Legion Live Q&A: How Fast Can You Gain Fat, Dealing With Haters, 2016 Plans, and More…

[00:00:00] Hey, it’s Mike. And this podcast is brought to you by Legion, my line of naturally sweetened and flavored workout supplements. Now, as you probably know, I’m really not a fan of the supplement industry. I’ve wasted thousands and thousands of dollars over the years on worthless supplements that Basically do nothing and I’ve always had trouble finding products actually worth buying and especially as I’ve gotten more and more educated as to what actually works and what doesn’t and eventually after complaining a lot, I decided to do something about it and start making my own supplements, the exact supplements I myself have always wanted.

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All right, so thank you for coming to another episode of the Jeremy and Mike show. So as you probably know how it works, probably been in these before you can just put your questions in chat and Jeremy is monitoring chat. Jeremy answers some questions himself and then other ones he shoots over to me and then I answer them so you can ask questions on anything you want.

Whatever diet training [00:04:00] supplementation, marketing business, I don’t care. Ask away and Jeremy will shoot him over to me and then we’ll just, go rapid fire. Yeah. creatine or so here’s the first question creatine or no creatine and loading versus non loading so creatine is a great supplement is a supplement that if you’re weightlifting yes you should be taking creatine there’s really no reason not to it’s safe it works it’s probably the most studied molecule in all sports nutrition Hundreds and hundreds of studies have been done on it over the last several decades and it’s safe and you don’t have to cycle it.

It doesn’t shut down natural production and like steroids do or anything like that. It’s not a wonder supplement by any means, but you will over time, you will build strength and build muscle faster. You will get stronger, but muscle faster taking creatine. So yes, creatine monohydrate. Is really the way to go in less, unless you have a, it can upset some people’s stomach or it can even give them diarrhea for whatever reason.

And for those people, you can go with a more water soluble form like micronized creatine monohydrate. It can do the trick or like creating citrate can be good or creating higher hydrochloride can be good for [00:05:00] that creating malate also. But if you, I would just stick with a simple monohydrate.

And then see if you need to go with something that’s more water soluble. But if you don’t, most people don’t, they’re fine. Five grams a day loading just gets it into your muscles faster. So you’ll see the effects sooner. Otherwise, there’s no real benefit to it. I guess I would probably load it just for that reason, just cause you’re going to see the benefit you’re going to see, cause it needs to accumulate in your muscles before you’re going to see a noticeable difference.

So you know, if you load it, you will get there faster, but you’ll also go through that first tub faster if you care about that. If you do care about that and you’re on a tight budget, then don’t load, just do five grams a day and within your first month or so you should start seeing noticeable increases in the gym.

All right, next question. Are you going to do a contest this year? Transformation contest, probably this year? No, because we have a month left here. Next year? Yeah, I’m sure we’ll put together something like that. We like doing those kind of things. It just, it oh, okay. Jeremy was saying if I was gonna do a contest, if I’m gonna compete.

First I’ll finish on, if you’re [00:06:00] talking about transformation contests, then yeah, we’ll do something like that next year for sure. We’ve just been super busy with a lot of different things and really we get bottlenecked in, in, in develop, developers, devs, actually. So we have a really good dev team now that’s been working their ass off getting this new website done for Legion.

Which is going to be ready soon and it’s a full revamp of the current site. It’s awesome. It’s really nice. We’re really excited, but it just, it takes a ton of time. So we’ve been limited on dev. So even for little things like that for instance the golden label thing that if you remember that we’ve talked about it months ago, we’re still going to do it, the reason why we haven’t done it yet is because we just haven’t been able to allocate the dev resources to really get it up and running the way that we want it to with redemptions and stuff.

But yeah we. I don’t see why we wouldn’t do some sort of transformation next year just because they’re fun and it gets people, it’s good motivation, people like it. If you’re talking about me competing like in, getting on stage it’s just not my thing. I’m not interested in it.

One I don’t care. I don’t have any reason to do it. [00:07:00] Maybe it would boost my street cred, a little bit, but in whatever, not, I don’t know how much that would really matter. And to really get anywhere in that world, you have to be on drugs as an actor, as a natural weightlifter or natural competitor the natties, cause they look bad basically, like the guys that look small and just frail.

Yeah. Those are the natties and the dudes that are big, full, dry and look great on stage. Those are not, those are the not natties. For that reason, it’s just not really my thing. I would rather take that time working on other things that I care about. This is a good question. It’s something that I have anyway, so here’s the question basically is there a limit to how much fat your body can store in one from one meal from one bout of overeating?

It’s actually funny. I was just talking about it today because I A couple of times a year, Thanksgiving being one of the times and usually Christmas dinner being another day, I just go ham on food. I eat until I’m in pain, basically, and I don’t even care. I just do it for fun. I have, I basically just see how much food can I get in me.

It [00:08:00] comes out to be like seven plates. It’s ridiculous. And I would think that I’m pretty, pretty lean right now. I’ve been this way for months and months. I have ab vascularity, like I’m lean enough where I would think I would see a difference by eating, who knows, I don’t even know, 7, 000 calories in one meal.

And the next day I would, or at least over the next day or two or something, I would expect to see that I would get a little bit fatter. Like maybe I’d have a little, like my skin would be a little bit tighter or sorry, the hops that my skin would be a little bit, I just feel some fat, but I really don’t see much of a difference when I do that, which I don’t have a great explanation for actually.

And what I can say for sure is if you keep the fat low, which I don’t do on those days, I don’t even, who knows I’m eating so much shit. But on my week to week like routine, I’m not doing that once a week. I’m sure if I did that every week, it would become a problem. My week to week routine though is.

My cheat meal quote unquote is usually a high carb meal like my fats aren’t really going over a hundred grams for [00:09:00] the day And they’re probably closer to 70 grams but I might go five six hundred carbs and That definitely that’s just cyclical for me every week I tend to do that And sometimes eat a little bit less and then on the next day to compensate, but I don’t see much change in my physique.

I don’t have a good answer to that question. I’ve looked at, just through a lot of the research that I’ve done, I’ve kept my eye out for something. Is there some sort of answer on that? How much fat can your body synthesize in, in from one meal over eating? Cause I, yeah, on take Thanksgiving, I’m eating 7, 000 plus calories, whatever it is.

My body is not absorbing all those calories. There’s no way. Like I am definitely who knows what percentage of that is actually getting absorbed and used and the rest is just, it just goes out, undigested and you actually see that cause your poop will like float. And that’s normally if you had that a lot, that’d be a sign of a poor nutrient absorption in your small intestine.

And if it were like an ongoing thing, it would actually be something a doctor would want to know about because they, that’s a bad sign. And they would, that’s something that, they would [00:10:00] want to address. But you’ll get that sometimes like I’ll get that if I eat a ton of food and because your body just can’t The undigested food makes it into the large intestine and then the bacteria in there It causes gas and bloating and then when it comes out your poop floats basically So you’ll see that when you eat a ton of food and your body can’t absorb it all or can’t digest and process at all so You know, again, I don’t have a good answer for this question, but in a day you probably could gain a body, a pound of body fat a day is probably a fair assumption.

If you ate enough food to do that now, I don’t know if you could accomplish that in one meal because you’d need anywhere from 3, 500 to 4, 000 calories. And not just calories, if it were, if that, if really you need a lot of those calories to be from dietary fat, that’s efficiently stored.

If a lot of that fat, those extra calories were carb and protein, your body, especially if you’re lifting and you’re exercising, your body has other things that can do with protein and carbs and then convert them to fat and they don’t convert to fat very efficiently anyway. You really have to go high [00:11:00] fat.

And if we’re talking about, yeah, I guess if you were to eat. Over the course of a day, if you were to eat maybe a surplus of 500 grams of fat, maybe you could gain a pound of body fat in a, in, in that day. But if we condense that down to one meal, how much fat can you really eat in a meal before you just can’t even, what would me, maybe I can go 200 grams deep.

But again, that’s not necessarily a 200 gram surplus because what I do when I’m going to be eating a lot of food is I just eat protein throughout the day. I save all my carbs and fats. My body’s been burning fat all day essentially because it hasn’t had much food. And I come into that dinner with a good, let’s say 3000 calorie buffer or 25 men, not 3000, let’s say 2, 500 calorie buffer that, I’m not even in a surplus until 2, 500 calories deep.

So when it’s all said and done, that surplus of, let’s say it’s a 3000 calorie surplus by the end of the meal. But how much that’s really from dietary fat, maybe only a thousand calories of it’s from dietary fat. And there’s also something to be said for nutrient [00:12:00] partitioning and the longer if you’re lean and you work out a lot, especially if you train your muscles a lot, your body is you could think of it as resistant to gaining Fat in a way if you have good insulin sensitivity a rambling answer, but it’s something that I’ve, whatever it’s been on.

It’s been on my list of things to if I do come with a good come up with a good enough explanation and an answer, I would make a good article basically, which makes me want to read more on it because it’s these days. Sometimes it’s hard to find new things to write about. So anyways, let’s go to the next question.

Any underwear advice? A guy who never skipped leg day. Anything that fits my waist, rides up my thighs, and briefs. Are briefs the only option? Yeah, I’ve got, I actually have that same problem. Especially when I’m doing cardio, if I’m biking, it’s so annoying. It’s always riding up on my shit and I’m always pulling it down.

So Jeremy says Under Armour. I don’t have any Under Armour. Yeah, boxer briefs. Under Armour boxer briefs. That’s what Jeremy says. I have do I have any briefs? I’m not no, I, yeah, I definitely do, but they’re not I don’t know, they’re like Calvin [00:13:00] Klein and then random stuff my wife has bought me.

I don’t know. I haven’t found A brand like I like some underwear, but I don’t know what they are because my wife has bought them So Jeremy says under armor though, and I trust him Calvin Klein trunks. He says for everyday wear I have some Calvin Klein briefs that I like but anything else like you what you’ve run into?

Yeah, there’s just you know Don’t run under it. Yeah Alright, next question. In relation to bulking, what would you consider too small of a surplus? It only makes sense that there would be a certain surplus required to build muscle, right? PS, love you, bub. Thanks, man. I love you too. So yeah, really what you want.

to what you’re accomplishing with that surplus. First and foremost is you are making sure you’re not in a deficit because if you’re in a deficit, then your body’s ability to synthesize muscle proteins is impaired. And that’s one of the main reasons why you’re just, you really can’t gain muscle when you’re in a deficit, if you’ve been lifting for any period of time.

So that’s the first thing you’re accomplishing is not being in a deficit. And that means that your body’s able to build muscle most [00:14:00] efficiently is what you could say now beyond that. Now, unfortunately, That’s not a, there’s not a dose dependent response that’s not, you can just keep on going into a bigger surplus and you’re gonna build more and more muscle.

However, there is something to be said for a larger surplus if those calories are coming from carbs. So if you’re just like increase your fat intake out the roof, you’re just going to gain fat faster. You’re not really gonna get anything from it. It’s not like your workouts are going to be any better.

There’s really no point to do it. Which is why I always recommend to keep your fat intake at the healthy level. And unless you really high fat dieting, there’s just no reason to do it, especially if you’re doing a lot of weight lifting and you know what you’re doing with your diet and you’re not overweight and so forth.

So there is something to be said though, for a larger surplus, if you are eating more carbs and that kind of, and how your body responds to that is going to depend on your body. My body does very well with carbs. And again, especially with carbs, my body is resistant to. gaining fat from carbs.

I have very good insulin sensitivity and that’s just the way it is. Some other people though they notice that they gain fat faster from a carbohydrate [00:15:00] surplus for surplus versus let’s say a protein surplus. So this is where you, this is one of those things you have to learn your body.

And but if you could go into, let’s just say the minimum. The reason why I recommend the minimum surplus being 5%, but I like to say 10 percent is because then, you’re in a surplus. Cause when you’re calculating your TDE, you’re looking at an average daily energy expenditure.

You’re not looking at a spot on for every day and it changes from day to day. It doesn’t matter how anal you are about it. You’re never going to be a hundred percent accurate about your energy expenditure on a day to day basis. So really what you’re trying to do is get a, a, an accurate.

estimate of your daily energy expenditure. And some people get fancy and they raise or lower their intake every day based on activity level. I don’t do that. If you search muscle for life, go to most of life and search T D E calculator. And then you’ll see an article I wrote on this. That’s how I do it.

Or you can search for macro or macro nutrient calculator and you can see a more extensive article on turning it into a whole diet plan and stuff. So by 10 percent surplus, you [00:16:00] are giving yourself a buffer basically to ensure that you’re not in a deficit, really ideally when you’re bulking, you’re not in a deficit any days of the week.

Ideally you’re in a mild surplus every day. And so with that said though, if you could go, let’s say into a, let’s say you could go at another 10 percent of your TDE straight from carbs. And not notice you’re not gained fat too quickly because as I, I’ve written about this, I’ve talked about this a lot.

The biggest bulking mistake you can make is just gaining fat very quickly, which means that you have to cut sooner. You’re just not able, you really want to stretch those bulks out, which means you want to see your fat come on slowly. And if you can gain muscle and fat at about a one to one ratio, you’re doing a good job.

So depending on your body, if you’re able to Take that. Let’s just say that you’re bulking your 10 percent surplus is 3000 calories a day. Just for simple math. If you could go up to 3300 or even 3150 calories a day with those extra calories coming only from [00:17:00] carbs. The reason why that’s nice is that is going to make a difference in your lifts.

Obviously there’s a point where. eating more carbs isn’t going to do anything, but you, your intake has to get pretty high to reach that point. So if you’re going from 400 grams of carbs a day to 450 grams of carbs per day, you might be surprised that you notice that in the gym, that’s you have a bit more energy.

Like that might be an extra rep or two on your big lifts. It really can be just from glycogen and just because carbs are energetic. And when you’re doing a lot of heavy lifting or just weightlifting in general, As long as your body does well with carbs and so forth, a high carb diet is going to be more productive, and it’s also more conducive to muscle growth, mainly because of insulin’s anti catabolic effects.

Higher carb diet means higher insulin levels, means less protein degradation. That’s the long answer to that. Is 5 to 10 percent minimum surplus and if you can go higher straight from carbs without gaining fat too quickly, basically if your body is very carbohydrate sensitive then take advantage of that.

And then might as well just throw this out there as well because I’ve come across [00:18:00] it a lot. Just emailing with people. If you’re someone that has a very fast metabolism or just a I guess it would all come over. You just burn a lot of energy every day. So you have to eat a lot of food to gain weight and gain muscle.

Then there is a point where, I’ve emailed with guys where they’ve, their carb intake is up in the 600 gram range per day and they just visit, they just can’t stomach eating any more carbs. And I understand and but their weight is stuck and their body fat, they’re doing everything right.

It’s just, they need more food. Then we usually actually either increase protein a bit more or protein and fat a bit more. And sometimes it’s just fats, but most guys, they like to increase their protein and fats a bit more to get to that point where their body starts gaining weight.

And everybody has that. That’s not a uniform, a 10%, what should be a 10 percent surplus won’t work for all people. There are people that the hard gainer types that per calculations, they need to be in a 40 percent surplus just to gain weight period, just to even be able to gain, build some muscle.

And I would say that’s rare, but that is out there. So if that’s you and you’re [00:19:00] thinking that doesn’t apply to me, just know that there is a point where it’s part of the whole game is learning your body’s sweet spots. So it’s understanding the basics and the fundamentals of energy balance, understanding macronutrients, how they work in the body.

And then there’s a bit of trial and error in there and knowing where your calories are at, given your lifestyle and given your metabolism, your genetics and so forth. And what numbers work for you for me, I know that if I wanted to bulk, I would work my way. I would start at about 3330, yeah, 3300 calories a day.

And over time I would have to work it up to about 4, 000 to 4, 300 and then by that time I probably be around. 16, 15, 16 percent body fat and maybe time to cut. I’ve done it many times and I just know that’s how my body works. So you know that’s my body. That’s not necessarily your body. You might, your calorie ranges might be smaller or it might be higher.

So let’s go to the next question. All right. So what’s your best advice? If you get. sick with food poisoning, especially if it happens during a cut. Just recently got food poisoning. I hate that shit on Tuesday night. I’m still recovering was cutting. I’ve, this has happened to me before [00:20:00] and what I do, if, whether it’s be, whether it’s food poisoning, I’ve had the flu before when I’m cutting.

I try to eat around, I come out of a deficit just because your body doesn’t need the added stress if you’re sick. So I try to, just eat around TDE and it’s hard. It’s hard to eat. I understand that if you can’t eat, you can’t eat. I would try like protein. I try to get protein down.

Ultimately don’t stress too much about it because even if you do lose a little bit of muscle. You’re going to gain that back like in your first workout. It doesn’t matter. Like muscle memory is real. That’s one of the things that you see in a lot of these transformations online is a lot of drugs are often involved, but also, a person’s in a detrained state.

So it’d be like, if I stopped lifting for, six months and did nothing, but eat food and got fat and then started lifting again, I wouldn’t even need drugs to. Make what would be look like a steroid transformation because of muscle memory. Don’t stress about it. If you can eat protein, if you can keep it down, keep it down.

If you can keep food down generally, it’s not feeling good. You can’t train or whatever. Then just try to eat around your TDE and don’t exercise until you feel better. I’ve made that mistake many times, [00:21:00] especially like with having colds or flus or whatever. Where I like the first day where I feel not like shit, I’m back in the gym.

And then the next day I feel like shit again, when you should just be resting. So it’s one of those things don’t beat yourself over it. Just get better, eat around, come out of a deficit. So your body’s not stressed, get better, and then just get back at it. Next question. I just bought your French vanilla and eggnog protein and they are awesome.

Thanks. Yeah, we’re, we like them a lot too. Any plans on coming out with new or seasonal flavors? Eggnog is out of this world. Yeah, it’s actually funny. That eggnog was an accident. That eggnog was, we were working on our vanilla and they sent us, that was supposed to be vanilla. We were like, that’s really good, but it’s not vanilla.

That tastes exactly like eggnog. And then that was like, Let’s just do eggnog. And so that’s how it even came about. So yes, we are going to be doing our next flavors, cookies and cream, right? Jeremy? Yeah. Cookies and cream. And that’s going to be out. I think it’s January, February. And then after that we are going to do our next seasonal flavor is going to be a summer.

It’s going to be a strawberry banana and it’s super good. And if [00:22:00] everyone likes it and it sells well, we may just end up keeping it. Eggnog will probably retire. I think we did our one run of. A few thousand bottles or something. And when those are gone, then we’re going to just let that one die. And then, or it’s not going to come back and then, next holiday season, maybe we’ll do like a pumpkin spice or, that was ideas that every year we do something cool for the holidays, but it’s strawberry banana.

If everyone likes it, if you all want us to keep it then that one we would keep, we really like it. So anyways, cookies and cream in a month or two. And then in the summer, I would say May, June or whatever is going to be strawberry banana and, that’s that. Next question. Can probiotic supplements diminish weight gains in overly caloric diets?

No, definitely not. There’s no, no evidence I’ve ever seen any of that. Like probiotics are interesting. I’ve actually done a fair amount of reading on it because we were looking at probiotics For our greens supplement, we’re looking at them for a weight gainer kind of meal replacement type of deal that we’re looking at doing.

And you’ll see in the, in, when the sales page for the green supplement goes up [00:23:00] which it will be up soon you’ll see, I have a whole section on probiotics. And basically the thing is that probiotics, if we want to go by what the literature I want to go by the scientific research is that there may be certain strains that have benefits.

We just don’t know yet. And what is sold out there just, at the, at GNC or whatever, what in magazines on the internet is a lot of what the benefits that are claimed are bullshit. It doesn’t help you lose weight faster. It’s not going to prevent weight gain. It’s, if we may actually end up still including some in our weight gainer, probably some acidophilus and there were a couple of strains that there’s some research that shows it can help with digest with digestion.

And that makes sense considering that a meal replacement shake is going to be a lot of calories. It, it can just help with the digestion of that, it’s going to be a minor selling point. We’re not going to be pushing like, Ooh, this has probiotics. Like. How a lot of companies do because when a company is doing that, when they’re really playing up probiotics and how awesome they are for your gut and immune system and weight and blah, blah, blah.

It’s bullshit. Just bullshit. Next question. How do you [00:24:00] spot fake female natties? That’s a good question. Not just in terms of steroid use, but how do you tell if a woman has booty implants, or just amazing genetics plus sound training? I. e. Jen Selter, J Lo, etc. This is a serious question.

That’s actually a good question. Yeah, that’s good. That’s a good point. Jeremy was saying that regarding the butt thing, if a girl is very skinny and she doesn’t have a lot of leg development, like she has very skinny the hot dog leg look, but this big, but either that’s just crazy genetics where you’ll have, sometimes girls will be very skinny with very big boobs.

It’s just that’s just genetics. That’s, there’s no way to get that or do anything. It’s just, that’s just is it increases the likelihood of it. Implants because to get a butt as big as some of these girls have for the average girl to have a butt that big, her legs are going to be huge, very muscular.

It’s going to take a lot of squatting and a lot of hip thrusting and split squatting and all that stuff, which is going to build up your legs. There’s no way to just build up just your butt. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. So Jeremy was saying Brittany, who’s one of our sponsored [00:25:00] athletes, if you’ve Brittany, probably.

So she has a big butt and she has, it’s very developed, but if you look at her legs, they’re also very developed. I wouldn’t say her legs are super big, but she, you can see that she lifts and she’s done a lot of squatting and her core is very developed, which you also get from a lot of squatting and just compound weightlifting.

There’s also Jeremy saying, if you look, go look through their pictures and if six months ago they didn’t have a butt and now they have this huge butt, then that, that, that is, I would say, pretty. But regarding steroid use if a girl is very muscular and very lean , then it’s like similar to guys, but you don’t even need to be as much.

Like guys can be very muscular and very lean without steroids girls is much, it’s much harder. So if you’re seeing, and again, though, you’re, they’re not necessarily gonna have any of the. Androgenic type of qualities. The girls that are on a lot of steroids, they look like guys.

That’s obvious, but otherwise that’s very hard to tell. But if a girl is very muscular, very hard and very lean, very dry, then there’s a good chance there are drugs involved. There’s a girl at my gym, actually a perfect example of that, where she [00:26:00] competes. Which means drugs. I think she has her pro card.

And, but she swears natty, of course but that’s her look very vascular, very lean, very muscular, very dry always. Okay. So here’s the next question. So this is a back and forth with Jeremy and someone else saying someone was comment. It was asking when I was talking about my, on my you know, cheat day or whatever, cheat meal type of day where my fats are maybe 70 to 100 grams.

My TD is around 3000. It’s probably maybe a little bit lower. That’s that’s probably my average daily. Maybe it’s 2, 900 ish, but you get the idea is 70 grams of fat considered low enough for a high carb cheat day and meal. So I’ll talk a little about refeeding. So it depends what you’re doing.

Again, of course it’s calories. You just do have to remember that, and this is especially true. When you’re lean and you’re wanting to maintain. So if you’re a guy and you want to stay under 10 percent body fat, you have to watch your fat intake. You just do. Now of course it’s calories. Now, if you were just, maintaining your, if you’re eating at TDE, you can do whatever you want with your fat, but if you’re going to be in a surplus, you have to [00:27:00] watch your fat.

You can noticeably get fatter in a weekend by eating too much fat. I know because I’ve done it and this is something that ask any guy. Who has stayed naturally, not these assholes on Instagram that are like, Oh I, once I learned how to count my macros, I’m now eating 7, 000 calories a day and look, I’m 6 percent body fat by my nutrition plan.

Yeah. Okay. As long as you’re willing to fucking trend hard, then maybe you can do that too. No, I’m talking about like reasonable, actual, real numbers where if you’re fat, if you go too hard on fats and your surplus, you just start. putting fat on fast. You can, you see it. Carbs, as I said, are different.

Protein is different. Of course you can gain fat if if you’re in a surplus from mainly from carbs, it’s just it’s not, you’re not going to gain fat as quickly. You just won’t. Again, with one meal, I wouldn’t really worry about it so much. It’s not like I, I’m keeping, on that day, it’s usually me going to a restaurant and, I’m eating probably about a hundred grams of fat in that meal, and that’s really my day’s [00:28:00] worth of fat because up until then I’m just eating lean protein, eating some vegetables at lunch and stuff, so I’m coming into that dinner maybe with ten grams of fat, and I’ve eaten a lot of my protein for the day and some veggies and stuff, and so I wouldn’t say there’s a number where you can’t be over 70 grams of your screwed.

It’s you see, you just have to keep in mind that depending on what you’re eating Jeremy went to a cheese restaurant in in Tampa recently. And he was telling me and, it’s just. It’s a nightmare because you’re going to, you’re going to be a thousand grams of fat deep.

If you go hard, that’s yeah. He says it’s worth it. I understand, but it’s just, you have to keep that in mind that if you can keep the lower, you can keep your fat intake when you’re in a surplus, the better. If you are really trying to stay super lean, that’s just the way it is. Now let’s say you’re cutting and you want to do a refeed.

So you can do a high carb day to spike leptin levels and psychologically it feels good and whatever. In that case, again, it’s smart to keep your fat intake personally. Like when I refeed, I keep my fat intake [00:29:00] very low. It’s under 30 grams or under for the day. Now it’s just one day. Obviously you wouldn’t continue to do this every day.

That’s that it’s just not enough fat for basic health needs. It’s just one day though. And the reason there is because really you’ve been in a deficit for a while, your whole body glycogen levels are low. So you really are just trying to spike your body’s glycogen store what it stores in your muscles and liver.

You want to try to top that off or get, really refill it and and then spike your leptin without storing. Any fat, which is why you keep your dietary fat low. And if you’re just maintaining and you want to do a refeed, you can do that too. I guess there’s no reason not to be the same rules.

So it’s just that difference of are you cheat? Are you just cheating? Which is where it’s for me, cheat me, cheat meal means eat whatever I want. It means that I’m not really like I’m going to key. I may not go to the cheese restaurant and eat a thousand grams of fat. I’m going to go to a restaurant and I’m just going to order whatever I want.

I’m going to order appetizers, entree, dessert, and I’m going to eat a lot of food. That’s cheating to me. Refeeding is a bit more structured. It is. [00:30:00] I’m keeping my fat low, so I’m going to be eating pancakes and maybe eating pasta. I’m going to be eating. Usually I have some fruit, some oatmeal, things like that.

Just low fat, tasty stuff. If you’re doing pancakes, you can maple syrup. There’s easy ways to start stacking that up. So hopefully that answered that question. Next question. What type of music pumps you up in the gym? Huh? What do I listen? I, it depends. I’ll have different moods. I don’t know.

Like sometimes I’ll listen to different types of rock and heavy metal. I like a lot of older stuff. Like I like a lot of Marilyn Manson’s older stuff. I like Korn’s older stuff. I like Slipknot’s older stuff. I don’t know, stuff that when, I guess when I was in my twenties or even a little bit younger.

As a teenager I was listening to I liked Nirvana so that’s the rock stuff. Or I’ll go heavy bass, like trap kind of stuff. Like Jeremy listens to the loudest fucking music ever basically, and then he’ll send me songs, and the ones I like. I saved to my SoundCloud so I don’t even know what half the shit is.

I don’t know. It’s just really loud tons [00:31:00] of bass and, I don’t have a specific song even these days, but I have my SoundCloud and really loud. I guess he listens to these mixes. So it’s like a trap mix. So it’s just like a bunch of loud songs. Yeah, it’s just loud noise, but I like it.

All right. Next question. I was wondering when you’re in the process of reverse dieting, can you still have a cheat meal? Yeah, sure. There’s no reason not to. It’s just one meal again. If you just keep in mind what I’ve been talking about, where you keep it moderate, keep your fat intake under control, just enjoy yourself and don’t make a big deal out of it.

All right. If you want to save your calories up for that meal, that’s always something I do standard because it really does work really well. Especially for these types of situations where you, whether you’re maintaining or reverse dieting, you do want to keep your intake in a certain range for a certain reason.

Saving calories up is great. So you just eat protein throughout the day. And drink a lot of water and, drink coffee or drink whatever you want to just keep you satiated. And then you come into that meal with, you, you can go 2000, 2500, [00:32:00] whatever it is, calories in before you’re even in a surplus.

So that’s always nice. So can you talk about how to best go about prep for a show or photo shoot or write an article or link to a trusted source? Yeah, this is an article that needs to be written. Jeremy was saying if asking if Lyle McDonald does, he probably does Jeremy. I don’t know what on his website.

I haven’t. If he does, I haven’t read it. I would think maybe in his books, definitely he has a lot of experience working with people. He, I would, anything Lyle would have to say on it, I would say that would be a good source of information. Lane Norton is another good source of information on this because he himself has competed and he works with a lot of people that compete.

And I did a podcast with him. If you go to muscle for life and you search for Norton, it’ll come up and he actually talks about this. And his experience, he has more experience than I do. I’ve I’ve never competed, but I’ve done photo shoots and gotten pretty lean for photo shoots and so forth.

Basically, I’ve done the kind of the same thing that he talks about in the podcast, which is a simplified approach to it, which is. really centers around just getting lean enough. That really is the key [00:33:00] is that sometimes you don’t realize how much fat you have to lose to really look the way that you want to look.

And it’s not about manipulating your carbs and sodium and water. It’s about getting lean enough. So what I do is make sure like I give myself enough time to cut, like I don’t cut that really close. I don’t go, Ooh, I only have two weeks to get ready for this shoot and I need to lose, six pounds, I think.

So let’s just eat nothing and do a ton of cardio. I don’t do that. I try to give myself enough time. So I even try to overshoot it a buffer of two or three weeks just in case things get slow or whatever. And and so that’s the first thing is making sure that I’m lean enough. Now, normally with our photo shoots that we’ve done they haven’t necessarily been like on the books.

Like I have to be ready by this date. So it’s more just like I cut until I have the look that I want for the photo shoot. Like we did a photo shoot recently for the new cover of the second edition of the shredded chef, which we’re working on, which will be out in the next couple months or so. And that was just a matter of just cutting until I didn’t want to be super lean. Obviously I want to be lean, but I didn’t want to be like super bodybuilder [00:34:00] lean necessarily because it doesn’t really fit. I don’t think fit the theme of it. I just wanted to be really lean, full abs, just look, look good and look lean. And then personally, I do cut my carb intake for probably about five days.

I’ll cut my carbs to about 0. 5 grams per pound. And the reason why is not that it speeds up fat loss, but it sheds some subcutaneous water and you do notice it when you get lean enough. And you can just get rid of some of that sub Q water. It makes you look noticeably leaner. It brings out, especially it brings out that vascularity in the abs.

And a little bit more vascularity in the arms and shoulders. So that’s the thing. And I don’t manipulate sodium potassium because it’s too easy to mess up. And then you just end up looking worse. Go check out the podcast. I do with North with lane on it. You’ll like it. He talks all about this and he knows what he’s talking about.

Next question. Question on the dumbbell bench press Sergio Olivia senior and Ronnie Coleman stopped short of the top because they thought it worked triceps more than the chest. Other people feel a squeeze at the top is important for pecs. What’s your technique and why? That’s a good question. I, my [00:35:00] kind of default on, on these things, you’ll find so many different opinions, ranging stuff like that, which is more just anecdotal to even scientific studies that have been done on different type of lifts.

And they’ll say, stop here, don’t stop here, do this, don’t do that. And my default go to is that more range of motion is better as long as it’s safe and you’re not forcing the body into, or forcing anything into unnatural positions. So personally, when I’m dumbbell pressing, I like to have. So I’m here and I actually like to rotate from chest pressing.

I like to rotate them like this cause then I can actually get them even deeper. And then I’m up and then I do, I mean I’m not like necessarily thinking about Oh, I got to squeeze my chest, but I am fully locking out so that my chest is squeezing. And if you’re not going to do that, then you still want, if you’re going to.

do like this, which is fine. You still want to make sure that you are getting that full range of motion. Don’t stop here. It’s not bad for your shoulders. That’s not true. Get you as long as keep, you’re going to keep your shoulders in or sorry, keep your, I’m trying to get on video here so you can see it.

Keep your elbows in. You don’t want to do all the flare like this. So it’s really more, I [00:36:00] think the most important thing is. A full range of motion because that makes the body do the most work. We’ve seen that. Not that we even need science to tell us that just go do some full squats and see how hard that is versus half squats.

That’s my that’s how I do it. Next question. So what percentage or ratio of weight gain should be muscle? If lean bulking correctly I said earlier about a one to one ratio is good. One pound of muscle to one pound of fat. You’re doing well. Anything worse it means you’re probably eating too much food or you’re not training correctly.

And if you’re doing better than that. Then you’re a bastard. No, it just means you have good genetics. You’re doing a good job. Stacked update is, so I have the, a new dev company rolling on it. And it’s a big company called Appster and they’ve done hundreds of projects and they’re legit and they’re going to make it happen.

So they’ve done a full review of all the work that was been done on it so far. And it’s looking good. They’re able to use it all. I’ve met with their team and went over everything. thing, gotten them all on board. The official development will resume next week [00:37:00] and probably 68 weeks from there. It’s a slow, these types of things are a pain in the ass.

I’m just like numb to this type of thing. Cause Jeremy and I have had it happen so many times on so many things. If a project of any magnitude goes off without a hitch, that’s almost like. How? What? It’s just not possible. That’s unicorn status. It’ll get done. It’ll get done. Next question.

I recently moved my workouts to first thing in the morning so I could lift fasted with forge and deadlift seems much harder and my back just doesn’t seem ready that early in the morning for pulling such heavy weight. Any tips or thoughts? Yeah. That’s normal. If you’re new to it, if it’s only been a few weeks, I would say stick with it, even if you have to go less weight.

But generally speaking, guys are stronger and People, I’ve seen some research actually specifically on guys because of hormonal fluctuations throughout the day are stronger later in the day, one because of the hormonal aspect and then two, because you’ve had food in you, you’ve had carbs in you.

So don’t be surprised if you are just weaker first thing in the morning period, especially with fasted [00:38:00] training. Some people’s bodies do not do well with fasted training. They just don’t like they’ll lose 20 pounds on their deadlift and they can’t get it back. If they’re training fasted.

I would say give it a little more time. See, drop the weight if you have to and see if you get back up to where you want to be. I myself have been training fasted for a long time now, at least a year because I’ve just come to enjoy it. I don’t take forage every day unless I’m cutting.

I do some days of the week, depending on what I’m doing. It depends on my food intake is, but give it some time and see if it really just doesn’t work and it’s a problem. Then, I would say don’t do it. However, if you’re training fasted with forge, you’re cutting.

And that means that you also, if you’re lean one, you get really lean. I would say the advantages that having caffeine and forge and fasted training provide in terms of burning stubborn fat outweigh who cares if your weight is down for a couple months while you cut and you’re not gonna lose muscle. Take that into account, too.

Next question. Hey Mike, I’ve been getting some nagging soreness in my elbow post workout. What would you recommend? Glucosamine has been minimally [00:39:00] effective. MSM sulfur has been slightly more effective, but leaves still much to be desired. I heard someone suggest curcumin. What would you recommend? If we’re talking supplements, yeah, curcumin is great.

I have a joint supplement called fortify. If you go to legion athletics and check it out, it has a type of collagen that’s been shown to it’s actually been shown to improve joint health in healthy people, which is one of the few things out there that can do that. Curcumin is another which is the pigment in curry and curcumin those.

poorly absorbed by the body. So you need to have with have it with a black pepper extract basically is what increases the bioavailability by 20 times. And and you can go check out fortify and you’ll see, and I linked to all the research on it. And there’s also grapeseed extract and there’s a couple other things too.

For supplements, I would say, honestly, fortify and glucosamine again if, unless it’s. It can be mildly effective for people with arthritis. If you’re not arthritic, you’re probably not going to notice much of a difference. I myself do take glucosamine just in case, because we don’t know that it’s worthless for people with healthy joints, but [00:40:00] we don’t really know that it does anything either.

I’m taking it because it’s cheap, and if it does do anything, Hey, I’m going to take it. And I hope, cause I, that’s, keeping our joints healthy. If we look at it in the longterm is super important. Because that’s one thing that our body can be an amazing shape, but if our joints go to shit, we’re not only we’re not going to be able to lift weights, but we’re not going to be able to play sports with our kids and just do things that we want to do.

I think it’s not expensive and it’s worth the possibility that works now. Otherwise I would say that if you were doing exercises that are aggravating your elbow you need to back off those and you need to also possibly look at mobility issues depending on what the exercise is.

Don’t try to keep on pushing through something that’s nagging. I made that mistake myself with my rotator cuff on my right side. On the backside, you have these muscles, these small muscles called the infraspinatus and Terry’s minor. And I’m pretty sure it was golf that started to piss it off.

I started golfing about a year and a few months ago and golf those muscles are involved in external rotation. And [00:41:00] golf I’m right handed and the golf swing is as you’re raising the club, you’re externally rotating like this. And then as you start to unwind your body, so you’re coming back and then you’re unwinding quickly.

And it puts a lot of stress cause back. And then it gets unwound a lot of stress on these muscles back here. And so it was that, plus a lot of heavy pressing, they started to get a little bit tight. And I was just like, yeah, whatever, who cares? And I would heavy press golf.

And then it started to get tighter up in my neck. And I was like, yeah, who cares? Heavy press. So I, do as I say, not as I do. And now it’s not injured, but now I’m going lighter on my pressing and I have to get, I’m just getting massaging, getting worked on. Like it was fine about a month ago.

And then I started having pressing again. I’ve lived these things. I know how this can go with these nagging things. So now I’m just, I’m not being stupid with it anymore. So I’m not, I’m just not heavy pressing right now. I don’t need to, my chest is, it was one of the, my best responding by or I don’t even want it.

Like it’s fine. I just maintain my chest and getting it massaged, getting it worked on and just finally let it settle down. Cause what happens is it’s just a bit of what you’re probably running into is a bit [00:42:00] of tendonitis where the tendon just gets a bit inflamed. That’s what I’m running into. And you need to get, you need to get the muscles to settle down.

So they stopped pulling on the tendon. So that is that hopefully that helps. Next question. What do you think about energy drinks? I think that I like I’m a fan of caffeine for sure. I’ve written about caffeine. If you have from us fly search caffeine, there’s an article up there. The standard type of intake is about 400 milligrams a day or less is going to be safe for pretty much everybody.

And again, you can go look at the research on that I cite in the article. Even it came to have health benefits because it improves blood flow. And so I, there’s nothing wrong with having caffeine every day, unless you have some very specific condition that would, contraindicate it.

But energy drinks in general, I don’t drink them because I actually just have pulse. That’s my energy drink. And we want to actually create an energy drink because pulse. is great for, with the beta alanine and BDN and ornithine in citrulline. Those are for training. Yeah. I wouldn’t necessarily need those if I was just wanting to get a little pick me up.

And I just want mainly the caffeine, the [00:43:00] theanine and that combo is what’s awesome. Like that theanine, that addition of theanine is really what takes that caffeine rush or high to that next level where you almost feel euphoric. So what we’re looking at is doing a. Energy drink with less caffeine.

So you can maybe drink a couple because, pulse is not super caffeine heavy, but it is 175 milligrams per scoop. Probably could be a hundred milligrams per, in a drink with theanine. And then with some other things that would be more no tropic or enhancing cognition as opposed to, something that would be for working out or whatever.

A lot of energy drinks. They have a lot of chemicals and stuff, and I’m not like super against chemicals, but generally I try to limit my exposure to chemicals if at all possible, I eat mostly organic foods. I I don’t have much in the way of artificial sweeteners. I’ll choose some gum here and there.

I love gum. So if I buy gum, I end up pounding it. So I just don’t really have it around. But if somebody else has gum in the office, I take them. And so I’m not like it. I’ll never have any chemicals, but that’s just the way I am. All right, next question. I have read and owned four of your books and they’re great.

Thanks. I’m a personal trainer and train myself using your methods because it works. I just opened [00:44:00] my own place, part time training, and I was wondering what was your advice on training clients that want to train one day a week? What kind of workout do you think would give the best overall? It’s a good question.

One workout a week. So you have a couple options. You could do a full body. That would be the standard way of going about it. I’d say that’s probably the best way of going about it really. But what you may want to do is alternate because The thing about full body workouts that can be very hard is if you’re trying to train heavy and do full body, you’re going to die.

Try to heavy squat, deadlift, bench, overhead, press, just that. Try to do that, three sets of each and one workout. And I’ll be amazed if you can even do it. So what you may want to do is. Take alternate, take two, a couple of those exercises, train heavy in the same or in, in one in that workout.

And then the next two exercises in the workout or the later part of the workout training like the eight to 10 rep, the higher rep and then alternate that, each week. So if you did the heavy squats and deadlifts last week. Then and then after that you did the lighter pressing, then you flip [00:45:00] that and you’re doing the heavier pressing and the lighter squatting and deadlifting.

And ironically though, higher rep deadlifts, like I did that this week cause I felt like I needed to do load, but I didn’t really want to do load. So I was like, I’m just gonna do some higher rep, but like actually push myself, not just do load high rep and higher up deadlifting. I haven’t done that in a while.

And that is the most exhausting shit ever. Like I was doing legit 10 rep deadlifts. And I was amazed. My heart was like an explode. So keep that in mind when you are going to be doing the higher rep stuff. It doesn’t necessarily have to be 10 reps with your 70, 75 percent one rep max. You may want them to go a little bit lighter, something they could maybe do 12 or even 15 reps with, but you’re having them just do 10.

That’s probably how I would, and it depend on the person. That’s how I would approach it. Cause I know I can tell you, if you try to just tell them to do a bunch of four to six reps stuff in a full body using compound movements, try it yourself, it’s so hard. So yeah, full body and I would say alternate between what’s heavy and what’s light.

Week to week. Next question. Does alcohol, a glass or two on the weekend screw up [00:46:00] results? No, not necessarily. The thing with alcohol is it’s not as a molecule. It’s basically, it’s impossible to store as body fat. It just doesn’t get converted into fat. It’s a poison that gets shuttled out of the body.

But it increases or it decreases fat oxidation rates, meaning that it causes your body to store body fat even faster. So that’s why if you’re cheating. It’s, I highly recommend if you’re going a high fat, particularly cheat meal, I highly recommend that you don’t drink because you’re going to store as much fat as possible from that meal essentially.

And those effects last for many hours to alcohol’s effects. So going back earlier in the podcast, we’re talking about how much fat can you gain in one meal. The way to test it out would be go to the cheese restaurant Jeremy went to. And eat everything and drink a bunch of alcohol and you will gain the maximum amount of fat you can from one meal.

So check go to muscle for life, search for alcohol. You’ll see an article I wrote on the subject. And it tells, breaks down how this works and gives you a simple little strategy. If you’re going to be drinking, how to minimize the damage. So to [00:47:00] speak. So yes, you should be able to drink once or twice a week and really not have any problems.

You just have to go about it correctly. The question is basically how do you keep your fat as low as possible? How low can you go? So a good baseline is about 0. 3 grams per pound of fat free mass. So that’s everything in your body. That’s not fat. And you can calculate that just by figuring out your body fat percentage just go search, search for body composition, go to muscle life, search for body composition.

You’ll see an article on it. So about it’s, it’s going to be probably about. 0. 25 grams per pound of body weight, something around there. When I’m maintaining, I’m around, eh, I would say 0. 3 to 0. 4 grams. I’d say 0. 3 grams per pound of body weight is my general intake. And it sometimes goes higher on some days based on what I feel like eating or lower.

But yes, that’s a simple answer. That’ll give you everything you need for your health, basically. And the only reason to eat more would be If you really like it, all right, next question. So [00:48:00] what’s your foot position for the leg press? I like, shit, I guess it’s hard to show. So about yeah, I’d say it’s about shoulder width.

Or so, and I like my feet a little bit higher, not with my toes off the top, but like maybe an inch my toes are an inch below the top of it. And one thing just keep in mind with leg press, when you start going heavy is you’re not necessarily trying to get your knees to your chest because then that can put your lower back, you’ll start, it starts curving under like this.

You’re you’re getting into a position where for me, my knees get to about here. That’s fully loaded for me and then it’s, and then it’s back up. So that’s what I liked. The higher your feet are, the more it’s going to be your hamstrings and the lower the feet are, the more it’s going to be quads.

But again, you have to find what’s comfortable for you and don’t try to force that range of motion. Be don’t try to force yourself to full squad if you don’t have the mobility to do it because you can just hurt yourself. I’ve done that before and not really hurt myself. It’s like I’ve had my back like almost.

Pop like when I was [00:49:00] leg pressing a long time ago and strangely it like wasn’t even really hurting. It was just like a muscle. I don’t know if it’s something because I was trying to force that range of motion. Oh, let me just say on that. I also really liked the hack squat sled, not the barbell.

It’s an awkward shitty exercise, but if you do it on the sled, that’s also a great exercise for really hitting your quads. I’ve been doing a lot of that in front squatting recently. All right. Next question. Lowest round of golf. My lowest round is I shot an 83, but that’s like actually playing every ball, no mulligans, no fixing lies, no bullshit.

So I shot an 83 with two triples and a double, which is hilarious. Cause I had a sick, I was thinking I was one over on the second night I had a blow up holes in the beginning and then had a great back nine. But I’m. I would like to break 80 by the end of the year. I’m close. I just don’t know if I’ll be able to play enough before I go out of the, I’m going out of town in a couple weeks.

And that was my original goal was to break 80 before the end of the year. And I’m fucking close. I just, I don’t play enough. So I get into [00:50:00] these. situations where I don’t know how to hit shots and I end up with a triple. Next question. So what’s your max as the grass squat? I haven’t ATG in a while because it was starting to bother my knee actually, probably just cause of mobility.

Might’ve been a little bit of technique. And I just had no reason to do it. So I don’t think I ever got more than maybe two 55 or something like that. But that also was after my heavy. Parallel squatting. I never like started my workouts with heavy full squats. I would always start with heavy back squats.

And then, after doing, anywhere from, I would say three 45 to three 65 for reps there, I would go start doing full squats. So who knows, these days though, I don’t even do them. Although, ironically, I am doing a lot of front squatting, which are it’s a full squat just because that’s just the natural movement.

So my front squat, my best so far is 275 for two but that’s because I hadn’t front squatted in a long time. I got my back squat up there pretty well, but hadn’t really front squatted a lot. So now I flipped them. So I’m doing a lot of front squatting now because I’d like to build a front squat 315.

I think that [00:51:00] is at least respectable. So that’s what I’m doing right now. Will I be able to make decent muscle gains if I train fast and do not eat until 5 hours after I finish my workout? That’s a good question. That’s not ideal. I’ll say it’s not ideal. If you can have some leucine or some HMB or something like that.

Or some BCAs if you can, if you want to keep it simple before you train and then after you train and then a couple hours after that, then yes, you’d be fine. But to have nothing to eat, nothing, and then train fast and then don’t eat for five hours. It’s just protein degradation rates. Protein breakdown rates really start to ramp up after.

That facet training, especially in the time in the hour or so following, and then it gets worse. And when you’re trying to build muscle, what you’re trying to do over the course of, you could look at it every 24 hours is you’re trying to maximize protein synthesis rates and minimize protein degradation rates.

That’s really what you’re trying to do. So in this case, you’re missing a potential bonus in protein synthesis by having a protein after you work out. There is evidence that, I know it’s [00:52:00] controversial thing, but I would say that there’s a good chance that over time it makes a difference.

And then, so you’re missing that and you’re adding, a fair amount to the protein degradation side of the equation. So it’s really not ideal. I’m not going to say you can’t make gains, but it’s not ideal. All right. Next question. So how do you deal with family or friends hating on you? Friends hating on me.

Get rid of them. What kind of friend is that? About your advice, business books, et cetera. That’s funny. So I’ll say family. I mean my three year old son doesn’t really hate on me. I think he just idolizes me at this point because that’s just the way little boys are like he wants to eat the things that I eat.

He wants to do what I do. And my wife doesn’t hate on me at all. She’s very supportive and she understands. Yeah, I work a lot and she also, we’ve been together for a long time. She knows me. She just knows that’s what she’s getting into. When she decided to marry me, she knew that I’m just not going to be that person that is wants to hang around a lot.

That’s just not me. So she doesn’t, sometimes it does go a little bit. And I’ll, I haven’t like even said [00:53:00] anything to her in two days. Not legitimately, not that bad, where she’s you’re come on let’s spend some time. I’m like, all right, good point. So that’s just the way that is now friends.

Again my friends are like. Like the people I work with, Jeremy’s my best friend and the guys I work with are my friends. Otherwise I don’t I don’t hang out with people very much. The guy I work out with is a friend of mine, but he’s a business owner and he’s of the same mentality.

So I have surrounded myself with people that are the same way. It’s not just me that works a lot. Jeremy works a lot. Kareem works. Everyone in here works a lot. So we all. And there’s, that is supportive in and of itself where the people that are around you, of course they don’t say anything cause they’re doing the same thing.

I mean everyone’s work fluctuates, we all know what it’s like to put in those long weeks and those long hours and it’s, we’re doing it for a reason. We’re doing it because we like it, but also because we’re trying to, we’re thinking and we’re trying to put a future there. There’s something we want to achieve.

And we’re not just thinking with day to day, what do, what would make me feel good right now? I’m going to go do that. And that’s how a lot of people live. And if people were, I don’t have people that try to give me shit for that. But if I [00:54:00] did, if someone did try to give me shit for that, I wouldn’t take that shit.

I would not have friends that are like that because they are going, I know very clearly what I want to do with my life. And I have a good estimation of what it’s going to take to get there, I think. And anything else that like anything that would get in the way of that’s the distraction. And that would be, I would include a person too.

If some person were in my way. That’s it. They’re out of my life now. That’s just how I am. I wouldn’t say I’m like an uncaring person, but there’s definitely, I have that side to me. If someone’s like on my good side, you could say I’m very helpful and I like to, and I’m caring, but there’s certain things and certain people that are in a, go into a bucket of, I don’t care.

I don’t want to hear it. I don’t want to, that’s it. So that’s the way I am. Next question. I’m hitting all my macros, but I’m waking up in the morning bloated. I was eating carbs late at night. Is this the reason for this or am I eating too much? It’s, no, I wouldn’t say that it’s just, oh, you’re eating carbs late.

That really depends on your body. I would say it depends on what you’re eating. Go We don’t have a search up yet on the new legion blog. [00:55:00] We’re going to have a search. So put into Google legion bloated stomach search for that. And there’s an article I wrote and check that out. It has a lot of good advice in there.

And I think it’s going to help you. I’ll just leave it at that. That’s a simple question. A simple answer. Next question. So when you mess up on a cut by overeating, you can usually just go back to cutting me back on track in a few days. But what do you recommend if you mess up on bulking by overeating and getting too much, a small little cut or just keep bulking, pretend it didn’t happen.

Good question. I guess it depends like, okay, if you mess up meaning you overeat for a day or two, I probably wouldn’t worry about it and I would just keep going. But if it’s like you went on vacation and you just way overdid it. Maybe not a bad idea to come back and cut for a week and then just work get back on your bulk Do keep in mind though.

How much fat are you gonna lose in a week a pound? You know in the greater scheme of things, it’s not really that big of a deal. It’s not gonna help that much There are you know People out there that like the idea of cyclical bolt bulking, where you go, you bulk for eight weeks and cut for a couple of weeks.

And I’m [00:56:00] not totally against that idea, but my personal experience with my body and just working with a lot of people is when you get into it, you get into it like a groove when you’re bulking and I, especially after a few weeks of being in a surplus and you’re training hard and you’re progressing every week, you gain reps, you gain weight, you gain reps, you gain weight.

And for me, stopping to cut. Has messed with that and it’s been harder to get that momentum back. Like it still takes I don’t know. That’s it’s not a very scientific thing I know it’s very anecdotal. I’ve just experienced it myself and seen with a lot of people that said I do know people that really do Respond well to that basically they bulk until they hit a plateau and they get stuck and then they cut for a couple weeks just because if they’re stuck on their bulk, they figured they might as well cut.

I’m not totally against that idea. But there’s probably a reason why they got stuck. It’s probably not that they needed to cut. That’s not really, that’s not why you get stuck. So that may not address the problems. They might just come out of that cut and still be stuck. If you search for plateau on muscle for life, you’ll see an article on weightlifting plateaus.

And if you [00:57:00] also search for bulking, you’ll see an article wrote on bulking in general and there’s a lot of good advice in there. So I would say it’s one of those things that you should try. And see, how do you like what do you like more? Do you, I prefer just staying in a surplus, stretching that bulk out, for a good four to six months and then cutting.

And on my, sometimes when I was bulking I would like on the weekends, if I wasn’t lifting, I would reduce my intake a little bit. I said, I’m still in a surplus, a little bit smaller surplus. Have you ever encountered any problems with getting lightheaded during a workout? It happened to me several times this week and only on a couple of most only on a couple of most compound exercises.

I know it’s not my breathing, but it could possibly be a result of overtraining. Oh, good question. I’ve had that sometimes actually. I’ve had that when holding my breath. I’ve had that on overhead pressing. And on deadlifting before, but it doesn’t happen frequently. And it’s usually because holding my breath for I’ve had an overhead press, like holding my breath for several reps and then being like, Whoa, like finishing my set and damn, that was lightheaded.

I, I don’t, I wouldn’t, I don’t know of any reason why it would have anything to do with overtraining per se. That’s something I haven’t really looked into. To be [00:58:00] honest, I haven’t really run into it myself. And it’s very rare that I have other people that are running into it, blood pressure or blood sugar levels.

Assuming that you haven’t had any issues with that, it could just be random. I’m sorry. I don’t have a better answer for that. It’s something I really haven’t looked into. So in bulking, is it a rule that you’ll eventually have to up your cows at some point due to slow down and weight gain?

Yeah, probably. Yeah, it’s like cutting it to pay if you want to go for a longer period of time and gain a good amount Of weight and muscle probably same thing with cutting most people are gonna find that they’re gonna start their deficit at a certain level and if they want to get really lean or they Want to keep that cut going for let’s say, a couple months three to three months There is a point we have to start reducing your food intake It just is the way it is and on that point, of course, it’s best To not like you want to do as much exercise as you can and drive that deficit with exercise because that really does preserve muscle.

But there is a point where you just have to eat less food. So it’s similar to bulking. You can only train so much and you can do so much in the gym. There is a point where you just have to eat more food. [00:59:00] But how that will work, how that will play out for you is really dependent on your body. This is one of those things where you have to just learn your body.

Next question. For a female following your plan. Great. By the way, what do we do when we reach a plateau on the heaviness of weights for lifts go to most for life and search for plateau. And you’ll see a, an article on weightlifting plateaus. Check that out. That is going to, it’s going to help you.

Because there, I think there’s six or seven different things in there that you want to look at. And yeah, check that out. And if you have, if you’re still running into issues, just send me an email and then we can go back and forth because usually that article is that addresses the main points, but sometimes there are just, individually, individual circumstances that need to be emailed out and like, all right, what’s going on?

Let’s see here. I’m having huge issues keeping my calories low enough to cut at this time of the year, dinners, drinks, very hard to eat and drink the right stuff and I have friends, any suggestions. Yeah, don’t cut during the holidays. Seriously though, that’s the answer. It is hard. I know. It sucks.

Yeah. Jeremy’s saying you can do what he does where you’re cutting a few days of the [01:00:00] week and then just the weekend is a blur. , the weekend is just in a, it’s just gluts. Just a gluttonous. No, it’s not that bad. But no, it is a point where okay, if you know that. You have something coming up, then just keep on your cut and again, use the little strategies that I’ve talked about.

If you can do some exercise before those big meals, it can definitely help with nutrient partitioning save your calories for those big meals and just do your best. And ultimately, just weigh the enjoyment of what you’re doing versus do you care? Ultimately in the bigger picture, is it fine that if you’re just, you’re cutting is going to be, maybe over the next month you only lose a pound.

You know what I mean? And then you can go hard come January and is that worth it to you to enjoy what you’re doing with your friends and stuff? And a lot of people would say yes. So then, fine. And that’s the best way to go about it because then psychologically you’re not, you have no anxiety about it.

You know what you’re doing. It’s under your control. You’re not, you don’t have to feel bad about it. You’re not breaking your promise to yourself. And a lot of people do that, and I understand that. Next [01:01:00] question. Will your supplements ever go into retail? I used to work for a vitamin shop and used to promote your supplements.

What are your plans for Legion MFL for 2016? So the first question is, probably not retail. I don’t see that ever working because I spend too much to produce my supplements. My cost of goods sold are, let’s say, on average, Five, four to five times higher than my competitors. And that’s the way I wanted it from the beginning.

That wasn’t an accident because that’s what it takes to make good products. And I’ve said this many times, and I’ll say it again. The problem with retail is. You need an eight times markup, eight to 10 times markup from manufactured MSRP to make that work. And you can’t make good products for that.

You can’t, you cannot make a good pre workout supplement for three, 4. It’s impossible. Or maybe even 5. You can’t make a good pre workout supplement. And that run down the line, you can’t make a good fat loss product for that. You can’t make a good multivitamin for that. You can’t make a good anything for that.

Maybe you can make some like vitamin D pills or vitamin C pills or something. And that’s it. I don’t see my shit ever being in [01:02:00] retail because the quality and the price that it costs to make high quality supplements will never support it. That’s why we’ve really focused on building a selling directly to you, the consumers, because that allows us to have the margins needed to run a business and be profitable and grow.

And actually make good products and stuff that I, myself have always wanted. And Jeremy has always wanted. And that, that if a lot of our customers are more educated people that they’ve always wanted since we are, we lads so yeah, and then in terms of plans. For 2016. So quick little rundown for legion.

We have this new website coming up, which is also going to include stacks like bundles and stuff, which is more ways to save. We have enough products for it. Now we’re going to be doing a subscription service. So like a subscribe and save type of deal where it’s going to be saved 20 percent on your order and then we’ll send it to you every month.

And of course it’s going to be like. No shady bullshit rebilling. You’re going to sign up for it knowing that’s what you’re signing up for. Obviously. So we’re gonna be doing that. We’re going to be [01:03:00] doing we have a whole email marketing campaign and it’s a big complex thing basically that has It’s a whole promotional thing that we’ve put a lot of time and money into.

That’s going to be rolling out. It’s hard to explain, but you’ll see it in action when it’s up. And we’re going to be doing an affiliate program is going to be next year for sure where we’re going to have to roll it out in a controlled manner. So it’s an affiliate program is obvious. These are the, these are obvious.

Things like who would not do these things anyway. So yeah, we’ll have to roll that out in a controlled manner and then we have some new products coming in some new flavors and we want to get serious about looking into getting into Canada properly and the, in the UK and Europe properly. So we can offer really affordable shipping that, that would be big.

And yeah, so those are the big, those are the big things for Legion. We have some other things as well, of course. And for MFL new website, it’s going to be first quarter, whole new, brand new. Designed from the ground up. It’s time that we did that. We’re gonna be putting up a store on muscle for life.

We’re going to be selling obviously our own stuff, but a lot of other cool [01:04:00] things that I, use and recommend and putting together some cool packages and buying books and stuff like that. And we’re rolling out a new meal plan service as well. That’s going to be a big upgrade to what we have right now to based on a lot of feedback of to make it more customizable to meet people’s needs and coaching service, which we’ve been piloting, it’s been going very well.

We have our first people wrapping up. We’re going to be. Announcing those success stories soon. And we’re looking at a subscription thing for MFL as well on. And then we have the whole app. We’re excited to really jump into apps. I think there’s a big opportunity there and we’re going to be able to really kill it.

We’re doing that as well. So I’m forgetting things, at this point it’s. It’s a melting pot. Alright, next question. Weightlifting on a ketogenic diet, what advice do you have? Search for legion, go to google legion ketogenic diet. And I wrote a whole article on it. Basically it sucks.

Haha, Jeremy’s laughing. There’s the short answer. Ketogenic dieting is stupid. It’s stupid. It’s so hard unless you have a medical reason to do [01:05:00] it for weight lifting, no carbs, it’s just garbage. It’s, it is factually worse for building muscle. Your workouts are going to factually suck and you’re just, you’re not going to look as good.

You’re not going to feel as good. There’s no reason to do it. All right. You’re on a desert island and you find a huge supply of either peanut butter or Nutella. Which one do you choose? Shit. Because it’s me, I honestly have to say peanut butter but I’m a weird person. You can’t live off from Nutella.

You’ll just straight die, dude. Nutella is so good, though. If I could live off Nutella, if I knew that I wasn’t just gonna die from it, then of course Nutella. Nutella destroys peanut butter, let’s be real. But if I had to try to survive for real and not develop some strange disease or something, then I’d have to go with the peanut butter.

Next question. Given sleep’s critical role in recovery and mental acuity, what are some tips to improve sleep? Asking the wrong person. I do not sleep very much. I can fall asleep easily, but wake up several times throughout the night. That sucks waking up. If, that, that’s probably one of the reasons, that’s one of the reasons why I don’t, I sleep [01:06:00] maybe six hours would be a very, would be a restful night, sometimes a little bit less.

Yeah, if you go to, if you go to MFL and you search for sleep, you’ll see an article on it where I give some tips on how to improve sleep. So that would be helpful for you. Yeah, do that because it could be a number of things. Again, this is something where if we were emailing, I’d be able to send you the article and we’d be able to like actually have a good discussion of where you’re at, but check out that article.

It’s a good place to start. And yes, it’s definitely worth, putting some, you probably have to make some lifestyle changes, some behavior changes before you go to bed. That’s where a lot of people mistakes that they make in terms of too much blue light before bed and things like that. And not having a pre bed routine that relaxes you and so forth.

So check out that article, send me an email if you need more help. But that’s a good place to start and also throwing it out there. Not that, supplements are not my go to answer for things, but we do have a sleep supplement coming out, which has glycine, which is, you’ll see on the, on, on the sales page again, it’s going to be our standard style, everything is, there’s all the research is there, but it has, you can look at these things like go to examine and look at these, look at the, [01:07:00] look at glycine, look at.

Lemon balm extract look at ruticarpine for clearing out caffeine out of the body, which is great because a lot of people don’t realize how long caffeine stays in the body. It’s hours and hours. It depends on how your body metabolizes it. My, my body metabolizes it very quickly, but many people’s bodies don’t.

And sometimes, having caffeine within six hours of going to bed is associated with worse sleep. It is in most people. There’s research on it and on, I talk about, I’ve written about it, whatever. Anyways, check out the sleep article and then check out lunar is the name of the product.

It’s going to be, it’s going to be available in a few weeks. It’s being received at our fulfillment house, blah, blah, blah. Next question. What are your thoughts on diet breaks and moving straight back to maintenance after a cut versus first time? I think diet breaks are a good idea. If you need to, it’s not necessary.

A lot of people don’t they just go and then they finish and that’s it. But a lot of people like I know Jeremy likes to take breaks on his diet every so often when he’s cutting. He’ll just go to maintenance for a few days just because He’s familiar with his body and [01:08:00] he knows that there’s a point where it’s just the stress starts building on his body.

So he goes to maintenance for a few days and then goes back into cutting. So there’s nothing wrong with that. It helps. It’s good for psychological just sticking to your diet and preventing, going over the top and then going back to straight back to maintenance after a cut.

versus reverse dieting. It’s fine if you haven’t been cutting for that long. One of the big benefits of reverse dieting is preventing the snowball eating too much. Because when you’ve, when you, let’s say you’ve been cutting for two months, your body for various reasons related to hormones and metabolism is in, is primed for fat storage.

So what you don’t, the worst thing you can do is finish your cut and just start slamming down food. Cause you are going to gain fat very quickly. So the, one of the big benefits of reverse dieting. It’s not like some magical thing. It’s just that it keeps your caloric intake under control and you’re gradually raising it back up.

And there is something to be said for gradually bringing your metabolism back up because you are going to not that your basal metabolic rate is going to change all that much, but your total daily expenditure energy expenditure does go [01:09:00] down as you’re cutting your body. Adapts in different ways to just burn less energy.

So as you start reintroducing food, your body starts moving around more naturally. Your, non exercise activity thermogenesis comes back up. So yeah, that’s you, if you haven’t been cutting for very long, you can jump back to maintenance. If you have, you can, but you might do better with a reverse diet just to make sure that.

You don’t really gain any fat coming back to TD. Next question. So what should I do? If I get stuck on a certain weight on an exercise, such as a bench press while cutting on the year one challenge, I’m currently at 13 percent body fat of my 10 percent target for bulking. Yeah you’re cutting and it’s.

It’s very common to get stuck. So just keep at it. You may not, you may just stick there and that’s totally fine. Remember when you’re cutting, your goal is mainly to just not lose muscle. If you’re new to weightlifting, you can gain muscle while you’re cutting, but if you have, let’s say, a year worth of weightlifting experience under your belt, it’s really not going to happen.

So long as you’re not dramatically losing strength while you’re cutting, you’re doing it right. When I cut, I do not gain strength. I really don’t even gain reps. I’m just permanently stuck while I’m cutting. [01:10:00] So just the way it is. In the past I have gained strength while cutting, but it’s been like three weeks and then I stick.

Next question. Help. How do I get rid of my cellulite? Go to Muscle for Life and search for cellulite? I talk about it. There are definitely things you can do, like gaining muscle, losing fat. There aren’t very many, like easy quick fix. Re quick fix remedies like creams and shit. I know that some girls swear by body brushing as well.

I haven’t seen any research on it, but I know it’s one of those kind of folk remedies that may have something to it, but go to muscle for life, search for cellulite. You’ll find an article. It’ll help you. Next question. Are you planning to release a dick enlargement supplement? Censored. It’s not for me.

I’m asking for a friend. I like that ad. My friend has a really tiny dick. Not me. My dick is literally massive, but It’s really the biggest thing you’ll ever see. But my friend has the littlest dick you’ll ever see. No. We’ve actually in spitballing ideas for supplements, should we make a dick pill?

And we’ve looked at stuff to improve blood flow, and yo him bean, and there are a couple things that might. It’s not going to make your penis larger but you might make [01:11:00] give you better hard ons. I don’t know. It was like something was thrown around where I don’t, do we even want to make a dick pill?

Do we even care? But you could look at things that would increase blood flow. Again, it’s not really going to increase the period, make your dick bigger, but it might give you better hard ons. Citrulline for instance, what’s impulse or, him being increased his blood flow.

Theanine as well. So next question, my favorite actor and why I don’t really have a, do I have a favorite actor? I don’t think so. Yeah. Christian Bale is pretty sick. Christian Bale. Super good. That’s true. Leonardo DiCaprio. How can He’s a god. Just because he’s so good. He plays such, who? Yeah, Matthew McConaughey, super good.

Yeah, see Jeremy knows me better than me. Matthew McConaughey, super good for obvious reasons. Just incredibly good actor. True detective. He was so good. God, he was good. Who? Yeah, Peewee Herman’s pretty sick. He’s into playing with himself and shit. That’s pretty cool. Yeah. I’m not, I like movies, but I’m not like a movie nut.

I’m more into reading and writing. So anyways next question. So caffeine stays in the body for so long. How is taking [01:12:00] creatine after workouts ideal since creatine doesn’t work nearly as well with caffeine in the body. That’s not definitive. That’s, there’s one or two studies on that.

And it’s controversial because the mechanism isn’t understood and like to be safe. Yeah. Maybe you don’t want to ingest. And remember those in those studies, right? It was creatine and caffeine ingested together, but then there’s another study. So you have, I think it’s two that are, they’re saying, Hey, it may not be good to have these together.

But then there was another study that was done, I think it was with cyclists that showed that the creatine made caffeine or other way around. Caffeine made creatine more effective. So don’t give that much credence. Like I’ve written about that and I’m just yeah, to be safe, that’s one of the reasons why we don’t put creatine in our pre workout.

Also, not everybody wants to take creatine. So we really wanted our creatine to be in its own supplement for people that want to take it. But don’t, it’s not something to worry about. You know what I mean? Have creatine with your post workout meal and you’ll be fine. You’re gonna notice a difference.

There’s no question, creatine works. You can try it. I wouldn’t worry about that. Oh yeah, hey This is, I was just talking with Jamie on the way over here, random, cool idea. We’ll start doing this. [01:13:00] So what we’re going to do is at the end of each of these live Q and A’s, we’re going to pick three people.

Maybe we’ll do more in the future. I don’t know right now. It was just random number three people, and we’re going to give you a 100 gift card to our to, to our store just for taking the time to come be here and hang out. And, we have fun doing this. We hope you like it and use it as an incentive in the future, to come hang out with us.

Yeah, to come waste your time, basically. We like wasting our time, we like wasting your time, jeremy will put in here, he’ll tell me who’s gonna pick email addresses, and then I’ll say, just so we know who wins, but then Jeremy’s gonna email you, and you’re gonna get a 100 gift card to to our store.

To the Legion’s store. And we’ll do that every time, we’ll just pick, three, maybe we’ll make it five next time, who knows, but we’re just gonna do it. All right, we’re gonna do it right now. We’re gonna do it live. Fuck it. We’ll do it live All right. So it is danny underscore d underscore brown at yahoo.

You win my friend We have jack lantern 31 at gmail you win. Oh, and just so you guys know we also have So we have the sleep supplement coming. We have the green supplement on the [01:14:00] way. We’re not happy with the flavor yet It’s been a pain in the ass And we have a five pound, we have five pound, five pound weighs coming to in the next month or so, which is exciting and fish oil as well.

We’ve sent out an email, we have to send another email on the surveys because those names didn’t go over so well, which it happens. So I have some more ideas. All right, next winner. FBE28 at Hotmail. You win. So enjoy your gift cards and I think that’s going to be it for now, and we’ll do we could do Jeremy, we could do one for fun when we’re going to, Jeremy and I are going to be in Europe at the end of the year.

We could do one like on the laptop or something. If it works wherever we are, it could be fun depending on where we’re at. We’ll see what we can do by at the end of the year, maybe we’ll do something for fun. Jeremy’s going to be in England primarily, but he’s gonna be around. I’m going to be in Germany primarily, but I’m going to be around.

We’re going to meet up. So maybe we’ll. If we’ll find a cool place, if we can do it, if we can make our schedules, align and we’ll do the European [01:15:00] version. We’ll do it in Amsterdam in a weed shop, in a coffee shop. Sorry. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We’re going to be smoking coffee.

Hey, it’s Mike again. Hope you liked the podcast. If you did go ahead and subscribe. I put out new episodes every week or two. Where I talk about all kinds of things related to health and fitness and general wellness. Also head over to my website at www dot muscle for life. com where you’ll find not only past episodes of the podcast, but you’ll also find a bunch of different articles that I’ve written.

I release a new one almost every day. Actually, I release four to six new articles a week. And you can also find my books and everything else that I’m involved in over at muscle for life. com. All right. Thanks again. Bye.