Live Q&A: Artificial Sweeteners, Weight Gainer Shakes, “Healthy” Drinking, and More…

[00:00:00] Hey, it’s Mike, and this podcast is brought to you by my books. Seriously, though, it actually is. I make my living as a writer, so as long as I keep selling books, I can keep writing articles over at Muscle for Life and Legion and recording podcasts and videos like this and all that fun stuff. Now I have several books, but the place to start is bigger leaner, stronger if you’re a guy and thinner leaner, stronger if you’re a girl.

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All right, so here we are. Another monthly Q and a, we’re doing these, the last Wednesday of every month is, is. Generally when we do it we miss it here and there depending on what’s going on, but that’s, we try to try to keep it last Wednesday every month. So if you like these and you want to keep on coming, then just make a note in your Google calendar or whatever.

And we’ll obviously email and you know, maybe we’ll throw it into some emails earlier in the week or something in the future, just so people can think with it, but let’s get started. So the first question, Hey Mike, is this good? Hit cardio incline at 7. 5 with 10 miles per hour on a treadmill for 10 minutes.

And then I do this after 20 minutes on a Stairmaster on level 12. So wait, so this is, so incline so incline walking is fine. I mean, that’s there’s, I just wrote an article just recently that, Walking is not hit in terms of overall effectiveness for, for losing fat as quickly as possible, but it has it’s upsides which [00:04:00] one is, is it’s easy to do two.

It’s very low. It’s low impact, which means that it’s easy on your joints. It’s also just easy on your system. So when you’re cutting. Your body can only take so much abuse, basically you’re in a calorie deficit, which puts stress on the body as it is. You’re still lifting heavy weights. That’s more stress and more recovery demands.

And then you’re adding in some high intensity cardio that adds more stress. So, so there’s a point where, you know, you just can’t push your body any further. Walking is a very low intensity activity and there’s actually research. that shows, oh, it’s seven, yeah, I guess, I mean, Jeremy was just saying that seven and a half is kind of a jog.

That’s true. Oh, sorry, I was reading that wrong. I don’t have a treadmill. Yeah, so, so yeah, so I guess that’s jog. Anyways, just finish what I was saying on the walking point. The, it’s, it’s a good low intensity activity that burns like, you know, you can burn a couple hundred calories an hour walking.

So in this case, though, I read this question wrong. So yeah, it’s more like a jog. For 10 minutes and then do this after 20 minutes on [00:05:00] a Stairmaster on level 12. See, the idea with HIIT cardio is that you’re doing high intensity and low intensity, high intensity. So this is more just like steady state.

So, you know, jogging for, for 10 minutes and that’s, that’s following 20 minutes on the Stairmaster level 12. That’s fine for cardio if you’d like to do that, but that’s more steady state you know, medium kind of intensity or might feel like high intensity, but high intensity interval is a bit different where you’re pushing yourself really hard for anywhere from 30 to 90 seconds, depending on your conditioning and depending on what you’re doing.

And then you’re backing it down for usually at least the same period of time as your high intensity interval, if not twice as long. to let your you’re essentially catching your breath again. So in your high intensity intervals, you’re pushing yourself, you really should be pushing yourself to the point where you can’t comfortably hold a conversation and you’re maintaining that for a certain period of time.

And then you are backing down to where you’re, you’ve caught your breath again, you’re repeating. So if you like doing that you know, steady state kind of medium intensity type of cardio, then do it. You may [00:06:00] be able to lose fat faster if you were to switch to a high, high intensity interval type of training.

It’s just. tougher because those high intensity intervals are, are, are hard. I mean, you really have to be pushing yourself. Next question. When I take creatine monohydrate, I get bad insomnia and also have to pee 10 times a night. Is there a different form I can take that will not give me these symptoms?

You know, that’s a good question. Some people it’s strange. Just react strangely to creatine. Unfortunately. I have not heard insomnia, but I’ve heard indigestion. Really, Jeremy says he’s heard insomnia. I’ve never heard that. I’ve heard definitely indigestion and just like stomach problems and diarrhea.

It’s not common, but I’ve heard it. Insomnia, I have not heard before. But you know, you can try another form. It probably isn’t gonna make a difference. You could just try a more water soluble form. You know, I, I’ve written some articles. It depends on what’s, what’s out there. But, you know, creatine hydrochloride or if you, if you go, if you search on legion’s blog for creatine supplement, you’ll see a list and you know, some micronized micronized is going to [00:07:00] be monohydrate, but it’s a more water, water, water, soluble form might help.

Yeah, you’re, that’s the only thing you can really try. Like creatine, there are a few forms I talk about in the article that just aren’t even as effective as like, like liquid creatine is just doesn’t really work at all. And there are a couple other forms that don’t really work. So unfortunately it might just be that you cut out the creatine, which in the greatest scheme of things is not a huge problem.

Yes, creatine works, but it’s not necessary. It’s just helpful. All right, next question. Hey Mike, I just had a surgery and was looking at your joint supplement. I was wondering if you could comment on the effectiveness it might have after a surgery. Is it more for prevention of stiff joints or could it help heal my joint faster as a torn meniscus that was repaired?

You know, I, I don’t, I mean, obviously you’re, you are in recovery mode. So I’m assuming you’re not really going to be doing any sort of exercise or anything that’s going to be aggravating your joints. So I don’t think fortify would help your [00:08:00] joints heal faster. It is for reducing inflammation. So in that regard, it may help.

But it’s, I wouldn’t say it’s, it’s not necessarily made for you know, the, that, that type of situation where you have. a damaged joint that, that needs to be repaired. The, the reduction of inflammation might be able to help, but it’s mainly for people that, I mean, it’s for people with healthy joints and it helps them preserve healthy joints primarily by preventing the autoimmune response that can happen.

that eats away cartilage over time. That’s what leads to rheumatoid arthritis. And it’s also for people with compromised joint health already that again, where it becomes this vicious cycle of inflammation, autoimmune response, further inflammation, and just degradation, degradation, degradation.

So by, by really focusing on mitigating that autoimmune, autoimmune response and reducing inflammation. You can get rid of pain, you can get rid of dysfunction, but, you know, in your case, I can’t say for sure that it’s going to help it’s not going to hurt, but I can’t say for [00:09:00] sure that it’s going to help.

Yeah, I mean, you can give it, give, you can give it a, give it a go and get, get, you know, one bottle, we’ll have it back soon. The problem with, unfortunately, the company that produces the collagen, which is a company called InnerHealth and this is, it’s a patented collagen, there is no good replacement for it, I, I looked.

Yeah. Jim, I was just saying it was a cartilage surgery. Yeah, it may help. I can’t say for sure. But anyways, we will have it back sometime within the next three or four weeks. The company that produces the collagen they were having trouble meeting demands, so they wanted to increase production capacity.

So what they did is they just shut down their entire operation for like four weeks to increase production capacity. And now they are backlogged with orders and now it’s a big problem for them. I don’t know why they did it that way. So that’s why we ran out of Fortify because we couldn’t get collagen.

And there’s no replacement. There’s no other that is the patented molecule. That’s what we need. So anyways, it’s it’s, they’re supposed to be shipping out to the, to my manufacturer on Friday and then my manufacturer is going to rush it. So hopefully that happens. Next question. Most [00:10:00] bodybuilders rag on the Bowflex.

Is there anything wrong with the actual system if someone is doing low reps, heavyweights, proper form? I wouldn’t say that it’s something that’s wrong. It’s just that it’s not going to be as effective as free weights. And this is kind of on my list of articles. It’s something that I’ve written about and spoken about kind of incidentally in other articles and other podcasts and all over the place really.

But I think it deserves its own article, which is free weights versus machines. And the bottom line is, and there’s, there’s quite a bit of scientific research on this, is free weights are just more effective for building muscle and strength. It’s not that you can’t build muscle and strength on machines.

You’re just not going to see the results that you’re going to see with free weights. And you know, I’ve actually, my, my parents have a Bowflex, so I’ve, I’ve messed around with it. And I find that when you try to really ratchet up the resistance, it’s very unwieldy. It’s, it’s a clunky type of system because the resistance It, it increases like exponentially as you can, as you move through your range of motion.

That’s what, you know, Bowflex would be like one of those things that I would, if I were stuck in a hotel and [00:11:00] that’s all I had, I would do something with it, but I would never you know, like if I were setting up a home gym, I would never opt for a Bowflex. I would just get a simple barbell set up with some adjustable dumbbells before I would do that.

All right, next question. Mike, you rock. Thanks. What do you consider to be the ideal macro carbs, protein, fat percentage intake when cutting for a female? Pretty simple. You know, there’s not much changes. For, for most men and women, there doesn’t need to be a big change. I would say protein is pretty universal, somewhere around a gram per pound is, of body weight is good.

If you’re very overweight, that could be a gram per pound of fat free mass, which is if you take your body fat and if you remove your body fat from your body weight, what’s left after that? So, you know, if you, let’s say you are 150 pounds at 33 percent body fat so, you know, you’re, if you’re at like 45 or whatever pounds of fat, and if you took that out of your weight, and if you were left with 105, you know, grams of protein, then that would work.

In terms of carbs, I am a big [00:12:00] advocate of high carb dieting for, for fat loss, actually just wrote an article over at MFL on how many grams of fat you should be eating per day that explains why I’m not a big proponent of high fat dieting, which is kind of the trendy thing right now. There is a certain amount of dietary fat that your body needs for basic health.

purposes. You know, you have the essential fatty acids. You know, you have alpha linoleic acid, even linoleic acids. These are, these are things that your body can’t produce that needs to get from his diet. Especially there’s, there are types of fats called omega three fatty acids that are, are very, very important that you get enough in your, in your, in your diet for various health reasons.

But once you’ve met those basic health needs, increasing your fat intake beyond that, it doesn’t really have any benefits in terms of health or body composition or performance. You may enjoy it, and that is a reason to do it. If, you know, some people just really, the types of foods that they like to eat are generally fattier foods.

And that’s okay. As long as ideally, you know, that you, you’re getting a, your [00:13:00] majority of your fats from unsaturated fats, which are fats that are, you know, liquid at room temperature. So oils, nuts, seeds, things like that, as opposed to getting the vast majority of your fat from saturated fat, which are fats that are solid at room temperature, like, you know, what you, what you, the kind of fat you’d find in dairy, like butter or the fats that you find in meat.

And the reason why is although again, eating a lot of saturated fat is kind of the thing right now. There are, there’s, It’s not conclusive. The science is not conclusive that, and some people say it is, that, oh, we know now saturated fat has no association with heart disease, I, that’s not true. And I talk about that in this latest article, how many grams of fat you should be eating per day.

The research that has been prominently shared around as the, Definitive proof that saturated fat, you can use much saturated fat as you want, and it will not increase the risk of heart disease has been thoroughly criticized by, by prominent researchers and scientists. [00:14:00] So I think it’s smart to play it on the, play it safe and, and keep your saturated fat intake to somewhere around 10 percent of your daily calories or less and get the majority of your fats from unsaturated sources.

So as long as you’re doing that, you know I would say that your fat intake could be somewhere between 15 and 20 percent of your daily calories. And as long as you are getting enough omega threes, which I personally just take a fish oil because I don’t like fatty fish is that’s really your best source of omega threes.

You can get omega threes from plant stuff, plant sources, like let’s say flax seed and others. But the problem is that the conversion. of that, of the fat that is in the plant sources, how the, the, by the time it gets converted, you know, it, your body converts it into a, it’s a, it’s a fatty acid called EPA, which it then has to convert into DHA.

And that process is very inefficient. It’s, it’s very inefficient to go from ALA, which is the fat in, in plant. You know, in the plant food going from ALA to [00:15:00] EPA is already very inefficient. I believe it’s like four or 5%, maybe 6 percent can be converted. And then EPA into DHA is even worse where it’s almost negligible.

So the best way to get your omega 3s, your EPA, DHA is just it, you’ll find it directly. You’ll find in fatty fish in, in large amounts. That’s the most common way that people get it. If you like the, you know, like salmon and mackerel I think sardines as well. And if you like. Those fish, then, you know, eat a few servings a week and you’ll be good.

I really don’t like them, so I just take fish oil. So, I take about four grams of fish oil a day, which gives me about two and a half grams of omega 3s of EPA, DHA, and I’m good to go. So, if your fat is 15 to 20 percent of your total daily calories and it’s primarily unsaturated fat, your saturated fat is limited, and you’re getting your EPA, DHA.

You’re good to go. And you get the rest of your calories from carbs. So that’s a good baseline. That’s a default. It’s a starting point. If though you find that that that is not enough fat for you, [00:16:00] you just don’t enjoy it. I mean, fat also, when, when you eat fat with a meal, it helps keep you satiated. So it is smart when you’re cutting to have some fat with every meal.

So if that’s just not enough for you, that’s fine. increase your intake by whatever you would like to add. Let’s say you want to go up 10 or 15 grams of fat per day. Just take from your carbs. So for every, for every two grams of carbs that you remove from your meat, from your, your, your numbers, you can, you can add one gram of fat.

So in that case, if you want to add 10 grams of fat to your daily, just pull out 20 grams of carbs and you’re good to go. So that’s, that’s a, that’s the. baseline that I recommend most people and I’ve worked with thousands and thousands of people and most people do best on that type of setup. High protein, high carb, low to moderate fat and they’re able to lose fat efficiently.

They’re able to, you know, enjoy their, their, their, the foods because generally we like to eat carbs. Carbs may, you know, they improve, they increase mood, they give us energy. They help keep our workouts you know, [00:17:00] good. They help make sure that we have, I mean, obviously our glycogen levels in our muscles and in our liver is going to be generally low because we’re restricting our carbs regardless, but the higher, the higher we can keep that and the more glycogen we can keep in our body, the better our workouts are going to be generally speaking.

So, and also just, just to throw that out there that it’s a myth that women need to eat so much more fat than men. It’s just not true. There’s no physiological reason for that. You know, the dietary fats play an equal role in hormones in men and women. And the point is you just need to get enough for your body’s basic health needs.

And if you’re going to increase beyond that, you should have a reason to do it. Not just. Just because. All right, next question. How can I avoid forearm pain during bicep curls? I even tried going back to the 8 10 rep range, but it keeps coming back even after a few weeks of rest. That really kind of depends where this pain is.

If it’s, if it’s along this area of your forearm, most that’s, and if you’re new to weightlifting, that’s just something you have to deal with. [00:18:00] Heavy curling, you know, I, I, I had the same issue years ago and I said to keep on going through it. If it’s somewhere else, it could be, it could be a tendonitis issue.

But regardless, I would say just stop doing whatever it is that’s bothering you. So maybe you can switch to a different type of curl. Maybe if you’re, if you’re doing traditional curls, you can switch to a a hammer curl and maybe that. We’ll not aggravate it. And you know, so I’d have to get more, more information.

You can send me an email on that if that doesn’t help you, because I’d have to know, where is this pain? Is it following an injury or is it something that just kind of crept up on you? How did it creep up on you? Was it that you were going up in weight? Because what I’ve heard from a lot of people and I experienced it myself is when you start getting into heavier and heavier curling, there is a point where you get this strange pain.

It almost feels like it’s. And you know, in most cases, and in my case, I just kept on going and it wasn’t excruciating pain. It’s just uncomfortable. And then in [00:19:00] time just went away. All right, next question. When are you going to come to the dark side and do a powerlifting meet? The problem with powerlifting and me is if I want.

To, to really focus on getting stronger, I would have to be fatter. There’s just no way that I’m going to stay, you know, somewhere around 8 percent body fat and be super strong. You know, and I’ve pushed myself hard. I’ve kind of maintained this 8 percent ish place for about a year now. And I’ve pushed myself hard in my training.

I’ve done all kinds of stuff. And I just I’ve, I feel like I’ve hit a ceiling with my strength given my body weight and given my caloric intake. Unfortunately, Being a natural weightlifter, which everybody says, which I don’t really talk, I don’t really, I don’t push it and go on and on about it because I think it’s silly and I think the more someone like It claims that they’re natural and, and swears up and down how natural they are, the less, the more likely they are on drugs.

But my point is my, my calories on a, on a day to [00:20:00] day basis are about 2, 800 max 2, 900 even somewhere between 900. And so I’m not able to eat, you know, 700 or 600 grams of carbs a day. And stay lean. There’s just not going to happen. If I could, then yeah, I’m, I could, I could probably gain 50 pounds on all my lifts over the course of the next, you know, whatever, six months, if I could just eat you know, a lot more food.

But for me, I. I prefer to just stay lean and look a certain way over being super strong. I’ve maintained good strength across the board, but yeah, unfortunately I just wouldn’t be a very impressive power lifter with my setup the way it is right now. And I also, I mean, I’m not training for power lifting.

I’m not doing a strength program which also brings me to a little aside on strength programs. One of the reasons why also I personally wouldn’t be interested in that is. Most strength programs, the, the lower body volume is much higher than the upper body volume. So you’re doing a lot of squatting and doing a fair amount of [00:21:00] deadlifting and the, the physique that that, that that builds is, is a very lower centric one where, you know, you have really big legs, you have a really big butt and your upper body can be muscular, but.

It’s just a lopsided type of look with huge legs, huge, you know, but he’s huge lower body and underwhelming upper body. And that’s, that’s also just not what I’m going for. All right. Next question. Could you please address problems with artificial sweeteners in terms of health risk and weight management?

Thanks. I actually have this on my list of things to either either do a video on or, or write an article on. And, you know, there is, there is some evidence that it may mess with your, your intestinal, it’s called flora, the environment in your intestines and in your gut. But this, it is inconclusive and we’ll have to see what comes out of it in future research.

There’s also it’s, it’s pretty well established that. Having having a lot of sweet in just sweet, you know, tasting things throughout the day that, that it can [00:22:00] stimulate your desire to eat more calories. So the fact that you’re, you’re having something sweet with no calories can kind of mess with your bodies.

I mean, it’d be more. Hormonal in terms of leptin and ghrelin, but it can lead to, it can help promote overeating. So there’s that and, you know, there, there are, there’s a lot of controversy over the, the more, I guess, sensational type of claims against artificial sweeteners that in, you know, aspartame increases your risk of cancer and all these other things that those when you start going that far you know, to, to that, to the, to the alarmist kind of end of the spectrum I don’t put, I don’t put much stock in, in that stuff.

And I don’t think there’s, there’s good scientific evidence of that. So like I, myself, I don’t never have artificial sweeteners. I chew gum here and there. I guess that’d be kind of my really only source. I don’t eat, you know, I don’t really have anything else that would have that. I don’t drink energy drinks.

I just drink Pulse. But I do, I all chew gum here and there and whatever. So it’s not that I’m like rabidly against artificial sweeteners. [00:23:00] But you know, if what’s coming to the point of, of workout supplements and why I chose to go with it. Natural sweeteners is not so much that like having a serving or two of artificial sweetening or sweeteners every day is going to cause any problems, but what if you’re taking, let’s say four scoops of protein a day, you’re taking two scoops of a pre workout a day, you’re taking a post workout you know, you’re taking, let’s say we have a sleep supplement, we have, so, and let’s say, you know, we have our green supplement Genesis coming out soon.

So it could easily be that somebody would be taking eight to 10 servings of my supplements a day on top of who knows what else drinking diet soda chewing gum, having other things with artificial sweeteners, there is a point where it can become a problem, where there is a certain level of intake, where if you’re having, let’s say, let’s say someone’s at 20 servings or 15 servings of artificial sweetener a day, that’s probably not good for your body.

It’s just probably not. And the same thing would go for artificial food dyes. So that’s why we chose to go with natural sweeteners and natural flavoring as well. Flavoring is, is much less [00:24:00] controversial. I don’t know of any scientific evidence that, that artificial flavors or have even similar effects as artificial sweeteners.

But we figured if we’re going natural flavor or natural sweetener, we might as well go natural flavoring as well. Because you can still make things taste really good. And then. You know, if at some point we know that, Hey, maybe we shouldn’t have been eating all that artificial flavoring either, then, you know, we kind of have our bases covered there.

So that’s where I’m at on it basically, and to dive into more details would really take an in detail video or an article, a question. What’s the healthiest way to get drunk? It’s a good question. I’ve never been drunk. It’s kind of a strange, I never got into drinking and never, I don’t know. I don’t have anything against it morally, it’s just, it was never really my thing, and then I never really felt like I had a reason to start, so I just never did.

It reminds me of a quote, I read, I read a biography on John Rockefeller, a senior just recently, and it reminds me of a quote in that book where basically he said that he never became a drunk because he never took the first drink, and so I [00:25:00] think there’s, there’s some wisdom there. However, the healthiest way to get drunk, I mean if we’re talking about, I mean really what I can speak on here is if We’re talking about minimizing fat gain because there’s no healthy, I mean, alcohol is a poison and you know, there, it’s, it’s not a question of, does it, are there health benefits or not?

There are no health benefits. It’s a question of how well can your body tolerate alcohol? Some people’s bodies can tolerate it very well and they can drink quite a bit without any apparent. You know ramifications, whereas other people’s bodies can’t and they drink much less and, you know, run into all kinds of health issues.

So genetics is going to determine that. But in terms of body composition the problem with alcohol is, is it just accelerates it’s always the rate at which your body stores fat, dietary fat as body fat. Cause it blunks, it blunts fat oxidation rates. So if you’re going to drink, then you. You really would want to have it be is almost like a refeed type situation where you’re having as little [00:26:00] dietary fat as possible on that day, but then you also, you don’t want to be eating a ton of carbs because glucose can be turned into, to fatty acids as well.

So you’re kind of looking at like a low, like a higher protein. Lower carb and as very low, very low fat type of day as possible. And especially when you’re around, when you’re drinking, because like the worst thing you can do would be if you’re going to be drinking, being a large caloric surplus for the day and have a ton of dietary fat.

and drink alcohol. So, which is what a lot of people, you know, usually eating fatty foods. That’s just basically you’re, you’re gaining as much fat as you possibly can in that, you know, period of time. So, I would say that’s probably the best way to go about it. All right. So, next question. Can you comment on the use of ephedrine hydrochloride HCl?

I’ve actually never used ephedrine, not because I just I don’t know. I never, I guess I just never really, I never, I just never did for, for no good reason, particularly I, I, I’ve read a bit up on it and as far as I know, it’s, it’s well tolerated and you can be [00:27:00] abused and there can be, it can be problematic like anything, but that’s caffeine as well, or that’s, I mean, if you abuse water, you can die.

So not that a Fedrin is, is, is obviously it’s, it’s more. quote, unquote, dangerous than water, but you get what I’m saying. I, a Fedrin works. There’s no question. I mean, in our, in our fat burner Phoenix, it has there’s, there’s something called sinephrine in it. That is a, it’s, it’s kind of a natural form of a Fedrin.

So like you have the traditional bodybuilder type of stack, which is the, the ECA stack, the ephedrine, caffeine, aspirin stack because ephedrine and caffeine are synergistic and then aspirin helps as well. In Phoenix we have synephrine, no caffeine because we. prefer, I mean, most, most people prefer to get their caffeine from other sources than pills, whether it be pre workout drinks or energy drinks or coffee or whatever.

And then we have there’s, there’s, it’s, it’s, it’s a, it’s a molecule called salicin that comes from white willow bark and that salicin, that’s actually what aspirin was that, that’s nature’s aspirin. So we kind of [00:28:00] can recreate the ECA stack naturally by using Phoenix and some caffeine. But I don’t know the dosing on ephedrine because I haven’t used it and I haven’t really looked into it.

I haven’t written about it. But I don’t know of any reason why you Couldn’t give it a go. Question, what’s your personal go to method for cooking chicken? Baking these days, mainly just because I’ve been doing, I’ve just been doing one pot stuff for so long. And, you know, that’s, it’s just super convenient.

So, I have this big baking dish and every Sunday I just kind of do a vegetable medley with some sort of meat. It hasn’t been too creative recently. Just because of time, but I mean, obviously, I mean, baking is easy, but you can always saute. And if you’re not even, you know, if you’re baking a chicken dish, as opposed to just a single dish, baked chicken can be, can be really good because it can be very, very tender, very, very juicy and succulent.

So sauteing or baking. Question, when carrying out your research for articles, what is your go to reference for trusted information? [00:29:00] My main source is just scientific journals, actually. So you can pay to access you know, whatever you want, really. And then there are different, there are different services out there that allow you to access multiple journals, but it’s jumping from, so you’ll find like, you know papers that are.

Like systematic reviews, for instance, where they’re going over a lot of research that’s out there on a subject and compiling it all and analyzing it and saying, what can we learn from all of these clinical trials? And those, those are great. I mean, it depends on obviously the circumstance, but they can be, they can be really, really illuminating because it allows you to one, gain a general overview of, okay, where are things at?

What do we know about this right now? And then you can go from those references and just like how, when I’m writing. I try to, I try to cite, you know, studies for, for any claim that isn’t just, you know, basic physiology or just basic knowledge, then I’m, I’m really trying to cite, cite studies for it. So that’s how, that’s how scientific papers are written.

So if you’re reading a, [00:30:00] a, you know, let’s say you’re reading a, a meta analysis on something or a systematic review on something and they talk about some, you know, physiological mechanism, something that you want to learn more about, then there’s a very, very good chance that there are going to be other papers that are cited.

that you can go read. And that’s really my main source of information. There are good research reviews out there. Examine. com has one. Allen Aragon has one. I believe Brett Contreras has one. So those are good for staying just up to date on, on what, because those research reviews talk about new studies that are done, they talk about older studies that are done.

And they have kind of editorial pieces that. that are on, you know, all different types of subjects. So that’s smart as well, because again, that gives you a jumping, a starting point where you can jump off and then dive into other, other, other research. So yeah, I mean, there’s no like real trick to that.

It’s just, it just takes time and, you know, it takes some money as well to, to gain access to the research. All right, next question. I’ve used your [00:31:00] supplements before, but I’m trying up your mass, mass gainer because I’d like to. More help trying to gain mass. Is there a certain downside to using other mass gainers than your own?

Good question. We actually don’t have a weight gainer mule replacement product yet But we are working on one and we have the formulation almost done the price is in the right range not sure if it’s going to be too grainy and because we have some flax in there and stuff. So we need to get some samples going to see if it works, but we like the formulation where it’s at right now.

So we don’t, we, we have a protein powder, but this, this is going to be a protein powder. It’s going to be a blend of whey and casein, and then it’s going to have instead of seeing, and this kind of brings me to what I don’t like about a lot of mass gainers is, or mass gainers, weight gainers, meal replacements is they’re, they’re very expensive.

In some cases it’s like 12 servings for 60, which isn’t that bad. I guess if you’re thinking that it’s a full meal replacement, if you’re replacing entire meal for 5, I guess that’s pretty cool, but [00:32:00] it’s just junk. It’s, it’s just filled with usually dextrose, which is a simple plant sugar. It’s not that it’s like.

super bad for you, but it’s just a simple sugar. It’s cheap. It’s whatever. It’s like just eating a bunch of Malto. And I don’t like that for a meal replacement because I would prefer to have some sort of carbs with nutrition. So we’re going with, with a mixture of oat flour and potato starch flour. And I’ll explain why in the, in the sales copy.

And so we have, it’s, it’s a pretty unique product in that like all of our stuff, we’re just putting a lot more money into producing it than. Your other than your average weight gainers who were able to offer higher quality ingredients and just more good stuff than, than really any other weight gainer.

That’s, that’s why I don’t like weight gainers really is it’s just junk calories and you’re not getting much in the way of nutrition. So it wouldn’t be a big deal, I guess, if you were eating plenty of nutritious foods and so you’re meeting all your micronutrient needs. That way and you just are trying to get in an extra thousand calories on top of your [00:33:00] three thousand calories of nutritious foods every day.

Okay. Yeah, I guess that’s not, but, but that’s not the case. A lot of people, you know, they’re having a couple thousand calories of one to 2000 calories of weight gain or a day, and they’re not getting enough fruits and vegetables in their diet and other nutritious foods in their diet. And, you know, so I, I would rather have, and this is why I’m making it, I would rather have a meal replacement, be a true meal replacement, not just in macronutrients, but in micronutrients as well.

And in even Give some, some of the micronutrients that you probably are not getting enough of in your diet regardless, like vitamin K and, and some other things. So hope that, hope that answers the question. Next question. Did you work with researchers and scientists to come up with your legion protein product?

The protein product, no, I mean, I, we’ve worked with, we have two people that we’ve actually worked with on, on everything. Except for the protein, because it just kind of is what it is. We, you know, it’s just a clean, simple way isolate. And in the future, we’re always looking, always kind of [00:34:00] have in the back of our minds, we’re looking for, you know, how can we improve our products?

How, how can we add to them, you know, in some cases we can’t. Ford to add to them, like triumph is just maxed out. It’s just so expensive to make. But whenever we, we gain you know, price improve whenever we, we, we get a better price on things because economies of scale or, or just because of different efficiencies, then, you know, we’re looking at, okay, so how can we, how can we improve, how can we improve?

And we’ve already done several visions to products. But so in the case of protein, no, that was just kind of, we really liked this Irish way. And that really for us is the, that’s the unique selling proposition. That’s the unique angle. That’s why you should buy ours because it’s just better quality and you are, it’s, that’s nice to know for, for health reasons.

And I explained why on the sales page for, for the way, but you’ll, it’s also better for for, it’s just more, it mixes better. It tastes better. The mouthfeel is better. If you haven’t tried our, our, our protein, really give it a try and you’re going to be amazed. We’ve had so many people since [00:35:00] we’ve released that product.

The average sales have over tripled, and that’s just word of mouth. It’s not like we have some, our average weekly bottles of whey sold has tripled since we’ve released the new protein. Because it, it, it’s just that good. It’s so good. It’s abnormally good for, for, for the macros too. It’s so creamy and it’s so tasty and for being naturally sweet and naturally flavored and just being a really clean, simple protein.

It’s, it’s like, it’s really something special. So, that’s that question. Next question. Could you please voice your opinion on taking cleansing diet pills for cutting? I feel like it’s getting more and more popular and curious to try it out. Yeah, go to, go to Legion and search for detox. And you’ll see an article I wrote.

Basically a long story short is, Yes, we know that there are, we’re exposed to all kinds of toxins in our environment, in our food, in our water, everything, we can’t get away from it. And we do know that, that some of these toxins do get lodged in our fatty tissues, that’s true. But where the lie is, is you can’t [00:36:00] detox, you can’t dislodge those toxins and clear them out of your body by just taking some pills or you know, drinking lemon water every morning or anything like that.

There, it’s just, it just doesn’t work. So that we know doesn’t work. And when it comes to like detox and these like detox teas and all this bullshit, cleansing teas and cleansing pills when, when, when, of course they’re sold with weight loss, because if you’re following one of these regimens, you’re eating very few calories.

You’re eating, let’s say 500 calories a day. Yes, if you starve yourself and eat 500 calories a day, you are going to lose weight rapidly. Unfortunately, you’re going to feel like shit, and you’re also going to lose muscle, and it’s just a miserable way to go about it, and if you take it too far, it’s just bad for your health.

But you can skip the tea. You don’t have to drink the Stupid skinny whatever tea just starve yourself if you want to starve yourself and don’t bother with the tea unless you just really like tea But if you really like tea don’t waste money on that crap tea go buy good You know go buy a high quality green tea and just drink that instead So long story short is [00:37:00] these cleansing pills are not going to do anything You know, I know that some of them like they even put stuff in in these pills to make your shit black So you think that you know, look at all the toxins you’re pooping out and it’s a scam.

So save your money And if you want to go about, you know, learning, losing weight correctly go to search for calories on legion on the legion blog and look for an article. How many calories should I be eating? I think is the name of the article and that’ll break it all down for you. So you can work out what your caloric intake should be so you can be aggressive with your fat loss, but not reckless.

And you can also work out your macros and work out your meal plan and just do it right. And it’s a much more enjoyable experience and it, it’s, it’s sustainable. You’re not going to be dreading every day. You’re going to eat foods you like. You’re not going to be starving. You’re not going to be hangry all day, you know, hungry, angry.

Just, just, just do it right. And Really, that’s my best advice. What’s the ideal amount of time to fast for IF? I would say no [00:38:00] more than 16 hours, somewhere between 12 and 16 hours. Go search for fasting on the Legion blog and you will see an article I wrote on this breaks it all down for you. Do you take into account the afterburn effect of HIIT when counting macros?

No I don’t and I actually don’t like to try to estimate caloric burn every day, caloric expenditure every day because It’s just not necessary. I prefer to take your BMR and multiply it by a multiplier based on your activity level. See how your body responds and adjust up or down accordingly. If you want some good advice on that you know, you can read the, the setting your calories article I just mentioned, and then go on muscle for life and search for not losing weight and check that article out because it breaks down all the basic.

It’s, it’s kind of the simple or the most common mistakes that people make when they’re dieting that prevents them from, that, that, that halts weight loss. And then also explains how you ratchet your calories down as you continue through your cut because you have to do that. Thoughts on myofascial release I actually wrote an article on it.

It’s good. Like, you know, I, [00:39:00] I get massaged every week and that’s you know, you can do it on yourself with like foam rollers. Or with a lacrosse ball or, or, you know, or a baseball if you’re brave but check out go to muscle for life and search for myofascial and you’ll see an article I wrote on the whole on it.

Question. Why won’t I go vegan? Hmm. Good choice, Jerry. Why would I go vegan? Yeah. So, so, actually, this is on my list to write about. In terms of bodybuilding, which, I mean, I’m not a bodybuilder per se, but in terms of just weightlifting and maintaining optimal health. Vegan diets, you can make it work, but there are known deficiencies like, you know, B12 and iron and zinc, and these are things you can supplement for, and that’s fine.

But it’s, I really wouldn’t enjoy a vegan diet. And I understand on the, the ethical side of things, and I do know that you know, the, a lot of, a lot of what the meat industry, a lot of what happens in the meat industry is [00:40:00] pretty, pretty disgusting. You know, I’ve seen videos and what I would go in for is buying meat and I’ve actually looked into some farms that like some ranches that I could buy meat from.

They just, obviously they ship it to you packed in dry ice. Like I, I would go in for. Buying, not supporting that element of the, the meat industry by just choosing to get my meat from, you know, like cows that were raised humanely and, and then slaughtered humanely. But in, in the grand scheme of things, I don’t feel that it’s immoral to kill animals and eat them.

I mean, in nature, animals are killing each other every day. And I know that there are ethical. And I know there are counter arguments to all this and I, and I haven’t really gotten into, it’s not something, it’s not an argument that I really want to have. And so yeah, that’s, that’s, that’s basically, I wouldn’t enjoy my diet.

I, I like you know, I’m not crazy about meat, but I like meat. I also like, I like eggs a lot. I like, I like dairy a lot. So it would be very, it wouldn’t, I really wouldn’t enjoy [00:41:00] it. And there are. Downsides in terms of, of health and meeting your micronutrient needs and in meeting your protein needs and.

I don’t personally feel like it’s unethical to kill animals and eat them. But it’s on my list to write about. Next question. If you could only shave one part of your body for the next photo shoot, what would it be? Ha ha ha ha ha ha. I don’t, yeah, my right nipple. That’s, that’s definitely what it would be.

That’s, hey, I was telling Jeremy, I was like, Should I like cut again and if we do another photo shoot, like what for? Like, I don’t know, just, there we go. It’s going to be the right nipple shaved shoot. That’ll be all of our new images. I now have a reason to cut again. All right, next question. What do you think of Tim Ferriss and the whole life hack fitness industry?

I mean, Tim Ferriss as a, as a person is an interesting person. He’s a very smart person. He’s a smart marketer. I listened to some of his podcast. Like if he’s interviewing somebody that I’m particularly interested in, and I’ll check it out. Biohacking that whole, I mean, I, [00:42:00] you said life hacking. I don’t know if you meant biohacking biohacking is silly and you know, like the whole Dave Asprey bulletproof thing is just silly and it’s not, it’s just not nearly as effective as just.

sensible, following the fundamentals, you know, eat right, train hard, be persistent. And you know, you’ll get the body you want. That’s how you build a great physique. That’s how you build a healthy body, a strong body, not by chasing weird biohacks, eating exotic Brazilian nuts at 9 p. m. and putting, you know tablespoons of saturated fat in your coffee every morning, blah, blah, blah.

So if that’s what you meant I think it’s silly. And I think, I think though that honestly, Ferris knows that it’s kind of silly. It’s just, it, it, it makes for good marketing. That’s kind of the point. When you can say that, Oh, you know, you did all this research and you have these exotic herbs from China that do this and these nuts from, you know, Brazil that do that.

And that sounds sexier and is an easier sell also from a PR angle to [00:43:00] get reporters to cover it and just to get coverage, as opposed to saying, Sorry, you gotta watch, you gotta, you know, you gotta watch your caloric intake and your expenditure and you got to make sure that you’re just, you know, balancing your macros and keep on showing up and work hard in the gym.

That’s not as sexy. So, next question. How often should macros be adjusted as you’re cutting? Good question. Go to Muscle for Life and search for not losing weight and read that article and it breaks it all down in there. It really depends on your body. Some people really their metabolism It’s their metabolisms are just very resilient and they don’t experience much reduction in their TDE as they diet or it takes, you know, quite a long time for them to really notice a difference and other people’s metabolisms are, I wouldn’t necessarily even say slower.

It’s just that. Their body doesn’t adapt as as strongly as, as others. So check out the article and it’s broken all down in that article. Next question. Can women follow the beyond bigger, leaner, stronger [00:44:00] program? Yeah, definitely. If you are just that, that program is for advanced weightlifters is for people that are very, that have built their first.

If, if, if it’s a guy, I would say probably. 25, 30 pounds of muscle. If it’s a girl about half that and are very comfortable with heavy lifting on your big compounds, like two to three reps stuff you’re doing. So you need to know form, you need to know when to push for reps and when to back off. And so if that’s you, and also it needs to fit your goals.

If your goal is to really kind of maximize your strength and muscle growth, then that it does, that is the direction you want to move in, which is. More periodization, some very heavy work, some moderately heavy work, and some lighter work. There are different ways of doing that. You can periodize linearly, where you’re, you’re doing some very heavy stuff for a few weeks, and then you’re focusing on some lighter stuff for a few weeks.

Or you can periodize in each workout, which is what I prefer. And What I recommend that program, but I do have on my list too. I do [00:45:00] plan on doing a beyond thinner, leaner, stronger book. It’s just, I don’t think I’ll be able to get to it later in the year. And I’m still kind of compiling what I want that book to be because it needs to be a bit different than the men’s you know, whereas bigger, you’re stronger and thinner, you’re stronger.

There’s a lot of overlap because the fundamentals are the fundamentals, but. The beyond books I feel should more address. Okay, so you’ve built your foundation. Where do you go from here with guys? It’s a bit easier because most guys are still looking to gain size and gain strength for you know At least their first four to five years of training with girls.

That’s not necessarily always the case It’s not just I want to be as big and strong as possible I don’t I don’t come across very many girls that that that say that of course they’re out there But that that’s just not that’s what most guys say, you know most girls in my experience are much more into shaping, working on certain areas of their body and bringing up weak points as opposed to just, I want as much whole body strength and size as possible.

Next question. In the U. S., you say a 150 pound man should start with a diet of 2, 400 calories a day, 2340. However, the meal [00:46:00] plan examples in the book for 150 pound man has a target of 2, 724 calories. What number should I base my intake off of? I think I actually, I think you put this on the blog comments and I answered it today.

Yeah, those, that, that was actually just an oversight in that those are actual custom meal plans we’ve made for people. So in the book, I give formulas that are kind of a good starting place for everybody. There is a safe starting place. Whereas when you’re like, for instance, when you’re cutting, I want to make sure that you’re in enough of a calorie deficit that you’re going to lose weight.

I’m assuming that compliance might not be perfect. If you’re bulking, I want to make sure that we’re not starting you much higher than you need to be starting. So we’re not putting on necessary amounts of. I would rather have you start your bulk a little bit low and, and let’s say gain a half a pound a week and then wrap and then work your calories up a little bit to where you can get to the one pound a week range.

I’d rather have that than start you too high and have you gain 1. 5 to 2. 2 pounds a week let’s say, unless you’re brand new that that can happen. But you know, the point is I would rather have you gain. A little bit [00:47:00] slower at first and work your calories up. So that’s all start, start with the book, start about 2, 400, see how your body responds, and then move up from there.

And you know, I need to make a note on that, that maybe we just pick a different, cause that was a meal plan made for a specific person and we’re able to then make it, make it very tailored to that person’s needs and what they, what they really need to eat to gain weight. Next question. Can you explain some guidelines for list cardio instead of HIIT?

I have a DIY treadmill desk and can literally walk for hours every day. Is there such a thing as too much list cardio while cutting or bulking? Yeah, go check a muscle for like muscle, muscle for life. And just go into like the articles, I think from the last week or so, I, I wrote an article, the easiest cardio workout you can do that actually works.

And it’s all about walking. And as I was talking about earlier, walking is, is great for I think supplementing your, your energy expenditure because you have, because you have a treadmill desk, you will be able to burn quite a, quite a, quite a bit of energy every day walking. Cause again, you’re probably going to, it’s going to be [00:48:00] somewhere around a couple hundred calories an hour.

So if you were to do, you know, three, four hours of walking a day. That’s great. And in terms of too much, there’s probably too much walking at some point, it becomes a bit counterproductive. But you know, if, if you did three or four hours a day of walking, I don’t think that will cause any issues and I wouldn’t do any additional cardio because it’s not necessary.

That’s a lot of cardio in terms of how much calories you’re going to be burning. So do, yeah, do try that. Try that. Plus you’re, you’re weightlifting and you should be fine. Any news on your app? beta release. Yeah, I’ve kind of had it in the back of my head to email out an update on it. I just wanted to have a bit more to show before I email out.

So basically it is fully in the hands of a new company called Apster out of San Francisco. I chose them, which is, I really should have just chosen a company like them in the first place. They’re very expensive, but they’ve built hundreds of apps. They build award winning apps. They really know what they’re doing.

And so you know that everything is rolling. They are, we’re working on, you know, there’s a whole process where you make [00:49:00] wire frames and I approve the wire frames and then they develop and you develop one little piece at a time. So it’s rolling. In terms of when the beta can begin, I would think probably some are March ish, March or April, and it should be fully done, ready to sell in, in summer.

So you know, the, the whole project has taken. It’s going to have taken quite a bit more time and money than I anticipated initially, but that’s kind of my fault in that I didn’t do my due diligence initially, and I assumed that it was going to be a bit easier of a project than it was, which is always a stupid mistake to make.

Always assume it’s going to be harder and more annoying and more money and more time than, than you think, and then you will be somewhere closer to reality. New question on stack to the app stack, any plans on adding a comment part after each set? Solid reps. Last one was a grinder. A good form, bad form.

Yeah, yeah. We’re either going to do that, have a comment section for each set, or there’s going to, there’s definitely be a comment section at the end of the workout. That’s one of those things that I have it in right now in the spec sheet, but we just, [00:50:00] we’re going to be in using it. Just make sure that.

It, you know, it, it works the way that we want it to work, but yeah, that’s in there. And it makes sense to, that, you know, we would, we would want to, we would want to be able to save notes for sets and then potentially review them, you know, in the future. Okay. Yeah. So what do I think of yoga for mobility?

I think it was good. I used to do yoga a couple of times a week. My wife was into it, so I’d go with her. And I liked it. It wasn’t particularly challenging like, you know, the, the teacher would challenge me with these different weird poses and do this and hold this and do this bridge and go from this position to this position.

And I mean, some of it was kind of hard, but I wasn’t, I didn’t feel like it wasn’t like a weightlifting workout, but it was great for the stretching aspect and always felt very good after. So I think if, if you want to do it, do it. Next question. Can you tell us a bit more about affiliate programs for 2016?

What are you looking for in terms of athlete traits you’d like to sponsor? Good question. So, we are looking at doing an affiliate program for both Muscle for Life and Legion this year. I’m also for life is going to get a full revamp, just like how Legion, you know, [00:51:00] has a brand new website, brand new blog, brand new everything.

And we’re still, we have about another month’s worth worth of work dev work, developmental work on Legion to implement some more marketing and just kind of e commerce things that we want to have on the website. And then we’re going to be turning all of our focus over to MFL, which is going to, again, it’s going to be a complete overhaul.

Head to toe type of deal where we putting in a store and we’re going to be changing the meal plan service. And we’re going to be really, we’ve been piloting this coaching service and it’s been going very well. So we’re going to kind of make that, you know, it’s going to have its inaugural announcement.

At some point we’re looking at doing affiliate programs for both. Now the reason why I say at some point is where it’s going to be a tentatively, we’re kind of looking at Q2, Q3 because with Legion, for instance, we have to, it’s going to be a closed. Affiliate program, essentially that we can’t just open it up and let everyone sign up because we’ll run out of stock like we’re already, you know, we’re running January.

It’s great. Things are going very well, but January is going [00:52:00] better than we even anticipated. And we, we knew it was going to do well, but it’s doing even better than we thought. So now, you know, we’re rushing our manufacturer. Hey, yeah. You know, we need it. We need stuff earlier. What can we do? We don’t want to run out of this.

We don’t run out of that. So we just want to avoid inventory issues in 2016 more than anything now. Some running out of stock here and there is inevitable because sometimes things just happen where for, you know, you place an order. It takes two months to make a product to make, you know, to produce, let’s say 10, 000 bottles of whatever you place that order thinking that, you know, you’re totally fine.

You, you have 16 weeks worth of inventory left in 12 week production time. Okay, great. And then somewhere in the middle sales double. The weekly sales just double and you didn’t, you didn’t do that. You’re not complaining, but you didn’t plan for that and you’d run out of stock. So that can happen. But what we don’t want to do is do something like just roll out an affiliate program.

So I get asked about it a lot. I know there are a lot of people that would love to be able to promote Legion and make money. And we would love to have that, but what I would [00:53:00] hate to do is roll out an affiliate program and then have everyone jump on board and then it just blows us out. And then, you know, that’s just not the way to do it.

So what we’re going to be doing is we’re going to have closed affiliate programs, meaning that we’ll, we’ll be accepting people in batches. So, you know, let’s say we’re going to accept 50 people and see what kind of impact that has on our sales, what kind of impact that has on our inventory. and kind of roll it in waves.

So anyone theoretically is going to you know, be eligible for that. It’s different. This is not necessarily a sponsorship thing. We’re not going to pay people to promote. We’re going to pay people for sales that they generate. So if you were, if we had it and you were one of our affiliates, you would have your own special, unique link.

That, so when you’re promoting Legion or muscle for life, or let’s say you’re promoting, because we’re going to be selling books on muscle for life and we’re going to be selling, you know, meal plans and coaching and supplements and other things. So we’ll have an affiliate program on each. So you’ll have, you know, you’ll say it’s your name.

muscleforlife. com or however it’s going to be. [00:54:00] Then all sales that you know that occur from people that click through your link, you would get paid a commission on that. So that’s how it’s going to work. It’s going to be later in the year thing though, it’s, we are definitely going to do it.

We just have to make sure that we do it right and that we’re ready for it and that we have a large surplus of inventory basically to make sure that we don’t just explode ourselves. 20, your thoughts on the chest dumbbell pullover as a chest building exercise. I’m doing flat barbell benching and client benching and dumbbell benching.

Just wondering about the pullover, the pullover, you know, it can, It can be good for your serratus and the idea is that it kind of expands the, at least visually the rib cage area. And you know, Arnold, Arnold was definitely an advocate of it. I, I used to do it in the past. And I would say it’s not nearly as important as your heavy pressing, but it’s, it’s if you wanted to incorporate it and see if it does anything for you, I would say, just do your heavy pressing, you know, do your nine sets of heavy pressing, then maybe do three sets of lighter eight to 10 rep.

[00:55:00] So if you guys like the metaphor do you think that is helpful for this case of again, If you’re, if you’re new to heavy weightlifting and you’re having wrist issues, then you know, I used to use these gloves that also had wrist straps built in and it can be, it can be nice for your overhead pressing and your bench pressing just to stabilize your wrist.

And you know, gloves for, for, for dead lifting. torn my hand several times deadlifting, which is in some cases annoying because I couldn’t deadlift for then another two weeks or so, because you know, it just hurt too much. The skin needed to heal itself. So that’s fine. Now though, I mean, you, you, you lift.

where your wrists just get strong enough and you don’t need the straps anymore. And you know, same thing with, [00:56:00] with straps for, for your, for your grip. I think it’s okay. I would personally rather do some grip training just to make my grip stronger, which if you go on muscle for life and you search for forearms or you search for grip, it’ll come up.

And there are some simple exercises you could do. You could just put them at the end of your pulling workouts and just spend 10 minutes doing some grip exercises and within a month or two, you’d see a dramatic increase in grip strength. So again, those straps for, for, you know, grip purposes is, is fine if, if you need it, but I think it’s a good idea to work toward not needing it.

In terms of a belt, I think that it’s. Yeah. Belt is not necessary, but if you use it correctly, it just gives you something to push your abs out again so you can really brace your core. And that’s good. You don’t need it. You can do it without a belt, but that’s really what you’re, what you’re getting out of it.

And obviously you see with power lifters and people that do a lot of heavy weightlifting, they’re almost always using a belt and that’s why, because it does help you lift a bit more weight because you can generate so much. [00:57:00] And, and that also protects your lower back. So I don’t lift with a belt. I actually tried one just recently, just because I hadn’t tried one in a while.

I got a good, it was like an insert. I think it was. And you know, yeah, I mean, it is what it is. I just don’t feel like I, I, I need it. Because I have a. Strong core, strong lower back, and you know, just by taking a deep breath and really kind of pushing your, your core out and really stabilizing everything.

If you can maintain that position, then you’re fine. And knee sleeves, I do use knee sleeves. I use rebands or how we pronounce it, Ray Bans R E H B A N D. And I like them because they just keep your joints warm and keep everything kind of in place. They’re not like knee wraps, which yes, can increase the amount of weight that you can squat.

But it also is bad for your joints. Knee sleeves are not bad for your joints. They just, for me, they just keep, again, it’s just, it’s just, it’s more of a comfort point. It just keeps my, it prevents joints, my joints from cooling off while I’m resting. And again, just kind of make, keeps everything tight and [00:58:00] feeling, you know, like it’s moving the way that it should.

So. I, it’s also, I also recommend you didn’t ask about it, but I also do like good weightlifting shoes. Like I use Addie powers for, for squatting primarily because it makes quite a bit of difference to have a really stable base that you’re squatting on that you can really torque your feet into. It makes a difference.

Next question. Any advice for dating German girls? Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha. That’s funny. Yeah, learn German. No, I don’t know. My wife’s German. So, that’s why he’s asking. Go over to Germany. They like Americans over there. They actually really do. And, you know, otherwise, I don’t know. I’ve only dated one German girl.

So, I don’t have any good advice other than, whatever, whatever works with girls, probably works with German girls. All right, next question. How much weight do you guys do for side lateral raises? Yeah, the next question is what are your current max lifts for squats, deadlift, bench? Yeah, basically do I even lift?

And the answer is no, I do yoga. So for my, for my [00:59:00] side laterals, I like to do them like I do them hanging like this. So I do it on the power rack. So I’ll, I’ll be hanging like this and then I do it one arm at a time and I really try to keep my body stable. That’s that’s kind of the point because I found that as I got into heavier weights, once I started getting to 45, 50 pounds, two at a time, it was just, I had, it was very hard to just keep my form in, but by now doing single arm.

Hanging, I can really keep my form in and not get my body all over the place. So the, the, the heaviest I’ve been on my side, lat raises anytime recently, it was 65 pounds for four, but that was hard. And I felt like my body was moving a little bit too much. So I’ve brought it back down to 60 to 55, depending on I’m doing it twice a week actually.

So I’m doing like. My heavier 55, 60 pound stuff reps sets of six to seven. And then a few days later, I’m doing some higher rep stuff, some 10 rep, 10 to 12 rep stuff, just because I’m just trying to bring my shoulders up as much as I [01:00:00] can. It’s a slow grind cause there’s slow muscles and I’m, I’m not, I’m not bulking.

So that just is what it is. So that’s that. And then how my squats, deadlift bench and overhead press. My, my recent bests have been, you know, again, like I was saying earlier, I haven’t really bested my, my, my PRS that I set probably about even six months ago, which on a squat on a back squat, I was up to about three 65 for a few.

And it doesn’t sound like it’s that heavy, but I have long legs, long femur squatting is. I mean, the, just the range of motion that my body has to go through because I’m fairly tall and six two and I just have long legs. So for me also given my body weight and give my body fat percentage, it’s, it’s not bad to be, you know, at a one rep of about maybe three 70.

I wanted to, I wanted to get to a four or five or so for reps, but given how I’m training right now and given how my body is, it’s just not going to happen and I don’t want to switch to a strength program and really. Dramatically raise [01:01:00] the, the, the volume on my lower bar, a lot of lower body training and I don’t want to get fatter.

So I’ve just, I’m just doing, you know, doing my thing basically. So on my deadlift the best was, I believe it was like four 25 or four 30 for sets of two or three, which again is nothing super impressive, but it’s fairly strong. And I don’t do that every week. I kind of work up to that and, and then deload and then come back and then, you know, just because again, I found that like when I was fatter, when I, when I weighed 10 pounds more, I was able to, I just, of course, I just had more energy in my workouts.

I was able to really push myself hard and heavy and I could recover better. And it just is what it is. And my bench press, the most I’ve bench pressed flat. Is a 295 for two or three. The most I’ve ever inclined is two 65 for two or three. And those were semi recent somewhere, somewhere within the last six to eight months and my overhead press seated two 25 for two was the most I’ve ever done.

And I’ve recently started doing standing just because it’s a new challenge, [01:02:00] something different. And my standing is pretty pathetic. I’ve gotten up to one 65 for three or four and it’s slowly going up. If I could. press 185 for four, I’d be happy. That’s pretty good, but it’s much harder. Like my seated two 25, good, good form for two or three.

And when I switched from, you know, that level of strength, or maybe at the time, cause I’d gotten leaner, I was at like two Oh five for reps on seated. When I switched to standing one 35 was not hard, but harder than I. Thought like one 35 was my whatever warmup before. And I go to one 35 standing and I was like, this is actually kind of hard.

So it’s, for me, it felt like going from the Smith machine back in the day to like Smith bench to freeway bench. That’s kind of how it felt. So yeah, I do lift a little bit. All right. Next question. I’m a female NPC competitor. I’m 16 percent body fat and I’ve been working out for almost three years now.

Can I get my quads to show? I work legs two to three days a week with four or five varied exercises. Why would one’s [01:03:00] quads never reveal themselves? Or maybe I’m not doing the right exercises. Any suggestions on what exercises would help them show? That’s a good question because. You know, I’ve actually had the same issue with my legs and you know, my best answer for that is there, there’s a genetic there is just a genetic element to this.

There is a genetic factor that’s in play. Like, you know, Jeremy’s legs just naturally have more definition than mine, period. He does not have to be as lean as, as I have to be to have, you know, the same amount of definition in his legs. And. You know, that just is what it is. It also, I find that you know, my legs, I neglected them for a long time when I was training in the past.

You know, I’ve only really been training legs properly, I would say for three and a half, maybe four years. And again, I’ve kind of hit a ceiling in that time because the last year I’ve really just been maintaining this leaner type of physique and that’s not ideal for continuing to, to build everything up.

So, you know, I would say I had three solid years of. [01:04:00] And then I’ve just been in a maintain mode because I’m happy with my leg size, but you know, I have noticed that in that time, my leg, my upper legs haven’t gotten all that much bigger, which I’m fine with. Cause at this point I, certain genes, I just had to have had to.

Just throw away. They don’t fit me. I can’t get them over my quads. And I really, my upper legs, I think it’s proportionate now. And I don’t particularly want them to be all that much bigger, but by by doing a lot of just been bid, still just training hard. And I’ve been, I’ve been building up my strength on my front squat because I found that my back squat just kind of hit that ceiling of three sixties for a few reps.

So I switched to front squatting and which I hadn’t been doing in a while and started again. I was like one 85 on my front squat was. It was harder than I thought. It was similar to switching to the overhead press. And so I’ve gone from 185 in the beginning for reps, which I mean, I could do it obviously, but it just, it was harder than I thought to my recent best is 275 for one or two on my front [01:05:00] squat.

So I’ve been making progress on that, but I have noticed that my quads seem to be getting a little bit more defined. And I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily because of the front squatting, because obviously the back squat is very quad dominant, and I’m sure if you’re doing four to five exercises and it sounds like you know what you’re doing, you’re doing the right exercises it, it may just be a, it takes.

Time. I mean, the more you’re doing the longer you lift and especially it seems with heavy weightlifting, the denser and more defined your muscles seem to get, and I know that just sounds bro sciency and it’s actually something I’ve read a little bit about in, in, in a couple papers that we’re talking specifically about.

Powerlifting and, and it’s relation to building that, a denser type of muscle tissue. So it’s kind of on my list of things. I may be able to write an article about it at some point. I don’t feel like I have enough of an understanding of myself yet. And I don’t feel like I have enough scientific evidence of it, but I’ve seen it.

I mean, anecdotally and I’ve seen it in my body and I’ve seen it now with working with a lot of people and it seems to be something that seems to be something to it. So it [01:06:00] might just be that you need to continue doing what you’re doing. Also, I will say that staying very lean. Like at like 16 percent for girls, very lean, that’s really not ideal for, if you’re trying to continue to gain size and just develop your muscles in general, it’s really not ideal.

Again, I’m doing it, you know, I’m staying lean but I’m doing it knowing that I’m not, you know, I don’t, I don’t complain that I’m not repping four or five on my squat because I know that if I want to do that, I better gain 10 pounds. Yeah. As the first step. So I hope that helps and I’ll go to the next question.

Maybe a silly question. Let’s say I put together a protein bar that tastes better than quest bars and let’s say I want to try to bring this product to the market. What’s the first step? Well, hypothetically you know, I’m going to, I’m going to, I’m going to say, wait for the next podcast. This is going to get posted as the podcast tomorrow, but the one after that is going to be on building a business because there are a lot of, I mean, I’d say, okay, the first step is if you have it yourself, [01:07:00] if you’ve made it yourself and you have the little.

Formula yourself and you know, this is awesome. And you know, if you’ve done some hustling and you’ve given it to your friends and giving it to people in the gym, and you know that this is a winner, don’t just think it’s a winner because you think it’s a winner. No, it doesn’t matter what you think. And this is something that in marketing just, kind of a viewpoint that you really have to learn to take your opinion about things doesn’t matter. What matters is what everybody else thinks. And if you can attune yourself to what everybody else thinks, and if your opinions happen to find resonance out in the marketplace, then that’s, then that’s a bonus.

But you know, I’ve heard, I just hear from a lot of people that are these days, especially I hear about more and more that want to start businesses or want to do something similar to what I’m doing or whatever. And, you know, when it comes to naming products or naming businesses or deciding on what products to even sell, too many people are just thinking with, well, I think that is good.

I think I should do this. I like this. I like this. And it doesn’t matter what you like. It doesn’t matter what you think. If no one else thinks the same way as you you have [01:08:00] to, you always have to keep that in mind. I mean, yes, it’s very good to have. And. Independent streak in you for entrepreneurial type of things, because you do need through the art things where you need to be able to say, this is a good way to do this.

And then this is the way I’m going to do it. But you also need to be, have your finger on the pulse of your market. So assuming you’ve done that and assuming that you, you have gotten good feedback and people really do like your bars. I mean, the first thing you’d have to do is find a manufacturer that can produce them in any sort of quantity.

You know, unless you were going to really try to just bootstrap and make them all yourself out of your home or something like that, which legally maybe you can do, I’m actually not sure, probably which isn’t probably not a good thing, but you probably could. So the first thing would be, how are you going to make these?

And, and then from there, of course, we go into how do you get it, how do you get the word out and how do you get people to care? And I’m not going to go into that right now, but, but the next podcast after this one, that’s going to get posted is going to be on just [01:09:00] build business, business building in general.

And, and a fair amount of that talk is going to be about marketing because marketing is so important. All right, next question. Is it always calories in, calories out, or is it true that when people, especially women, get older, like in their mid 40s, their metabolism lags? I have some older friends who say this is true.

The metabolic decline associated with aging is primarily due to loss of lean mass, loss of muscle mass, because muscle burns energy, so the more muscle you lose, which you do in your, somewhere in your 20s, you start to lose muscle if you don’t do anything about it. So by the time you’re in your 40s or 50s, you could have lost a lot of muscle by then, which dramatically reduces your basal metabolic rate.

So, you know, if you’re burning now a couple hundred calories less per day, but you don’t, you don’t adjust your eating, it’s easy to just gain fat. But then there’s also, as we get older, we tend to get more sedentary, which people tend to forget that when they were younger, they played sports. They just moved around more.

They did more with their bodies. And now, you know, we have jobs and we sit at a desk all day and then we go home and we’re tired and we watch TV and, you know, we’re just not moving our bodies [01:10:00] much anymore. So that can account for, for a lot of energy. Expenditure as well, you know, comparing when you were younger and more active to older and more sedentary.

So it’s in, in terms of weight loss, weight gain, energy balance is the key that does dictate everything that’s never going to change. That just is what it is. Calories are not calories if we’re talking body composition because what your body does with protein is those calories contained in protein, you know, have different effects in the body than the calories contained in carbs and in fats.

So if you want to learn more about that, go to muscle for life and search for macro M A C R O and then look for the article that’s on it. It’s like a simple and accurate macronutrient calculator, I think is the name and that’s a really good breakdown of everything and talks about. energy, energy expenditure energy balance of energy expenditure versus intake and, and how, and how you need to start there and then turn it into a, a good meal plan with the right macronutrient ratios or breakdown.

[01:11:00] And why? So yeah, I think that that’ll be the best answer for you. Just go check that article. So yeah, it’s so much. So the question is why haven’t ever got decked? Why haven’t I ever gotten DEXA scanned? And it’s actually funny because I’m wrapping up an article I have to work on it still some more tonight actually it’s going to be posted tomorrow over at Legion about measuring your body fat percentage and I know that people generally I used to think myself that DEXA was like the gold standard, DEXA is always right and then when I was researching for actually researched for a previous article, something similar on muscle fly.

If I wrote about body composition I was surprised to find myself actually decks that can be very inaccurate. So basically the problem with body fat percentage with measuring body fat is every method you have available. readily available is, is, can be very inaccurate. That’s, that’s, you know, BIA, body impotence, that’s calipers that is I mean, BOD, POD, that’s DEXA.

Now, DEXA maybe tends to be more accurate than let’s say BIA, [01:12:00] but and, and that, that also then. Clicked for me in terms of Dexa because I’ve seen videos on YouTube Like I saw this one video of some dude who got Dexed at like 6. 8 percent or 6 point something But was straight bodybuilder stage ready shredded and was like Dexing around 7 But the dude was just like striated from head to toe.

I’m like what that meant that makes no sense That’s, that’s, I mean, he’s ready to step on stage. He is not 7 percent and it makes sense then that, you know, Dexak, it can be wrong. So the articles didn’t go live on Legion tomorrow, actually. So if you want to learn more about it, just, just check out the Legion blog tomorrow, sometime in the afternoon EST it’ll be up.

And but that, that’s why, and also it’s not readily available. Like I’d have to drive a couple hours, I think, to get to the, the, the nearest that I know of, like I know somebody that goes to university and I could go use theirs, but, if it were like right down the road, maybe I’d just do it for fun, but again, you can’t put that much stock in it.

It’s, it’s, it’s a, it’s a guesstimate just like any other, anything else. And maybe it’s a [01:13:00] guesstimate that’s more likely to be closer to reality than not. But ultimately kind of the, the, the, the long story short with body fat percentages, the mirror is, is kind of the end, end of the story. If you, if you don’t look the way you want to look, if you think you look too fat, who cares what your body fat percentage is, keep cutting.

Once you look, have the look you want, you know, maintain that. And it is smart to keep an eye on how your body’s changing. Calipers are great for that because you can just, you know, keep an eye on your caliper measurement and see if, even if something is inaccurate, like a caliper is not going to be perfectly accurate, even the one that I like to use.

But if it is consistently inaccurate, at least you can use that to keep an eye on how your body is changing so you can make sure that you’re not gaining fat too quickly or you’re not losing fat too slowly. So that’s, yeah, that’s my answer for that. All right, next question. At what point in your life did you realize you want to start a career in a fitness industry and why?

So yeah, this is, I kind of stumbled into this whole thing to be honest. I, I [01:14:00] published. Yeah. I, my, my interest first and foremost was writing actually not fitness. And I, my original love with writing was, was fiction, just storytelling. And I, this is in 2012 or it was actually 2011. Amazon’s KDP platform was gaining.

I was just hearing about it in the news because there’s a guy named John Locke that was like the first dude to sell a million eBooks on Kindle using their KDP platform, and it was kind of like his little success story. And I saw that as it just kind of rekindled my desire to, to, to write in, in, in published books.

And so I, I tell the story in most of her life and I’ve told the story in many places. At the same time I was, this is when I was finally kind of getting things right with my diet, learning how dieting works, learning how training really works, learning the importance of heavy compound weightlifting of progressive overload.

Blah, blah, blah. And I had, you know, it was getting really good results in my body and I was helping friends and family with what I was learning. And I was starting to have, people were [01:15:00] saying, Hey, you should like one friend of mine was like, when I was getting really lean and starting to look good, he was like, you should just use your.

body to sell stuff. You know, he was just thinking like, Oh, who cares? Just go on YouTube and sell shit. And I was like, that sounds lame. I don’t want to do that. But then other people were like, you should write a book. You should write a book, you should write a fitness book. And that I was at first, I was like, I don’t want to write a fitness book.

I’m not like, I like fitness and I like helping people, but I’m not crazy about the idea of becoming a fitness guru or anything like that. But the idea kind of grew on me that. I could actually produce something unique that, that was, that could fill a real need in the marketplace. Because I started to look at what other books were out there and I was like, why is there no book that breaks down, you know, flexible dieting properly and teaches the real fundamentals of energy balance and of macronutrient balance and and, and, and then with on the weight lifting side, why is it all about muscle confusion and why is it all so complicated and the workouts are two hours long and blah, blah, blah.

So I [01:16:00] was like, actually, I might be able to do something kind of special here. So I decided to write Bigger, Leaner, Stronger, and I did. And I so that was the first book, and I published it in January 2012. At the time, I had another job, and I just did it as a side project. I wrote it on, at night. And and, you know, I think it sold like, I don’t know, 20 copies or less or something in the first month.

But I was just excited that anyone bought it. I was like, shit. That’s cool. I put a book up on Amazon. I didn’t do anything. I just put it up. I wrote it and I put it up. I didn’t, not like I had any, I didn’t have a book launch. I didn’t have anything and someone bought it. That’s neat. And then the next month it may be sold like 40 copies.

And, and, and it kind of started growing and then I started getting emails from people. And and within six months or so is selling fairly well. And I saw that. Hey, this could actually be something. So I started writing the next book, and that kind of took me through 2013 to where I decided that this was a real opportunity, and initially, I actually wanted to, and this is when, along the way I, [01:17:00] this is when I had, you know, started talking with my best friend Jeremy, who, he’s the person answering all the questions, you know, you’ve heard Jeremy, you’ve heard me mention Jeremy many times.

He’s my business partner and all this stuff. And so start talking to him because at the time you know, he’s in his early twenties and he was trying to work out what does he want to do? He could work in one of his family, family’s businesses or not. And I was telling him, dude, come work with me.

Let’s do, let’s do a publishing company. Let’s take what I’ve learned with selling bigger than you’re stronger. And then shred chef copies other books and let’s. sell other people’s books. Jeremy, the idea was that Jeremy would be the marketer and it’s something you’d have to learn, but he’s smart and very good at learning things.

So he would learn it. And then I would be the publisher editor type of person. That was like the initial idea. So we actually started to go down that path and named our company and started building our website and we’re putting together our strategy. But then we kind of stopped and really, and as, as in that time period, as the fitness.

Stuff just got more and more popular and getting more emails and people really liking the books. And, you know, we just looked [01:18:00] at it and said, what’s the better opportunity here? You know, and I, myself, I was like at first I was a little bit resistant to the idea of doing the fitness thing. Cause I, again, I’m not very my personality I don’t think is all that well suited to being a show, being a guru type of person.

I’m kind of private and I just like to do my work and look at my Instagram. There’s, there’s my life. You see, it’s boring. I work and I do things with my family. It’s not boring for me, but it’s not, there’s no vicarious thrill in following my life. And, you know, my, my videos would be so boring of like, here’s my day, it’s six 15, I woke up, I did this.

It’s the same thing every day. So at first I was like, and I, and I’m, I’m not one, I don’t care to try to chase. I don’t want people to love me. And I, you know what I mean? I just like to kind of do my thing. I like to help people. I like to stay in touch with people, but I’m not narcissistic enough to want to where I was like.

Yeah, I want to be famous. I want to be famous. So I was a little bit like, I don’t really want to do that initially. And but in talking with Jeremy, [01:19:00] we were just like, this is clearly the better opportunity and there’s, there’s already a lot of momentum. Like the universe is speaking to us. You know what I mean?

Where we were just felt like this is the smarter choice. Our guts were saying we should really embrace the fitness game. And although the publishing company is a great opportunity as well. And I think there still is an opportunity there. It just seemed like it was a better a better use of our time and just a better business decision to go into fitness.

So end of 2013, we just decided that’s what we’re going to do, started building muscle for life that launched in March of 2013. And you know, we started also in 2013 working on, on Legion. Which took about a year of work to really put it all together and to get our products lined up the way that, you know, our initial products and to come up even with the name Legion and the branding and everything, it was a lot of work.

So then Legion launched 2014 last year was our second year, obviously. And yeah, so in the mean, then since I’ve done a lot more writing and I’ve kind of gotten into a groove and Jeremy has learned a ton and he’s become a very good marketer [01:20:00] and I’ve, you know, tried to keep up my part of the bargain, which is just, I’m trying to get as good as I can.

I want to produce as good as content as possible and, and really build as good of a relationship with all of you as possible. And that’s really what I kind of try to focus on. So yeah, I mean, I, that, that’s kind of, that’s kind of the story. And I did just do a podcast on like, you know, some, some of the lessons I’ve learned and what I think are important points for starting a career in the fitness industry.

So you may want to check that out. That was just the last podcast. Here we go. Is it possible for hernia surgery to mess up the abdominal wall? I had two hernia surgeries and I can’t seem to develop any ab shape. That’s a good question. I, you know, I’m not sure on that. I don’t, I don’t have a good answer for that.

It really would depend on, you know, I guess where they were and how bad was it. I don’t see why that would necessarily prevent you from building up your rectus abdominus. I would, before I would just chalk it up to say, Oh, well, you’re fucked because you had a [01:21:00] hernia surgery or a couple of hernia surgeries.

I would question where your body fat percentage is at. Because if you’re, let’s say this is a, if you’re a guy and you’re at 15 percent or higher, if you’re a girl and you’re at 25 percent or higher, you’re really not going to see much. In the way of ab development at all, like you have to really get to about 10 percent as a guy to really start seeing what you’re working with, or 20 percent as a girl.

And and then I would also kind of question, what are you doing for your abs? I found that one of the best things you can do for your abs is weighted work. A combination of weighted work, like weighted crunches or weighted hanging leg raises or captain’s chairs. And then, and then something that is, that works the obliques, like air bicycles are very good for that.

Captain’s chair, leg raises, not weighted, straight leg until failure are good for that. Planks are okay for that. Reverse crunches are decent, not for obliques, but it’s more rectus abdominis. And then, and then the abs recover very quickly. So there’s something you, you know, you should be training your abs.

Two or three times a week and you should be probably [01:22:00] doing I like to do a circuit where I do like a weighted exercise, 10 to 12 rep range weighted right into an Unweighted like like a leg raise to failure right into another unweighted like an air bike to failure and doing three of those Circuits three times a week is a lot plus your heavy compound lifting which isn’t so great for your rectus abdominis The the ab muscles what you think is ab muscles, but is very good for all the supporting core muscles so Yeah, that’s that’s What I think that’s that’s all I have to say on that one.

Okay, so it’s 920 I have to get ready for a call that I have in 10 minutes So I hope you found this helpful and w we will be back in a month and you know, obviously if any, if, if, if your question to get answered, just go throw it in the AMA on a muscle for life, you know, go to muscle. com. There’s an AMA linked, linked right on the homepage, drop your question in there.

And it, you know, I will get to it. It, we run a little [01:23:00] bit behind obviously, because you know, I get a lot of emails, get a lot of messages and I can’t spend eight hours a day doing it, but you will get an answer. So, thanks again for taking the time, and I will see you next month.