three sets of five, or if you’re doing BLS, it’s one set of six, or If that’s a bit too aggressive as two sets of six or three sets of six, if that’s all you really know, and then you’re just like, cool, I’m stronger now, adding weight, cool.

I’m stronger now, adding weight. You’re not even tracking everything because you’re just gaining strength so quickly across the board. That’s great. But there’s a point when, again, coming into. For most people, it’s probably the end of year one, maybe middle of year two, or that’s no longer the case. If you’re not tracking there’s, you’re just going to, you’re going to hit it.

You’re going to hit a ceiling. And then you’re not going to know really where to go from there because it makes a difference simply knowing that, okay, last week, let’s say you’re doing and you got 225 for five five, five, four. Let’s say those were your sets. I think that it makes a difference knowing that and going, okay, when you sit down for that first set, let’s say you do your warmup, you feel good.

You slept well. There’s no reason why you should expect poor performance and you get down on the bench and simply, You could even say, and there’s research on this, actually envisioning a successful set of six, or even just conceptualizing that you’re gonna go for six and you’re gonna get, it makes a difference in terms of your performance.

And again, there’s a bit of research on the that point in particular and how it even relates to strength that visualizing success, successful sets, increases performance. That’s one thing that you get from tracking. Another thing that you get from tracking as an intermediate is.

You get to see that you still are making progress. Whereas that progress is not as, it’s just not as evident as it was when you were new, because it is maybe, in my case now, if I can gain a couple reps on my. Big lifts per month right now. I’m happy. And that’s it’s progress.

And, so if I’m adding weight it’s about once a month on my big lifts and, it’s usually five pounds, sometimes 10 pounds, depending on how I’m feeling. That’s progress. But if you’re not tracking you won’t necessarily realize that, that you are gaining those reps. And I think that, Even generally being demotivated.

If you’re just discouraged, if you’re getting in the gym and you’re starting your workout, you’re discouraged. You’re wondering, are you just wasting your time? Are you even making progress? And you’re just going through the motions. Those workouts are not going to be as productive as workouts where you know that things are moving in the right direction.

Progress is slow, but it’s there, what you need to do this week to. Progress. And if you don’t get it this week, that’s okay. You always have next week. 

Luke: Yeah. And I’ve, I heard a power lifter once say that, he’s thinking about his sets through it throughout the week because he knows exactly what he needs to hit.

And so I think that comes over time as you track more and more, you’ll be thinking, okay, Wednesday I have an overhead press and he get five reps. And you’re just thinking about it in advance. So when you get into the gym that day, you already know what your objective is. And so the more you track, the more your brain thinks about those things.

And so you really do start to develop this somewhat of a mental obsession with the progress you’re making. And the more mental energy you put towards that, what you track increases and what you track and share increases exponentially. So you have something that you’re trying to share. Putting your mind, your mental energy towards it becomes a larger and larger part of your life.

So looking at that next workout in advance becomes a much more productive thing than just walking to the gym in the morning and thinking what am I supposed to do today? You’ve already mentally rehearsed it because you have been keeping track. 

Mike: Yeah. And that’s actually a funny point. I would, I’m not even at that point.

I don’t think about my work outside to outside the gym. For me, it is when I’m in the gym. I track everything. So when I’m like, okay, I know what I’m doing today. I don’t visualize successful sets rep by rep, but I conceptualize okay, I’m looking at, okay, I’m squatting today. Here’s the weight on the bar.

Here’s what I got last week. I’m feeling good. I’m going to see if I can get at least, let’s say I got four reps last week. I’m going to try to go for at least five, maybe six, depending on. How close to technical failure I’m willing to go today or whatever, but I’ll conceptualize that, get in, get the concept of, doing a good set of five, even though I’m not necessarily watching each rep in my mind’s eye.

Which again, I could do and I, and approximately would improve performance, but I just don’t take it that far and outside of the gym. I’m actually not thinking about it. And, for people that hear that and go that, that sounds, that seems a bit weird or seems a bit too obsessive. If you’re thinking about or visualizing your workouts outside of the gym, I would say, yeah, what yeah.

Do most people spend their time thinking about in general, just stupid, trivial shit anyway. TV shows, social media, interpersonal dramas, shit that doesn’t even matter. It’s actually just negative. Nothing positive will ever come out of it. I would argue that while, yes, there probably actually are better things that you could do more constructive things with your energy, your mental energy outside of the gym than visualizing success of work successful workouts.

There are also much more negative things. I would say it’s probably not negative. It’s maybe it’s a bit frivolous, but it’s not negative. Whereas yeah mulling over some argument you had. On Twitter, that’s negative. Like you’d be better off spending that time just visualizing a successful workout just to preempt what might already be going through some people’s minds.

Oh, that sounds ridiculous. That’s pathetic thinking, you visualizing workouts outside of the gym. Yeah, I don’t entirely agree. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Cool, man. Those are the questions that I had for you. Is there anything else in particular that you wanted to share with everybody listening?

Luke: I would just say that. This program that you put together, I’ve really never seen anything like it as far as just you really have like the guideline for, if you want a specific result, getting lean, getting bigger, getting stronger, the blueprint is there. So people that have come to me for advice a lot of times in the past, I’ve just referred them to you because.

I think you’ve pretty much nailed it on, what it takes to get a great physique. So I’ve really been impressed by you and your responsiveness to emails and your engagement with people that have read your books. So I would just say anyone that’s looking to get a great physique and get the body of their dreams, then follow Mike.

Cause he, he knows what he’s talking about. Thanks, man. 

Mike: Yeah. And just to follow up on that. And that’s been my goal since the beginning. That’s one of the reasons why I actually decided to write a book as opposed to creating maybe a higher priced book. PDF for course, or something is I wanted to put everything into something that like currently the paperback is actually cheaper than the Kindle, which is funny that paperback just because Amazon’s discounting algorithms are outside of my control, but they just they have their margin.

And so they cut into their own margin. To discount the books. So right now, like bigger than you’re stronger is on sale. The paperbacks on sale for 7 and something. And the Kindle 7 and 99 cents. I wanted to write a book because I figured I can put everything in there and it’s not going to be expensive.

The most, usually the paperback is like 12. So for eight to 12, I can give somebody something to say here. Here, this is it. This is what I’m about and you can just judge me on this. If you just do this, give it four weeks. So that has been my kind of mantra from the beginning is it doesn’t really matter what I say.

Things can make sense and I try, I do my best to try to make things clear and evidence based, but in the end it just comes down to, does it work? And it’s one of the great things about fitness is it’s empirical. Things either work or they don’t work. So take the calorie myth, the stuff that we were talking about previously.

Fine. He made an argument. What does he say? What’s he telling people to do? And then they do it and it either works or it doesn’t work. And it’s not just, Oh, let’s say if you lose a little bit of weight or gain a little bit of weight, but people are going. To people like me and the rest of the health and fitness educators, I guess you could say with specific goals in mind.

Often you’ll have a guy that wants to look a certain way or a girl that wants to look a certain way. And that means losing a certain amount of weight, gaining certain amount of muscle or whatever. And so if something works a little bit, if somebody follows a diet, let’s say they want to lose 30 pounds of fat and they follow some person’s diet.

And in four weeks, they lose a pound. 

Luke: Yeah, 

Mike: it worked. Let’s say an actual, they actually lost a pound of fat. Yeah, it worked, but it’s not going to get them to where they want to be. So my basic pitch to anybody is, I do as good a job as I can explaining things, making them clear, making them understandable.

And I’d say introducing them to the science behind a lot of it without beating them over the head with it. But in the end, it’s just do it. And if it works, that’s why you should continue doing it. And you should continue listening to me. And if it doesn’t work. Then please email me because I can help you make it work.

But in the end, if I couldn’t, if I couldn’t make it work then I would say people, they abandoned me. Don’t listen to anything else that I’m saying, because in the end this space in particular is about results. It’s not about just intellectual exercises. It’s about getting results. And that’s always been.

My focus is giving people things that they can get results with. 

Luke: And everyone I’ve introduced your books to, the people that I’ve actually done the work and studied it, they’ve gotten amazing transformations. It’s just, it’s if you put the work in and you read the book and you apply the concepts from the book, then, it’ll work.

It’s just that like when I first picked up the book, initially I didn’t really get started. Very quickly. I just listened to it and just thought about it. And I didn’t apply everything all at once, but when I actually started doing it, then it started working. So it’s really about how much time and effort you put into it.

And if you can follow it actually step by step, then it’ll work. I like it. I like 

Mike: it. Thanks again, Luke, for taking the time. I appreciate it. I hope that everybody listening enjoyed 

Luke: the interview. Yeah. And if anybody wants to see what my progress looks like, they can follow me on Instagram at Luke’s wall.

I like it. 

Mike: 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.

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Lastly, 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 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.

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