Ep. #546: Q&A: Home Workouts, Eating at Night, Sacrificing Sleep, and More

Hello friendlies. It’s Mike Matthews and it’s q and a time where I answer questions that people have asked me via Instagram at Muscle Life Fitness. If you wanna come follow me and ask me your questions and via email, which is the better way to reach me. If you want to make sure that you get an answer to your question, [email protected].

And so today’s questions are, what do I think about the coronavirus? Of course the rona. What are the best workouts to do at home for maintaining muscle and strength until we can get back in the gym? Is eating at night unhealthy? Uh, does it cause weight gain? And when is it more important to get extra sleep versus sacrificing sleep to get in the gym?

Or if we’re talking about quarantine life, to get in a home workout? And quickly before we get into it, I want to tell you about a charity sale that’s going on right now [email protected]. So here’s what I am. Doing, I have put my best-selling health and vitality supplements on sale for 15% off. So that’s my multivitamin, my green supplement, my fish oil, my joint supplement, my sleep supplement, all on sale for 15% off, and I’m going to donate 20% of this week’s profits to the center for disaster.

Philanthropy, which is supporting healthcare workers quarantined and especially vulnerable individuals. So again, that is legion athletics.com and our health and vitality supplements are on sale for 15% off. And the more stuff we sell, the more we are going to donate, because I’m gonna be giving 20% of this week’s profits to a charity that is helping virus first responders and people who are most negatively impacted by this situation.

All right, let’s start at the top. What do I think about the coronavirus and our situation? Um, all right. Some thoughts, shotgun, some thoughts from my brains. First is I do understand that it is not just another flu. There are a lot of people on social media who are dismissing it as just another flu and the key differentiating.

Factor to me here is that the people who uh, get hit hard with the disease that it causes c ovid 19 develop pneumonia like symptoms. And if it gets really bad need respirators to stay alive, they can no longer breathe on their own. And so there are only so many respirators, which means that there are only so many people who can, can get the treatment they need to survive.

And so this talk about flattening the curve, uh, makes sense to me in the context of respirators. Also called ventilators, same thing, and making sure that we have enough beds available, like, you know, in hospitals, whether it’s established hospitals or makeshift. Hospitals and enough machines, enough respirators or ventilators to treat the influx of, of people that will need treatment.

So for example, according to a March 19th message from Harvard Health Publishing, current estimates suggest that 99%. Of the people who are infected with the virus that causes C Ovid 19 will recover. And some people have no symptoms at all. In most people. We’re talking about mild symptoms, uh, a mild fever and some coughing and some aches for.

Several days and that’s it. And while thousands of people have died from this virus, the overall mortality rate currently stands around 1%. And that’s a lot lower than what the media was hyperventilating about just a few weeks ago, where we were being told that it might be as high as seven or 8%, uh, because of what’s going on in Italy.

And it was being not e not even implied, it was being explicitly. Stated that Italy might be what? Like, that might be a preview of what is to come here in the US and in the uk That’s what, uh, the, the mainstream media, at least large. Uh, Segments of the mainstream media. That’s the message they were pushing just a couple weeks ago, and a couple things to keep in mind regarding that 1% averages.

Averages are driven up by the street, extreme highs, and down by the extreme lows. So in this case, That average is being driven up by the elderly. Uh, I’ve seen some data that shows that the mortality rate can be as high as 15% among people who are 70, 80 plus, and particularly if they have pre-existing health conditions.

And then being driven down by the, the very low number of deaths among. Young people, kids in particular, I don’t even know if there’s been a confirmed case among kids. There might be among infants. I know that, uh, I was reading about there are some cases of a more severe illness among infants. Something that you would expect to see more among the elderly, but I’m not sure.

I don’t, I don’t think there’s even been a confirmed death. In children yet, and many children carry the virus and have no symptoms, uh, which is, which is strange. It’s, it’s just interesting how the virus operates. Something else to think with here regarding the mortality of the coronavirus versus let’s say the.

Flu, which kills a lot of people. The, the flu, the c d C estimates that anywhere from the low twenties to the high fifties, thousands of people, so like about 23 to 59,000 people have died from the flu already this season. I don’t know if you remember the 2017, 2018 flu season was even worse. The c d C estimates that over 80,000 people died.

And so some people are wondering why all the panic and the hysteria over, uh, this new virus that has killed a fraction of what the flu kills every year. And those numbers I just shared were just US numbers, not global numbers. And. Two thoughts on that. One is it goes back to the ventilator point. So yes, currently the coronavirus pales in in comparison to the flu if we’re talking about just people getting sick and dying.

But if the coronavirus spreads very rapidly and the healthcare system isn’t ready for all the people who are gonna need special treatment. The coronavirus deaths could, could greatly exceed the flu deaths. Now, that said, as the data set grows on the coronavirus, as more and more people are getting tested and treated, we are seeing that the mortality rate is plummeting.

So again, just several weeks ago, we were being told that it, it might be. As high as seven or 8%, and then it got revised down to three or 4%, and now it’s at 1%, and who knows when this is all said and done and millions of people have been tested and then treated, the numbers may end up looking similar to the flu.

We don’t know. We’ll have to see like the overall mortality rate of the flu is around 0.1%, but if you look into the data, 60 to 85% of the deaths caused by the flu are among the elderly. So as this coronavirus. Spreads around the world, which there’s no stopping that now it’s gonna be a thing and realize there are other coronaviruses that we’re exposed to.

This is a new one, but there are four different coronaviruses that cause the common cold, for instance. So this new virus is out there. And as more and more people get infected with it, uh, we will gather more and more data and we’ll have to see how it pans out. Something else to keep in mind regarding the data being collected on the coronavirus and other viruses is there are a lot of people out there who have gotten infected with.

This new coronavirus and flu viruses and other things who don’t go to a hospital, they just stay home and wait it out and get better, and they are not accounted for. Now, of course, scientists do try to control for that. They do try to adjust numbers to reflect the people out there who. Aren’t concerned enough or just don’t have serious enough symptoms to want to go to the hospital, but you can only do that so accurately.

It is still just an estimate. And my point with saying that is we know that this virus has been going around since at least January. When the w h O said they kind of dismissed it, is the general director of w h o kind of dismissed it as a nothing burger because there was no evidence he was saying that it can be transmitted from human to human.

And it’s kind of funny because this guy is, uh, a fucking loser who has been caught covering up outbreaks in the past. The New York Times reported on this years ago, uh, particularly the Cora outbreak in Haiti. You can go read about it online. And so that guy is now. Running the W H O and in January he said, oh yeah, this is this.

This isn’t really something to be concerned about. Anyway, my point with saying that is the virus has been spreading around for a while now, and here in the United States for example, there hasn’t been much testing yet. It’s ramping up now heavily, but up until now there hasn’t mu been much testing, so we really don’t know how many people have already been infected with the virus and gotten over it.

So I know several people, for example, who almost certainly have. Gotten it, uh, over the course of the last couple months. I mean, the exact symptoms, the low grade fever, the cough, the aches, just feeling kind of shitty for a few days, and the coughing in particular. Right? And that’s kind of what it was. It was three to five days of a fever of a hundred, 101, uh, a very annoying cough aches.

And then it went away. And you can find a lot of similar accounts from people on the internet who have said, Yeah, these symptoms sound real familiar. A month ago, or two months ago, or even three months ago, I had those exact symptoms, a low grade fever, uh, an annoying dry cough and aches and just kind of feeling shitty for three to five days, and then it went away.

And that’s in line with the most recent information published by Harvard, by their health publication. In most people, this is a mild illness. Now, something else worth commenting on, I think, is the economic implications. I, I do understand the current precautions being taken. To stem the exponential increase in infections and to then prevent a lot of unnecessary deaths because of unpreparedness and the ventilator points in particular, but also other resources that need to be in place to treat the people who are gonna get this and who will need.

To go to the hospital, but if this current quarantine and economic shutdown is dragged on to the point of an economic collapse like we saw in 2008 or worse. I start to wonder, does that even make sense? How many people? ’cause if that happens here in America, that’s gonna have ripple effects all over the world.

It’s we’re gonna drag the entire global economy down with us. Now, how many people will die if that happens? How much suffering will occur if that happens? And that’s guaranteed to happen. If there’s an economic meltdown, 100% can’t be stopped. Millions, tens of millions, hundreds of millions, maybe even billions of people will die.

And that’s to say nothing of all the people who are gonna suffer. Maybe they’re not gonna die, but life is gonna get real hard. And so does that make sense as a solution to the problem, a global implosion and catastrophe like we’ve never seen before. Or is there a point where you have to say, no, we can’t have that.

We do have to bring the economy back online, not because of Ma G d P and Matos? No, because of quality of life. Because people need to be able to earn money so they can feed themselves and keep a roof over their heads and to simultaneously take. Uh, thorough measures to focus the majority of the resources on the people who are at the highest risk and to help ensure that they don’t get sick, and if they do get sick, to make sure that they get the treatment that they need.

I mean, it seems obvious to me. And yeah, I’m not a public health expert. I’m not a political scientist, but I have common sense and I can do arithmetic, and who knows? Maybe that is the plan. Right? So it is the 22nd. We have another week of this. Self quarantine, uh, extreme isolation phase, and maybe that is gonna be the announcement coming into next month that we’ve done a good job and the virus is not spreading exponentially.

We’re gonna see numbers go up because now testing’s being done, but we might see that. Oh, okay. So the curve here. Is, is flattened and we can start returning to, uh, normal living, not all at once, but we’re gonna see a move maybe in the opposite direction of where things have been moving so far. But if that’s not the case and it continues to go in the direction that it has gone in so far, if there’s like a doubling down on the, uh, extreme.

Precautions. Then, I guess that would be national martial law and enforced quarantine. Can’t even leave your house except for, I guess, food, drugs, essentials. Then I really wonder what the fuck is going on. The Fed can only do so much. The money machine can only prop up our economy so long before the lack of actual production.

The drop in G D P just wipes us out, and of course it would wipe out the value of the dollar. That’s where it would start. And this is so obvious to anyone who understands the basics of an economy and understands the basics of how the Federal Reserve works, that if it does happen, I can only assume that it is by design, that it’s intentional that that is the plan.

And why? Why would that ever be done Intentionally? Why would that ever be planned? I. Well, the elite class of people, uh, this would, this would include not just the very wealthy, but also, uh, intellectuals, politicians who are at the top of the food chain have been talking for a long time now about the need for a global government.

If you want to learn about that, if you want. In, in my eye, in my view, irrefutable evidence, evidence of that. Check out Carol Quigley’s work first. Go read about who he was, and then read his book, the Anglo-American Establishment, and if you have the. Fortitude. And if you have the time, let’s face, a lot of us have the time right now read his Magnum Opus Tragedy and Hope, which Bill Clinton said was the most influential book he’s ever read.

Quigley was a mentor of Clinton’s, and so you have this relatively small group of people. With a tremendous amount of wealth and influence. You have a vision for the world, a future that they are working to create, and a major component of that is a global government. And there also needs to be a global currency.

Those things go hand in hand. And so this current coronavirus crisis would be a great opportunity for them to seize on, to move us closer toward what I think would be a dystopia, but they would say a utopia. I. And to anyone who would scoff at what I just said as conspiracy theory. I say, you’re a fucking idiot, truly.

And you are dangerous not just to yourself and to society because you’re a complete Muppet. You are the ideal sucker, a true mark. One, you couldn’t have a detailed discussion about the topic at all because you haven’t looked into it at all. You are just a conformist hive mind person who listens to authority and authority says that conspiracies don’t exist.

Two, I would challenge you to even define the fucking word. Uh, I would bet that 50% of people who, whenever they hear about a conspiracy of any kind, then dismiss it as, oh, a tinfoil hat actually don’t even know what the word means. Which, by the way, all a conspiracy is, dictionary definition is a plan by a group of people to do something illegal or harmful.

And so if you think that’s not going on right now in the world, especially in the Hall of power, I, I don’t even know what to say to you that, that that’s, that’s not naivete, that’s willful. I would almost say suicidal ignorance, so whatever. Just go back to your Netflix and your porn and your video games and sports ball and continue being exploited by the people who can conspire in plain sight.

Because you refuse to look. And what’s also kind of ironic in talking with conspiracy deniers, as I will label them, is they’re not consistent. They have the conspiracies that they like. There are just the conspiracies they don’t like. Those are the ridiculous ones. The ones they do like though. Oh, no, those are perfectly reasonable.

Those are proven. So, and, and this, this, this is of course on both sides of the political aisle. Uh, you have people on the left who love their Russia conspiracies and they love their Ukrainian conspiracies and their Koch brothers conspiracies. And then you have people on the right who love their cultural Marxist conspiracies and their Obama conspiracies and their George Soros conspiracies.

And if you look into a lot of those things that I just listed, there’s good evidence that, yeah, a lot of these people probably did do some things. That are not exactly legal or not exactly in the best interests of everyone to make money and to become more powerful and to undermine their enemies. Like that’s kind of the game.

And then when you look in history, You quickly realize that’s one of the primary themes since the beginning of time is people in power conspiring with their buddies to stay in power, to become more powerful, to become more wealthy. And of course, those things are, are connected and to destroy their enemies.

So anyway, that’s enough of that rant. Something that I’ve ranted about previously, but I thought it’s relevant to repeat given our current circumstances. But back to the coronavirus, let’s see where it goes. I, I do think that the most likely outcome is sometime in summer. I. This is gonna be more or less behind us now, it’s gonna take longer probably for the pandemic to be officially ended or, or announced as over.

Remember with sars, I, I think it took a year, it might’ve been a little bit longer, uh, for, for the pandemic to be officially declared as over. And we’re probably gonna see something similar here. But as far as the major disruptions go, uh, I do think the most likely outcome is. Come summer, most of that is gonna be over and we’re gonna see a bigger, more invasive government.

I do think that is likely just look at what the Fed is doing, getting involved in, in municipal bonds, they’re talking about getting involved in trading securities directly, and so I think there will be further consolidation of power in the Fed economically. Some small businesses. Are not gonna make it depending on how long the current precautions are in place.

It may not be as bad as some people are predicting, but we’ll probably see some corporate consolidation as well. But we can recover from where we are at right now, and especially again with the Fed doing what they’re doing, pumping now it’s trillions of dollars of, uh, liquidity into the markets. And making money available to small businesses and giving money directly to people.

And so if this current lockdown scenario doesn’t continue for too long, the economy should be able to recover by the end of the year. Maybe we’re not gonna be back to the highs that we were at before all this kicked off, but we should be well on our way back to that. And just to end on some good news that supports what I just said, uh, the number of new cases is falling where the outbreak began.

So in Wuhan, for example, they just reported no new local cases since the beginning. This is the first time since the beginning. Korea, uh, new cases are rapidly declining. Things are. Seem to be under control there. They’re getting back to work. They’re getting back to work in China as well, and that’s according to the Chinese government.

Um, but I also know firsthand, for example, uh, through my, my supplement manufacturer, the manufacturer, one of the manufacturers who makes a lot of the stuff for Legion, they are being told from their contacts in China that factories are back online. Everything is coming back. Their economy is quickly coming.

Back and so that’s good. There are also are breakthroughs on vaccines that are being developed. So vaccination trials are, are already underway at Kaiser Permanente. There are Israeli scientists who are nearing the development of, uh, their first vaccine and China’s testing five different options, and they say that they may have one ready next month.

And while a vaccine would be nice to have, that doesn’t help the people who already have it. Of course, if you are sick with it and you get vaccinated, it’s, it’s too late. But on the treatment front, uh, some good news came out that a drug that’s been around for decades, um, for treating malaria hydroxychloroquine.

May help cure C Ovid 19, the disease that this virus causes, especially when combined with an antibiotic. So the F D A is working day and night to expand the trials on this drug or this combination of drugs, and if it pans out, that would be a huge win. And let’s keep in mind that temperatures are rising and we don’t know if that matters in the case of this new coronavirus, but we do know it matters.

In the case of existing flu viruses that we’ve identified and that come and go every year and coronaviruses that cause the common cold, once it gets too warm, they die off. They can’t, uh, survive in the environment long enough to spread effectively. And lastly, I said this earlier, but I’ll just end on this point.

We may learn that this current phase of self quarantine and social distancing has worked, has accomplished the goal of preventing the exponential increase in infections the steep upward. Trajectory, uh, that would overwhelm the healthcare system with all the people who would develop serious symptoms and need respirators and hospital beds.

So again, we may get some really good news as we come to the end of this. Again, it’s the 22nd right now. I believe it was March 14th when this was announced, when we were asked to stay away from each other, basically just mind our own business, and it was supposed to go through the 30th.

I want to tell you about a charity sale that’s going on right now [email protected]. So here’s what I am doing. I have put my bestselling health and vitality supplements on sale for 15% off. So that’s my multivitamin, my green supplement, my fish oil, my joint supplement, my sleep supplement, all on sale for 15% off, and I’m going to donate 20% of this.

Week’s profits to the Center for Disaster Philanthropy, which is supporting healthcare workers quarantined, and especially vulnerable individuals. So again, that is legion athletics.com and our Health and Vitality supplements are on sale for 15% off. And the more stuff we sell, the more we are going to.

Donate because I’m gonna be giving 20% of this week’s profits to a charity that is helping virus first responders and people who are most negatively impacted by this situation. I. Let’s talk about home workouts. What are your best options? Well, what you should do is you should go over to legion athletics.com, go to the blog, and you’ll find a long article that I wrote.

It’s like 10,000 words. If I added a bit more material and like did some pictures and stuff, I could probably publish it as a little book or sell it as a program or something. But I’m just giving it away for free over at the blog. And I mean, it gives you everything that you need. I, I put everything I could think of in there for working out from home.

And so I explained for example, that if you are new to resistance training, you can do quite well with home workouts. You can make progress. It is certainly not a waste of time and it is not merely a calorie burning activity. You can gain muscle, you can gain strength working out at home, even if you don’t have any equipment, even if it’s just body weight training.

And if you have some bands, which might be hard to get right now, Amazon has been selling out left and right of everything, but you might still be able to find some bands over on Amazon. And ideally you’d get a set that ranges from like 25 pounds all the way up to 125 pounds. Gives you a lot of options.

And I recommend something specific in the article, but it may be outta stock by now. However, there’s nothing special about what I’m recommending. Uh, a lot of the, the band products on Amazon are the same thing. They’re people getting ’em from the same factories, probably from China. They’re just slapping random brands on the bands to try to make you think that theirs are special.

They’re not. But if you add some bands, then you can do even more and you can get a really good workout, even as an intermediate or advanced weightlifter with just some bands. You can do decently with body weight, but you are gonna have, you’re not gonna maintain all of your strength. You can probably maintain most all of your muscle with just body weight, but if you add some bands, it gets a lot more effective.

And then if you add some dumbbells and ideally you would get some adjustable dumbbells. I like the Boflex SelectTech. That’s what I haven’t used. Although I will say they’re a bit rough on your hands. The grip is a bit rough on your hands with, uh, with heavier weights and they’re a bit awkward, but so are the other option, which is power blocks.

Some people do like power blocks more. And I do believe they’re about the same price. I, I don’t think you can go wrong either way. So if you add that though, if you add adjustable dumbbells, now you have a lot of options. If you have bands and dumbbells, you can get in some great workouts. As an intermediate and advanced weightlifter, maybe you’re not gonna gain much muscle or strength over the next several weeks if we’re working out from home.

But you don’t have to lose any muscle and probably not strength. In terms of raw strength of your muscles. What you might find though, is when you get back in the gym and you get under a, a heavy barbell, you’re not able to squat as much as as you could when you were when, when we were living our precor life.

And the reason for that is not that you have lost muscle or even necessarily lost strength, it’s that squatting heavy weight is a skill. It doesn’t require as much athletic ability as swinging a golf club or like hitting a fastball or something. But it is, it is a, an activity that requires some technical.

Capability. And like with any technical movement or series of movements, you get a bit rusty if you don’t do it for a few weeks. So we should all expect to be a bit rusty on our compound lifts. Uh, I would say the squat and the bench press and the overhead press is where I’ve noticed this the most, not so much with the deadlift.

And so when we get back in the gym, yeah, our numbers are gonna be a bit lower. But that’s not because we’ve necessarily lost muscle or strength, just lost a little bit of, uh, let’s say ability, uh, with our technique. And we will, we’ll gain that back quickly within a couple weeks. I expect to be exactly where I was at before all this shit started.

And so again, just head over to legion athletics.com. Go to the blog, check out the article that is pined to the top of the blog feed. You can’t miss it. Home workouts, and it’s, it’s very thorough. It gives body weight, workouts, band plus body weight workouts, dumbbell workouts, which don’t necessarily assume that you also have bands.

So if you do, you can kind of mix and match. It has beginner workouts, intermediate workouts, advanced. Workouts. It has some programming as well, like, okay, so you have these workouts, how should you turn them into a weekly routine? I put some information on that, and it has recommendations for equipment. I mean, everything that you need to.

Keep, let’s say, to, to at least maintain your gains, if not main. Some make some gains while we’re stuck at home. Okay, next question. I’m actually gonna call an audible here, and I’m gonna, I’m gonna go with a question that just occurred to me that I’ve been asked many times in the Instagram lives that I’ve been doing every day, every other day.

And I didn’t think of it until now, but it’s gonna be, here’s the question. Um, should I be in a calorie deficit right now? Should I cut or should I eat at maintenance or even. Eat, uh, in a, in a slight surplus because of the coronavirus. Now if you’re wondering why people would ask that, it’s related to the immune system.

So some people are saying that if you’re in a calorie deficit, it’s going to depress your immune function, and maybe that’s not a good idea right now with this thing going around to that. I say no, I, I don’t know of any good scientific evidence that shows that a calorie deficit, per se, depresses immune function or, or increases the likelihood of getting sick.

That said, where I do think it’s reasonable to, um, suggest not being in a calorie deficit is if you’ve been in a calorie deficit for a while now and you’re, you’re toward the end of a cut and you’re starting to feel run down. Your workouts are starting to feel harder. I. Now might be a good time to take a diet break.

Yes, I do think that makes sense. And by the same token, you might not want to go into an overreaching phase in your training. You may not want to train, do your hardest workouts of your training block right now, even if that’s what you would’ve normally programmed, because that can, that can lower immune function.

And I know it may not be much and it may not matter. So I’ll just leave it up to you. If you know your body, you know how your body responds and you can recover just fine and you don’t run into any symptoms that would be related to over training, then I would say do whatever it is. Do whatever you think is best.

But if you’re not sure, and if you’re newer to weightlifting or resistance training, and if you’ve been in a calorie deficit, or if you’re gonna go into a calorie deficit, Which I think is fine if you wanna start cutting right now. I don’t see any reason why you can’t. I wouldn’t though combine a calorie deficit right now with a really intense workout schedule that really beats you up.

I mean, I wouldn’t generally recommend that, but I would say particularly right now, not a good idea. I also wouldn’t recommend. A huge deficit. Don’t, don’t, don’t try a starvation diet right now. And of course that’s my general recommendation, but I’ll just repeat it given the circumstances. Okay. This is getting a bit long, so let’s do one more question and I’ll save the others for the next q and a.

Which I’ll do probably in a few weeks. Alright, let’s do, is eating at night unhealthy or does it cause weight gain? No. Eating at night does not cause weight gain. Remember, calories or calories, energy balances, energy balance. It doesn’t matter when you eat your meals, so long as your calories are balanced.

If they are balanced, you will not gain weight. And no, it’s not unhealthy either. Those just aren’t my opinions. Those are things that have been shown in a number of studies. For example, there was one study that was conducted by scientists at the University of TI, and it found that a difference in calorie intake in the morning versus the evening had no.

Impact on weight loss whatsoever. Uh, in another study, scientists found that people who normally ate breakfast actually lost more weight by skipping breakfast and eating the majority of their calories later at dinner. And then on the flip side, people who normally skipped breakfast lost more weight by starting to eat breakfast.

And the reason for that is pretty simple, just greater satiety, greater feelings of fullness. Generally, people were less hungry and so they were better able to stick to their diet and lost more weight. Voila. Uh, another study worth mentioning was conducted by university at the University of Sao Pao, and what they found is there was no difference in weight loss or body composition between people who were eating five meals a day between 9:00 AM and 8:00 PM.

Versus people eating all of their calories in the morning, earlier in the day, versus people are eating all of their calories in the evening later in the day. No difference between those groups. And so the point here is just do what works for you. If you like to skip breakfast and eat your calories later in the day, do that.

If you’re like me and you like to eat light, so I work out first thing in the morning and I have two scoops of protein I have. Legion, uh, way, uh, the, the cinnamon cereal. I mix that one scoop with a scoop of the vanilla Thrive and I put some ice in there in the bullet magic bullet, I think it is, blend it up and drink it.

I think it’s delicious. And then I continue to eat light throughout the day. I have a salad with. Uh, chicken usually or some beef for lunch. And I’ll have a protein shake or maybe a Legion Protein bar in the afternoon, and then I’ll eat more at dinner. That’s just the way that I like to eat. But if that doesn’t work for you, if you like to do the exact opposite, if you like to have a big breakfast and then taper your meals down, uh, getting to the smallest meal of the day might be, uh, dinner.

That’s totally fine. Do what works for you. Now I should also mention that some research shows that eating at night can lead to overeating in some people and can reduce leptin levels. So that’s a hormone that makes you feel full and tells your body that it has, uh, plenty of energy and plenty of food. I.

And increased ghrelin levels, which kicks in hunger. So in some people eating at night just kind of makes them feel generally hungrier. And that may not be you though. You just have to see how your body responds. If you do like to eat a fair amount of calories at night, I. And one other thing to know about night eating is several studies have shown that having a serving of protein before you go to bed can help you gain muscle and strength faster and recover from your workouts faster simply because it provides your body with amino acids while you’re sleeping.

So your body’s muscle building machinery can do something because it needs the raw materials to to, to do something, to repair tissue, to build up tissue. If it doesn’t have the amino acids just kind of just sits there and waits. Now, some people will say that you should have protein before you go to bed because if you don’t, you’re gonna lose muscle.

And that’s not true. Uh, research has made that abundantly clear, like look at the intermittent fasting literature, for example, to know that that is not true. You’re not gonna lose muscle by not having protein for eight, nine hours. But what is true is if you have a serving of protein, 20 to 40 grams, ideally something slower digesting like casein, if we’re talking about a powder, uh, if you wanna check out mine, Legion, we have a casein, 100%.

My cellar, Cain, naturally sweet and naturally flavored, very high quality. Uh, or you can go with food. Uh, yogurt is, is an easy, it is an easy go-to Greek yogurt, you know, a high protein yogurt. Um, I prefer skier Icelandic yogurt over Greek because it’s a bit creamier and a little bit less, uh, bitter for the same macros.

Uh, low-fat cottage cheese is, is another good option. Something that I’ve used many times when I wasn’t in the mood for yogurt. And if you do that, that you probably will gain a bit more muscle over time than if you didn’t do it, and you probably will recover from your workouts a little bit faster as well.

All right. Well, that’s it for today’s episode. I hope you found it interesting and helpful. And if you did, and you don’t mind doing me a favor, could you please leave a quick review for the podcast on iTunes or wherever I. You are listening from because those reviews not only convince people that they should check out the show, they also increase the search visibility and help more people find their way to me and to the podcast and learn how to build their best body ever as well.

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