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I’m offering a slew of diet and exercise “hacks” that will immediately boost your results. “Hacks” are usually hogwash, but in this case, I’m sharing simple tips and tweaks that can make a big difference in your nutrition and training. Listen to this podcast and let me know your thoughts!
Timestamps:
0:00 – Want 125 quick, easy, and delicious “fitness friendly” recipes? Get The Shredded Chef: https://legionathletics.com/products/books/the-shredded-chef/
3:47 – What are some diet hacks?
6:43 – What are some exercise hacks?
Mentioned on the Show:
Want 125 quick, easy, and delicious “fitness friendly” recipes? Get The Shredded Chef – https://legionathletics.com/products/books/the-shredded-chef/
What did you think of this episode? Have anything else to share? Let me know in the comments below!
Transcript:
I am Mike Matthews, and this is muscle for life. Thank you for joining me today for a short but informative episode, where I share with you some very simple diet and training hacks. I use that term hacks. Tongue in cheek because that usually means bullshit. But in this episode, I’m gonna give you some very simple tweaks that you can make to your nutrition and to your exercise that can make a big difference in your bottom line results.
Let’s start with diet. Here’s a simple diet hack, go unfollow. Anyone who says that you should do a cleanse or a detox of any kind whatsoever, because here’s what you think happens on a cleanse fat loss and detoxification that’s normally the pitch. And then here’s what actually happens.
Fat loss, muscle loss, no detoxification, mind flying hunger and cravings, explosive mud butt and cleaning the 47 different parts of your $500 juicer. Here is another diet quick fix, go unfollow. Anyone who says that you should take a DNA or a microbiome test to improve your diet here, I’ll save you the $100.
Eat vegetables. Instead of cinnamon rolls and drink water instead of Oreo shakes. There you go. Now you don’t need to do the DNA test and another person you should go unfollow is the person who says that you need to stop drinking diet soda, because it will make you fat. Now can artificial sweeteners make you crave sweets?
Maybe, but probably not enough to matter. Artificial sweeteners do not stimulate our brains in the same way that sugar does. And studies have found that replacing sugar with artificial sweeteners can help with weight loss, and often does not with everyone, but. Often does yet another very simple diet hack is unfollowing.
Anyone who says that skipping breakfast is the secret to getting ripped and living forever and intermittent fasting also will not boost your metabolism. Ironically, in the short term, fasting does the exact. Opposite. It reduces energy expenditure. You should also bat away anyone who says that nuts are a great source of protein.
That fruit has too much sugar and that white rice is bad for you. But brown rice is okay. And don’t let the credentials of these people short circuit, your critical thinking, just because someone has an advance. Degree from a prestigious school, Harvard, Stanford, Yale, and so forth. That does not mean that they can’t give quacky or even dangerous diet and exercise advice.
And who else deserves the gate? Anyone who says that eating any individual food or macro will ruin your. Or make you fatter or make you leaner. These people are just as confused as the people who think that strippers are really into them. And this happened that one third pound hamburgers contain less meat than quarter pounders.
And again, yes, that happened one third pound. Hamburgers were not received well by hamburger eaters. They wanted their quarter pounder back. Maybe somebody should have tried a fifth pounder. Okay. Now let’s talk about exercise, exercise hacks. Who should we unfollow here? Let’s start with unfollowing.
Anyone who says that your knees should never go past your toes when you squat now forcing your knees too far forward when you’re squatting or. When you’re lunging that can increase the risk of injury, especially if you are lifting heavy weights, but if you happen to have long limbs, for example, your knees will probably extend up to, or maybe beyond your toes as you reach depth in those exercises with good form.
Another exercise, quick fix, go and follow anyone who says that cardio does not help you lose fat cardio burns fat, but remember that burning. Isn’t the same as losing fat in the sense of reducing body. Levels to lose fat, to improve body composition, to reduce body fat percentage. You have to burn more fat than you store consistently.
Over time. You have to be in a state referred to as negative fat balance. And another tip that will make an immediate difference in your training is to get off your phone in between sets and not for the reasons that you might think. Surprisingly research shows that scrolling in between sets can significantly.
Athletic performance. And so what should you do instead? There are a couple of options proven to do the opposite, to help your training. You can visualize your next set, visualize yourself doing it successfully. Of course you can review effective weightlifting cues. Think about the cues that you’re going to use in your next set.
That’s going to help you maintain proper form and perform better, and you can listen to rousing music. And I have a few more useful exercise, drips and DRS for you. The first is an effective strength workout. Looks like this. You do a few hard sets, which are sets taken close to muscular failure of a couple, maybe one or two max three.
Compound movements, big movements that involve multiple muscle joints, multiple major muscle groups. And then you do a few hard sets of a few isolation exercises and you call it stumps. That is an effective workout. Number two on my list here, the order in which you do exercises in a workout does not appear to affect muscle growth, but it does impact strength.
Research shows that strength gains our greatest in the exercises that are done earliest in a training session. So as a rule of thumb, start your workouts with the exercises you most want to get stronger in. Is usually a compound movement or multiple compound movements. And then toward the end of your workouts is usually where you are doing your isolation exercises.
And my third and final exercise hack for you is 10 to 15 high effort sets that are taken close to muscular failure, where you’re focused and you’re pushing yourself. That is far. Effective economical and fun than 20 25, 30 plus medium effort sets where you are ending the sets far from muscular failure, four plus reps from failure and where you are not focused and you are not feeling any sort of mind, muscle connection.
You’re not getting much of a pump and so forth. Remember that you can train any which way and get sweaty and sore, but to get stronger and to. Fitter, you have to train in very specific ways and that doesn’t necessarily mean training longer. It means training better.
