Ep. #313: How Nick Lost 19 Pounds & 11% Body Fat In Just 90 Days

Nick: To eat healthy is not rocket science. It’s a matter of planning. And for me, just the way that I function, accountability is really good. Being able to talk to a coach, once a week as well as have email communications, on a not necessarily a daily basis, but I had accountability on a daily basis and that was helpful.

Mike: Hello there. And good day. Mike Matthews here from Muscle for Life and Legion Athletics. And it’s time for another episode of the Muscle for Life podcast. This time around, I interview Nick, who is a 40 year old dude who recently completed my 90 day coaching service. And in this interview, we talk about how he found his way to me and my work, what he had done previously and what worked for him and what didn’t, how things have changed after he started implementing the advice he found in my articles, in my books, and how he was able to work with me.

with my team to lose 19 pounds, 11 percent body fat and six inches off his waist while also maintaining strength on all of his big lifts in just 90 days. And as with everything, nothing ever goes exactly as planned. And learning to adjust and adapt to conditions is a very important part of succeeding in the fitness game, especially over the long term, which is something that Nick has learned firsthand.

Along the way, he ran into a number of roadblocks, mostly related to diet. Which is something that most all of us can relate to. He ran into meal scheduling issues, hunger, and cravings in particular dietary temptations as well. And in this chat, Nick shares what helped him navigate these barriers skillfully and prevent them from.

Getting in his way or should I say prevent him from getting to where he wanted to be because they did get in the way I think Nick’s story is great because it’s very real if you have Dieted in the past or if you are dieting right now, or if you are about to start your first Cut your first proper cut You are going to relate to Nick’s story because as you will hear in this interview, Nick doesn’t have superhuman discipline or superhuman willpower.

He did slip up a number of times, but as we both discussed, we go back and forth sharing our experiences here. The key is in fitness, you don’t have to be perfect. You just have to be good enough most of the time. And the difference between perfect, if you’re talking about results, the difference between perfect and good enough, most of the time is actually not that big.

It means that, okay, if you’re perfect, maybe you get to your goal in eight weeks. And if you’re just good enough, most of the time you still get to your goal, but maybe it takes you 10 weeks or maybe even 12 weeks, but that’s it. It’s just, it just takes a bit longer. And while that may sound bad or negative on the nose, if you think about it, it actually is better for most people.

They would rather have it take 10 to 12 weeks, but be able to enjoy the experience a bit more, not be as strict, as anal, as OCD on their diet. Quote unquote cheat a little bit more than they should quote unquote then having to weigh and track every single calorie and never deviating from their meal plans and having absolutely no cheat meals and so forth.

Anyways, these are things that we talk about in this interview, so I hope you find it interesting and helpful. And lastly, this episode is brought to you by me. Seriously though, I’m not big on promoting stuff that I don’t personally use and believe in, so instead I’m going to just quickly tell you about something of mine.

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And if for whatever reason, they’re just not for you, contact us and we will give you a full refund on the spot. Hey, Nick, thanks for taking the time to come on the show. I really appreciate it. Hey, you bet. Glad to be here, Mike. So let’s let’s actually start with, let’s do a little bit differently this time.

Let’s start with, you went through my 90 day coaching transformation service. And let’s just start with results for where were you at before? And where are you at now?

That’s a great question. I probably should have prepared 

Nick: my before and afters. I have 

Mike: some numbers here if you want me to remind you. 

Nick: Why don’t you, why don’t you remind me of the numbers and then I’ll I’ll talk, talk about the experience. Yeah. Okay. So here’s what I have. 

Mike: Here’s what I have from Carson.

I have before you were 192 pounds, you were around 20 percent body fat, 39 inch body. Waste. You were pretty strong. You put up two 20 for four on the flat bench. Your squat was at three 15 for four, your deadlifts three 55 for four and your military press one 40 for four. And then after 90 days later, weight one 74 body fat around 9 percent waste around 33 inches.

Your flat bench, it went up a little bit. It went up to two 25 for four. Your squat is right around where you started three 15 for five. Your deadlift was around where you started three 50 for five and your military press one 45 for five. So basically you obviously are an intermediate. You’re an experienced weightlifter and you’d be able to lose a lot of weight, a lot of fat with no muscle loss to speak of.

I’m sure that jives with your experience of it. Cause if you’re not, if your strength is, if you’re maintaining strength through a 90 day cut, you are not, Losing muscle. That’s for sure. 

Nick: Sure. Yeah. And I think, when you look at those numbers, that’s where I obviously started and ended in the program.

And I’m like right now, I think I’m maybe 60 days outside the program and I’m pretty much right at that that spot as well. During the program, I pulled a hamstring doing doing, I think, I believe it was doing a deadlift. So I had to drop my deadlifts. For three or four weeks and then work my way back up to, I think right now, I think I’m at three 55 deadlifting and squatting like three 25 right now.

So pretty much the same as where I was during the cut. But yeah, for me, it was all about, I’d spent, I’ve always, worked out moderate, moderately, I’ve run marathons and Ragnar relays and I’d done CrossFit in the past and things of that nature and I’d been lifting for a few years before I started the 90 day cut.

So yeah, I’d had a little bit of experience, but for me, it was all about it was all about macronutrients and body composition. To be honest with you. You want to talk about that more? So just a matter of, it’s not rocket science, right? To eat healthy is not rocket science.

It’s a matter of planning. And for me, just the way that I function, accountability is really good. Being able to talk to a coach, once a week, as well as have email communications, on a not necessarily a daily basis, but I had accountability on a daily basis. And that was helpful, but just being able to plan it.

Okay. Here’s my week, with work. What obstacles do I see in the way as far as eating out? And I had to lock myself in my office from work buddies because they wanted to go out to eat. I’m just like, no. And so after a while they quit asking me, so I’ve probably lost a couple of friends, but that’s okay.

I didn’t like them anyways. They weren’t, 

Mike: they must not have been most of much of friends anyway, then. 

Nick: If they’re willing to break up over over shitty 

Mike: food. 

Nick: They’re always making fun of my protein. Oh, you’re just going to eat 

Mike: your protein today? I’m like, my abs that you wish you had. That’s right.

How is that? How is that changed now? Do you go out? Do you still not? Do you not go out to eat much or have you worked that back in? 

Nick: I don’t go out to eat. Not a ton. I wanted to say. Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve probably been out to eat two, maybe three times between, yeah, between dates with my wife and, work stuff, but, I’ve gotten a little bit lackadaisical as far as meal prep and things of that nature, but.

Mike: You can afford to, that’s the great thing about maintenance, right? Is it’s yeah, it’s still requires it to, if you want to stay pretty lean, it does require a bit of structure and a bit of discipline, but you have quite a bit of wiggle room as well. 

Nick: Yeah, for sure. But with that said also, it can get out of hand pretty fast.

In fact, so I’m actually right now on a two week cut just because I’ve gained a few pounds and I want to, I just want to trim them off a little bit, get rid of probably another five pounds or so. So just because, between holidays and family vacations and birthdays and things like that, I’ve gained a little bit of A little bit more weight than I want to.

So I’m on a little two week cut to try to trim off five pounds and then I’ll go back into maintenance mode. But for me, 

Mike: Yeah, see that’s the great thing. That is maintenance though, right? Unless you have no social life, unless you’re like me if you have any sort of life.

Outside of work and some family time. Then that’s, that is the nice thing about maintenance. I think is you can quote unquote afford to, yeah. Okay. So if you have a string of birthday parties and social events and holidays or whatever, you know that, yeah, just enjoy yourself. Keep on doing your workouts.

That alone will minimize fat gain. But just enjoy yourself. You don’t have to, you don’t have to. Go all out and binge, just eat the things you want to eat until you don’t really feel like eating anymore and see how it shakes out. And if in, at the end of it, if you’re like, eh, I don’t like, I gained a little bit more fat than I want, then yeah, what’s two or three weeks of going into a deficit and then just going back to normal.

Nick: Sure. Yeah. And that’s that was the plan going into it. I knew, those vacations and holidays and stuff are coming up. So I’d planned for it. I knew that it was going to be probably 3, 4 weeks of. Lacks of days of cold maintenance, if you will. And then I would go into a cut.

So yeah, as long as you plan for it, I think you’re right. I think that’s also, G GQ is not calling to take pictures right now. Let’s put it that way, but that’s okay. Don’t call me 

Mike: either. 

But I think it’s also one of the nice, it’s just nice psychologically where you can go on a vacation and not really be concerned about what you’re going to eat because you know that one, you can only do so much damage.

I think a lot of people are more worried than they should be. You have to really try to gain a significant amount of. Fat in a short period of time. And two even if it’s more than you you know what you’re going to do. You have your plan so you can just enjoy yourself and you don’t have to really have attention on, or you don’t have to at least fight that internal battle of when you’re sitting there, looking at the menu and I really want that, but do I really want that?

Should I eat that? Am I gonna regret that? You don’t have, you don’t really have any of that internal dialogue. You just eat what you want to eat and. See see where that puts you. And then if you need to do a little mini cut after you do it, and if you don’t. 

Nick: Yeah. I agree with you a hundred percent.

It doesn’t make any sense. Doing a, an extended cut. Let’s just be honest, it gets to a point where it sucks. I, it just gets to a point where you’re like, man, chicken and rice again, or sweet potatoes, or which I actually love all that stuff. But sometimes, man, you just want to, you just want to binge on On something else.

So that extended period of a cut does, it’s not the funnest all the time, especially at the end. Yeah, when you hit the maintenance mode, I live by the premise now that, you know what, if I’m good. 90 percent of the time, I’ve got a little bit of leeway that other 10%. And then, when I mentally have a lot of self discipline, great.

I’m on a, I’m on a plan or a maintenance plan and I’m really strict in my diet and those times in which. I don’t have a ton of self discipline. I’m okay to relax a little bit and knowing that, self discipline will come back tomorrow morning and we’ll be back on it. Yeah, no, I agree.

So totally. And that’s obviously the way most people 

Mike: function. I’ve now worked with and just communicated with tens of thousands of people. So I’ve just seen it time and time again, where I agree. I wouldn’t even say you have to be on point 90 percent of the time. You just have to be good enough most of the time.

that’s really what it comes down to. And all that being, taking to that next level of OCD which is okay. If some people, I guess I would count myself among those people. If I’m cutting, I never really go off my plan because I just don’t care. It’s not that I’m worried about gaining fat or losing fat slower.

I really, truly don’t really care. Care. I can eat the same food every meal every day, or I can and enjoy it, or I can eat a lot of variety and enjoy that as well. It doesn’t really matter to me. But I’d say for, for most people, just being good enough. Most of the time is going to get you there.

All it means is that it’s not going to be a perfectly linear process, and it’s rarely perfectly linear, even for people that stick to, every tracking and weighing every calorie every day. There are even just physiological reasons why it’s never perfectly linear. And so if you are going off your meal plan a little bit more often than you would like or, cheating or whatever, overeating a little bit more often than you like, as long as you’re good enough, most of the time you will see consistent progress.

You might just have to wait a little bit longer instead of eight weeks. It might take you 10 weeks or it might take you 12 weeks. But it’s So long as you know that and you’re fine with that’s totally fine. If you go, I could be super strict and I could get to where I want to be in eight weeks, but psychologically, emotionally, it’s going to take a toll on me.

It’s really not going to be enjoyable. Or I can be a little bit more loosey goosey with it, which is going to make, it’s just, I’m just going to feel better, which is going to help with compliance on the whole. And I’m going to be able to enjoy my life a little bit more. And so the quote unquote price that I pay for that is an extra two to four weeks of of dieting.

A lot of people will consciously, and I understand, and I think it’s the right choice, will say, no, I’ll take that. I’ll take the ladder over the former. 

Nick: Yeah. I look at it, you remember Simon Sinek’s talk about the infinite game versus the finite game. I don’t know if you remember his Ted talk. I can honestly watch.

I’ve only seen a handful 

Mike: of Ted talks. 

Nick: Yeah. And the premise is he’s talking about the finite game and the infant game and the finite game basically being, you’ve got a, an end destination, right? Whereas the infinite game, the whole goal is just stay in the game. And so when I look at it from a diet, a dieting perspective or a cutting perspective, oftentimes people want to lose weight for certain things, maybe a wedding or a vacation or whatever the case may be.

But the problem is when those are over, then they tend to gain all that weight back. And so I’m trying to look at it from an infinite game standpoint of. I’m 40 years old right now when I’m 60, I don’t want to be 20 pounds overweight. I don’t want to be 50 pounds overweight. I just want to be where I am right now.

So what do I have to consistently do on a daily, weekly, monthly basis to just maintain where I am for the rest of my life? Rather than go through these huge, I’m going to gain 30 pounds and then I’m going to spend, three months trying to lose 30 pounds. And then six months later, I’m back up 30.

That’s what I personally, I’m trying to avoid. And I think that’s what in society today. And as you said, yeah, if you just look at it from, if I can be consistent most of the time and I’m not super strict, but I’m counting, I’m on a meal plan or I’m counting calories or however you want to do it.

And you’re good most of the time you’re going to make progress. Yeah. It may take you six or 10 weeks rather than eight weeks, but if you can continue to do that after the 10 weeks are over, then that’s really the shift that you’re trying to make, right? It’s a mindset. Mindset shift.

Yeah. No, I like that. I like that framework. I have never heard of it. I 

Mike: just pulled it up on Wikipedia. I’m going to check it out after a finite verse. It makes sense. You first hear it and you go, Oh yeah. You get it right away, but I just have not come across that. The, those terms probably cause I haven’t really studied much about game theory in general, even though I’m interested in it, but it’s just something that I’ve never really read up on much.

But I totally agree with that perspective is it’s, I guess that’s something I’ve been pitching since the beginning of, when I got into the fitness space, at least as a, as an educator is to look at it as an infinite game. And and I think that becomes even more true as you get older, so I’m 34 and I’m of the same mindset where I’m now more interested in staying in the game than I am trying to race it a succession race through a succession of finite games, whether it is body composition related or performance related or whatever.

Now of course it’s, maybe a bit easier for me to. Be at that point. Cause on the whole, I’m pretty happy with my physique. There isn’t that much that I would, or even could change about it at this point naturally. So I could gain a bit more muscle. I probably have the frame for maybe 10 more pounds, maybe, but it would be probably half of that would be in my lower body, which I wouldn’t want actually to don’t like that look like I, I have.

Decent size in my lower body, but by like power lifter standards, I would need to put on a bit of size, a bit more size of my legs. We’re like, I already can, can’t fit into most jeans as it is. I could forget about jeans completely if I were to go with the standard kind of body composition recommendations.

But but yeah, anyways, just to that point, if I’m now just as interested in not getting hurt and enjoying my workouts and being able to do what I’m doing now, when I’m. Hey, if I’d like to be doing what I’m doing now when I’m 70 and it absolutely can be done. There are 70 year old power lifters who are probably stronger than I am, or at least as strong as I am.

So it can be done, but you have to look at it more and more in the longer the longer term. 

Nick: Yeah. That brings up a good point, like from a lifting standpoint, trying to stay in that long term. So for example I really struggle with. shoulders a lot. In fact, my, and my bench press right now is it like 205 because I’m really struggling with some sore shoulders and my overhead press, I think is at 150.

But my shoulders have just been really sore. And at the end of the day, it, yeah, it’s frustrating to be like, Oh, I’m dropping from, two 3225 down to 205. Yep. But I’m also like, I’m not here to break any records. I’m here to stay healthy. And there’s no reason for me to continue to try to push it and maybe tear a shoulder up or a rotator cuff or whatever that looks like.

Mike: That’d be the most common injury, right? 

Nick: Yeah, exactly. So rather than do that, I’m just going to drop weight and I’m going to, do that for a few weeks and see how I feel. And when they’re not a sore anymore, or when I feel like they’re back to normal, then I’ll start to increase the weight again.

And yeah, I’ve gone through the same and that’s the way I’ve gone through the 

Mike: same experience myself, where when I was in my twenties, my mid twenties, I had a good run of about, I’d say four years, five years where I was, I didn’t, not only did I not get hurt, I never really had any nagging.

Sure you’d have little things here and there, but I was basically, I was able to do a lot of heavy weightlifting, a lot of progression hit all of my PRS in that period, probably when I was like 27, 28. And that’s where I, I definitely made significant progress in my physique.

And since then I’ve made a bit more progress, especially in certain areas that I’ve really targeted with additional volume. But now I have two kids. I don’t sleep as well as I used to. I don’t sleep as much as I used to even though I actually, the thing is, I didn’t sleep. And that was also one of the strange things I would sleep on average, maybe six and a half hours a night.

That’s just when I would naturally wake up. And I never had trouble sleeping. I would be out in five minutes and I would open my eyes and it’s six and a half hours later. And that’s it. That was my sleep every night. And now. It’s I’ll wake up once or twice. And, again, I don’t know. It’s like one of those cliches that when you have kids, you just, your sleep is never quite what it used to be.

And that has definitely been true to a degree with me. And, I don’t know. It’s just there’s some age and some recovery issues. And A couple of years ago, I had biceps tendonitis. I had to deal with that. So I know exactly I had to stop actually bench pressing for, I want to say four or five months.

I just had to work around it. I had to do flies. I could do some lighter dumbbell pressing. And know exactly how that is, but again, when you can really lower your time for preference, and you can stop looking at. How do your lifts today compare to the random dudes on Instagram, which you can stop caring about that and more look at it again.

What are you in here for? And how how long do you want to be doing this for? Then the, Temporary speed bumps just don’t matter as much and sure. You still want to, you want to get better and you want to be stronger and you want to keep progressing. But if that means that you have to put things on pause and just maintain for a couple months as you work through an injury or work through just nagging, because I, that’s how I even ran into the biceps tendonitis was there were signs like I, after incline pressing, I was Getting fairly heavy.

I was inclined barbell pressing 275 or so for sets of three to four. And my neck would be tight and I would get it massaged and stuff, but it just didn’t, it didn’t really, what I needed to do is stop inclined pressing and probably start doing some actual stretches every day. There’d be some yoga poses that I now know that I would do every day to get rid of the problems that have continued to aggravate it.

Okay. But I didn’t, and that eventually turned into biceps tendonitis, which it wasn’t a, an extremely acute case. So I was able to get rid of it fairly quickly. But I know exactly how that is where it’s a little bit annoying, especially when you enjoy training a certain way to have to work around it.

But that’s the smart thing to do if you’re playing the infinite game, right? 

Nick: Yeah. And you bring up a good point. Everybody’s playing their own game. You know what I mean? Like the only real person you can judge yourself against is yourself. So for example, I’m squatting right now.

I think three 25 for sets of five or what? Yeah. Five reps, three, three sets of a five reps. And so I’d made a little bit of progress. I’m like, Oh, that’s pretty good. That’s not too bad. And I walk into the gym the next day. And some dudes bench pressing what I’m squatting. So I’m like, it doesn’t matter what you do.

Somebody is always going to be doing. Heavier weight or more reps than you. And that doesn’t really, that doesn’t matter. Then, yeah, then he’s 

Mike: the, but he’s dealing with the same thing. So he might, be squatting, let’s say he’s squatting fours and then he sees somebody that is bench pressing fours or is squatting fives and then depending on where he’s at, he might feel inadequate.

Nick: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter what type of weight you’re pushing in the gym. There’s always somebody that’s probably pushing more somewhere. So yeah, just focus on your own progression. And I think that’s what that’s really what helps you, move forward.

I agree. 

Mike: Hey, quickly, before we carry on, if you are liking my podcast, would you please help spread the word about it? Because no amount of marketing or advertising gimmicks can match the power of word of mouth. If you are enjoying this episode and you think of someone else who might enjoy it as well, please do tell them about it.

It really helps me. And if you are going to post about it on social media, definitely tag me so I can say, Thank you. You can find me on Instagram at muscle for life fitness, Twitter at muscle for life and Facebook at muscle for life fitness. So let’s talk about the coaching experience. So how did you find the service?

How did you find me? Find my work? And how did that work? I’m also in particular. I like to hear what type of setup did you guys come up with for your diet for your training? People always like to hear that because I try to do my best to give paint by numbers type approaches to diet and training that are going to work well for most people, but circumstances can.

Mean that what works well for one person, whether it’s in terms of meal timing or meal composition or macronutrient breakdown, et cetera, or on the training side of things, there are a lot of variables that come into play. And one, it’s hard to give a one size fits all approach that will work for all people.

So it’s impossible really that will work for everybody all the time. I do my best to try to give one size fits most approaches that will get most people to where they want to be. But I’d like to also hear specifically, what did you guys do? And did you run into any obstacles along the way that required that you change what you’re doing.

And so what changes did you make and why? 

Nick: Yeah. So to go back to your first question, how I found you, my wife probably, I don’t know, it’s probably been two or three years ago. She bought muscle for life and I’m sorry, not muscle for life, bigger, leaner, stronger and thinner, leaner, stronger. And I read it, so I read that book and then I just put my own training program together. That was like in the spring. Yeah, it was like in the springtime and from there I downloaded the stacked app. So I started using that in the gym, which was super convenient. And then three, maybe three or four months later, I had you guys build a meal plan for me.

And then I used that for two or three months. And from there I know myself well enough to know that Oftentimes accountability is helpful because I just wasn’t making the progress that I wanted to make. And this was through the holiday season as well. So I have a personality.

Yeah. So I was going to 

Mike: ask, was it like, because diet was a little bit funky just due to circumstances. Yeah. 

Nick: But I also, here’s my personality. I’m super black and white. And a lot of things that I do, I’m either all in or I’m all out. So what that does is that. Creates a lot of volatility in both my weight and my body composition.

And I wanted to get through that. So that’s where I was, I decided, I would go into the coaching program and see if some accountability would help me level some of that out. And then, and yeah, that’s what happens. I hired coach. So I’m like your classic. Dude, getting put at the top of your funnel through your book and just working my way through it down to the bottom of the funnel and entering the coaching program.

Mike: Cool. Cool. And so how did that go? What kind of meal plan did you guys come up with? What did the training plan look like? 

Nick: So the training plan was a lot of. The same similar stuff to what’s just built out and bigger, leaner, stronger, compound lifts. I worked out five days a week.

So my, just my regular routine and the way that, that I do things, cause I, I’m like, I’ve got four kids. So my days between work and evenings between kids and work are just jam packed. So I get up at 4 30 every morning and that’s when I hit the gym. So I was there five days a week three days or five days lifting and then 2 to 3 days worth of hit cardio.

After my lifts Mondays were, chess, Tuesdays were back and calves. Wednesdays were shoulders and abs. Thursdays were legs, Fridays were upper body and abs. So pretty similar to, 

Mike: yeah, pretty straightforward push, pull legs with some additional upper body volume. 

Nick: Push, pull legs. A lot of the same compound lifts.

The thing that probably changed the most for me, or one of the things that was, Changed a little bit for me was low bar squats rather than high bar squats, which I prefer low bar personally. Yeah. You know what I, it was super awkward for me. But now that’s what I do. I do low bar squats rather than high bar squats.

Why did you switch? The training program called for it. Like when I got with my coach, he called for it and he thought it was better. He liked it better. I tried it and I stuck with it for a couple of weeks and then I just haven’t gotten off of it. Yeah. 

Mike: You’re going to be, you’re going to be stronger on low bar for sure.

I think all around, I think it’s definitely the place to start. If some people they run into shoulder, like they don’t have the shoulder mobility and so that can make it difficult. And some people, if their wrists are very immobile, that can make it difficult. But if you can low bar, I generally recommend that as the starting place.

And if you. Build a base of strength there. And you want to play around with high bar just to see what it’s like, then, I think that’s fine. 

Nick: It’s interesting. You bring up shoulder mobility. Cause that’s one of the first things that I noticed doing low bar squats is due to after a set, my shoulders are, they’re sore as heck.

And I’m just like, dude, this is ridiculous. But it’s because of, where your arms are and how far your shoulders are stressed in order to do them. But yeah, nonetheless. Yeah, that’s what I’m stuck with now. I like it from a meal standpoint I’m unlike you in the sense that you can eat the same thing every day and it doesn’t matter to you.

I can for short periods of time. So I’m good with the same meal plan for probably two weeks. And I had, and I needed a different meal plan for the weekends because that in, I don’t know if I’m unlike a lot of people, but Monday through Friday, where I’m in a really set routine up at four 30 at the gym, off to work home.

Yeah. Every, everything is routine, right? Yeah. It’s super easy. Saturday comes around and it’s okay. What am I going to do today? That’s when, and especially Sunday when it’s a little bit more relaxed that’s when eating or falling off the meal plan is super easy for me to do.

So I had a different meal plan on the weekends just to change it up from my Monday through Friday and then about every two to three weeks, I would have to change up my My meal plans just for a little bit of variety. 

Mike: Yeah. Yeah. No that’s very common. All right. Idle hands of the devil’s workshop.

That’s a, that’s the weekend where you’re just, you’re just around and there’s food around and then, there’s just a lot of snacking and you don’t really realize how much snacking there is. And that’s and so yeah, what I generally recommend is that, yeah, come on. If you want to come up with a different plan for the weekend, that’s totally fine.

Minimize the snacking though. Cause snacking just sucks because it’s not exactly, it’s not very filling. It’s not very fulfilling, but you really can put down a lot of extra calories by the end of the day. If you’re eating two or three larger meals, then you just throw in random snacks throughout the day.

So if you can stick to the two or three larger meals, you have quite a bit of, and I, also I think if you’re going to What I’ve often done when I’m cutting, especially if I’m lean, wanting to get really lean is I’m in my normal deficit for the week. And then on the weekends, I’ll intentionally eat a bit more.

Like I’ll eat somewhere up around my TD for the day, depending on how I’m feeling, if I’m feeling really good, I’ll just stick to my normal deficit. But on those days where I’m usually not lifting, rarely would I lift six days a week. It was almost always five days. I’ve tried some three and four day programs, but I just working out.

So I stick with five. But so those are the weekend days are more of the recovery days, eat a bit more food that also tends to Yeah. Just having a bit more calories to use when you’re around food more. And when food is maybe just a little bit more in your mind, because your mind is not on the stuff it’s normally on where, basically it’s work.

And yeah, that’s pretty much, that’s 

Nick: pretty much what probably what is 

Mike: most on your mind during the week is work and food just gets fit in. Everything just gets fit in around that and gets very little mind share. 

Nick: Yeah. And for me, like I, I’ll get into these mental, funks, if you will, where I just start craving some.

So for me, mixed nuts and trail mix are my nemesis along with peanut butter bars. So if any of those are within like a 20 mile radius, I will devour them and I’ll eat all of it. So that’s where I. And that sucks. That sucks because it’s super high calorie and it’s super high fat. It’s 

Mike: nutritious.

And in, in one way it’s not, at least it’s not just like fried Twinkies or something, but from a calories perspective, it might as well be fried. 

Nick: And at the end of the day, like there was a couple of times I completely fell off the rails and I had, I paid for it. I put myself back 

Mike: a few days.

And what did you, what was your solution? Did you just stop buying that stuff while you were cutting? Dude, 

Nick: I wish, here’s the problem for me at work. They have probably half gallon clear containers of trail mix. And you have to pass by just like a handful at a time. There’s another like 200 calories, not a handful.

We’re talking like a whole bowl full, like just load that thing up with 2000 calories and call it good. And then my wife uses like mixed nuts for her for her dieting. But she, dude, she’s good about she’ll portion them out and have them in these little Ziploc bags. But me, dude, if I find them, like I will devour the whole thing.

I’ve gotten a lot better now, but it was a struggle there for a little bit. 

Mike: I like it. This is like a willpower challenge for you to overcome your wife’s portion. In fact, 

Nick: my my trainer, I was, on him back and forth one time about, and he’s he sends me an email and he’s Hey, wouldn’t it just be easier to not buy that stuff?

And I’m like, yeah, absolutely. But I don’t do the grocery shopping and I can’t convince her not to. That’s funny. But with that said, so with that said, like I fell off the rails, I don’t want to say several times but a few times and. And just by refocusing I’m like, okay, that sucks, but by refocusing, and maybe I did an extra set of hit cardio and two or three days later, I was right back where I needed to be.

It’s one of those things that you can recover from it. If you have to, I don’t recommend it. If you’ve got more self control than I do, I would recommend just using self control. But, if you do fall off the rails you can. You can 

Mike: recover from it. It just takes longer. Yeah.

And I think the point is not beating yourself up over it and realizing that pretty much everybody deals with the same issues. And the, you can look at it from, yeah, the people that you might see on social media who are super fit all of the time. A lot of them, I’ve gotten to the point where they either have eating disorders or it’s like a narcissistic kind of neurosis.

But even if that’s not the case, and I would like to think that I’m not one of those people, even though I’m not crazy shredded all the time, but I stay pretty lean. I, it’s an actually recorded a podcast with Mark Perry from built lean about this who stays super lean year round. And what does it really take to stay super fit year round?

Even if you don’t go to the point, let’s say that you don’t go to the point of mental illness, it still takes, though you can’t get around the fact that your energy balance has to be tightly regulated. And there are only a few ways to really do that. And you can’t afford to be in a significant calorie surplus very often if you want to stay really lean, and that’s really what it comes down to.

It’s just understanding that what is realistic and what you actually want to achieve. And look at your results, speak for themselves. They’re outstanding results and you’d show that to the average person and they would say, I would literally do anything to be able to do what you just did.

Whereas. When you look at it, you’re like, I don’t know. I guess I did. I did. Okay. I did good enough to get to where I’m at is how you would look at it. But, that’s it’s a matter of, it’s a matter of perspective. And, but what it shows is that it’s not that you have.

Superhuman self control or discipline, or you care so little about food that you could just eat, boiled chicken breast and steamed broccoli six times a day for six months on end to prepare for a bodybuilding show or something like that. It sounds very much that and again, this is, I’m just speaking from experience working with a lot of people.

That your experience and what you’ve told me is very normal. That’s exactly how it goes for most people and the people that, that make it and the people that get the kind of results that you get, they just don’t get, they don’t get too hard on themselves and they just make sure that let’s just say, if we wanted to go back to the old 80, 20 thing that, 80 percent of the time they’re being strict enough, they’re following their plan closely enough, they’re getting in the gym, doing their workouts, but inevitably if you were to average it out, yeah, there’s probably a day or two days per week where things go a little bit awry, whether it’s on the dietary side or the exercise side or both.

Yet they just keep going. They don’t let, they don’t let that one bad day turn into three, five, 10 bad days, which turns into quitting. That’s yeah. I think it’s just worth highlighting because anybody listening that has gone through a similar experience or is going through a similar experience should know that it’s very normal.

And if you just keep going, you can get to where you want to be assuming you don’t want to be a, professional competitive bodybuilder or like physique athlete. Yeah. If you wanted that, no, pretty much everything that I talk about is would only be the first stepping stone. You’d have to go a lot further with everything to the point where it does become unhealthy mentally and physically.

But if you’re just a normal person, you don’t have to be anywhere even close to perfect. 

Nick: Yeah, it really boils down to the small and simple things. Small and simple things over time are going to get results. And it’s good to know that I’m not the only crazy person out there that can’t seem to be consistent a hundred percent of the time, but that’s just not me.

That’s not my style. Even the trail mix thing. You know how, if I were 

Mike: to go on my, 

Nick: go on my email and search for trail mix, a lot of emails would come up. Trail mix, chocolate, ice cream, dude, I’m telling you trail mix and peanut butter bars are my nemesis. So in peanut 

Mike: butter, any sort of butter, if I just put in, whether it’s peanut butter or almond butter is also a big thing.

Oh yeah. For sure. So on the training side of things, were there anything, is there anything interesting that is worth bringing up there? Was it pretty straightforward? You followed a bigger, leaner, stronger ESC program. Did you have to make any kind of any. Changes along the way. Did you run into any obstacles?

Nick: Yeah. I 

Mike: mean, so from the training perspective, you mentioned the hamstring issue. Yeah. 

Nick: That was really the only obstacle that that I ran into. The one thing that I would say that I thought was Super interesting is being in a deficit for so long. My energy levels really never dropped there, but probably the last week, maybe week and a half, like mentally and physically I was done.

Like my energy was like super low mentally. Like I was just. Like I was done in the sense that I just I just want to go back to normal for a while, but yeah, 

Mike: Which I just want to interject just for people listening. If you reach that point and you’re not done cutting though, you still have a bit of fat you want to lose.

It’s totally fine to take a diet break. And if you want to read a little bit about that, head over to muscle for life and just search for diet break. You can check out an article that my editor in chief who writes with me, his name is army. Short for Armistead and he and I he writes articles under his name.

I read articles under my name, obviously, but he put up an article on that and some research that is diet breaks can be great for that where, basically it would come down to, you raise your calories for a week or so up to around Your TD, you don’t want to go into a surplus, but you just give yourself a break.

You just eat more food for a week or two, and that can really help with that. Where if you’re really starting to feel rundown, just seven to 10 days of eating it comes out to be quite a bit more calories if you’re being aggressive with your fat loss, which I would recommend. So let’s say you’re cruising in a in a 25% Deficit, let’s say, that can be pretty significant if you’re, let’s say your TD is a 2000 calories.

Let’s say that’s a, it’s a woman, right? And she’s eating 1500 calories or so a day. That’s jumping up 400 ish calories is what you would jump up. And even for guys, that’s quite a bit of food, but for women that’s a significant amount of food. So if you were to, if you were to translate those numbers to To guys, it’s, I’d say the relatively speaking, it feels like a large increase in food and it’s just very satisfying.

Nick: And so that for me, when I hit that point, luckily I was at the, I was really at the end of my cut and I had, my goal was 8 percent body fat. And I think that my last percentage that I weighed in that was like eight and a half percent. So I was. I was really close to being there. And plus I would have some vacations coming up in the next couple of weeks.

And I’m like the effort to get to where I wanted to be. Yeah. So it’s time. It’s just like, all right, 

Mike: let’s call it here. 

Nick: Yeah, let’s call it here. And so I’m like, I’m going to maintain through the summer after labor day. I’m going to see where I’m at. Cause my goal is to hover around 10% kind of year, year round.

And so I’ll see where I’m at, labor day ish. And then maybe, go into a cut if I need to, in the early fall and just keep going down that road. So that was really the only thing. Is 

Mike: that outlook new to you? Like previously, is this the leanest? Have you been really lean before?

Is this approach to your managing your body composition new, or have you been here before you’re just coming back to it? 

Nick: No I’ve never. I’ve never been this lean in my life. So I think I’m like most guys, I, all of my fat sits in my lower gut and my love handles. So for example, to go from, I can see a difference now that, I’ve gained a little bit of weight and it all sits right there in my gut and my love handles.

So I’ve never been this lean my entire life, but I’ve never focused on it either. I’ve always just focused on. I’m doing what I want to do and staying healthy, but I’ve never really been interested in body composition, if you will, the last time I had lost a lot of weight, I was running marathons, but, I got bored with that.

That’s one of my problems in life is I get bored really easy. So I got bored with marathons after a couple of years and then have moved onto something else. So yeah, this I’ve never been this lean. So this is just new, a new outlook as to the way I want to manage it going forward.

Yeah. 

Mike: And how is that? Do you think it’s something, cause just from what you’ve been saying, looking at it in terms of the infinite game, the longer picture, is it something that you see at that point of boredom, of course I’ve. Worked with and just spoke with a lot of people have run into that as well, but a lot of people have found that the body composition game has been different for them and that they really could see themselves really like they get to it.

They get into really good shape and then they go, no, I really liked this actually. Like I and it just shifts their whole mindset where they’re then thinking like I could be 50. The end. Look more or less the same. Yeah, little things change. You don’t look exactly the same at 50 as you did at 20, but body composition does not have to change at all.

You just look a bit older, but your body composition doesn’t change at all. And this is something I wanted to point out that is, is I’ve just seen it with many people who get, you got into this not knowing exactly what to expect. And then we’re really excited on the other end of it, where they’re like, this is totally under my control.

Yeah. And I care about this is not only is it healthier to be at 10 percent body fat than 20 percent body fat? It just, it is not the 20 percent body fat as a guy is unhealthy per se, but certain physiological, there are certain physiological aspects of your body now that work better at a lower body fat percentage.

Like for example, just take insulin sensitivity is. Healthier to have higher insulin sensitivity and your insulin sensitivity right now is higher than it was when you’re at 20 percent body fat period, even if you’re exercising, regardless of what you’re doing. And there are some other things like that.

So anyways, I just wanted to point that out just for people listening to that. I think that’s one of the hidden benefits, so to speak of what can look just like a more. Something that’s more just about vanity Oh yeah, my abs and low body fat percentage. But it’s just something that I’ve heard from many people where they were a little bit surprised that not so much that they care about how much they’re bought or that they care about their body fat percentage more as a number, but just the experience of being leaner, of being fitter and how that kind of impacts everything in their lives.

Where it convinced that where they now feel a personal conviction no, this is a long term thing for me now. Whereas I can see with marathons, maybe when the novelty wears off and you’re like, all right, now I’m just suffering. And I don’t even, I don’t even care about this. You know what I mean?

Nick: Yeah. For me, like it was good to get, That lean, because now, now, what’s possible. And to be quite frank with you, if I cut in the fall, I’m probably going to try to get to 7 percent just so I can like really see the ab definition. Cause I probably, I had good ab definition, but.

Not not like picturesque if you will. So I’d like to see if I could get to that point. And for me, a couple of things have changed. So me and my wife, we’ve always been super active. So we mountain bike, we wake board, we’ve run marathons and Ragnar relays and all that stuff, but something’s changed for her as well.

In the sense that we’ve never focused on nutrition. But about the same time that I started focusing on it this last year, so did she. So now that’s our norm at this point in the sense that we both, it’s not one of those deals that I’m like, Oh, I gotta be, I gotta eat healthy while she’s making, fried chicken.

Like it’s not that, and it’s never really been fried chicken, but at the for the most part, when I’m making. An egg omelet in the morning with some spinach and salsa, so she, when I’m having chicken and broccoli at night, she’s pretty much doing the same thing.

And so that’s, I think that’s making it easier for, from a long term perspective, as well as to be quite frank with you. And I don’t know if other people are this way, but when I go out to eat. So for one of the things that I love in life is sushi. Like I, Aside from trail mix and peanut butter bars, I can devour sushi, but when I go out and eat, I can also feel just on the ride home, the bloating.

Like I can feel like the bloating in my gut and my love handles a little bit. I don’t like the way that feels. And knowing what lean feels like compared to that feeling I tend to move towards, okay, what do I got to do to feel, to make this bloating go away and feel more lean over the next day or two.

Mike: Yeah. Yeah. No, I know what you mean. My wife loves sushi as well. So we go out for sushi often and yeah, that’s what happens when you have five of sodium in 30 minutes, you deal with it. Yeah, but it tastes so good. Yeah, I agree. I like it not as much as she does but I like it.

Maybe that’s the point where every week she wants to go eat sushi. Yeah. And often we do just something like, yeah, fine. Whatever. I don’t, I guess I don’t really care that much where we go, but but yeah, no, I know what you mean. Yeah. That’s, those are really all the questions that I had for you.

Is there anything else that you’d like to share with everybody listening? 

Nick: I think I think we’ve run the gamut there. I, for me it worked out great. I really enjoyed it. I liked the relationship that I created with with my coach. It would be fun to touch base with them every once in a while.

I probably will, but. At this point I’ve got the tools that I need to really move forward. And so again, for me, it worked out great and I’ll probably just continue to do it going forward. Awesome. 

Mike: Thanks for being a client and thanks for taking the time to do this. I really appreciate it again.

Great job on what you what you did. And like you said, now, what’s possible. You’ve done it once and now, and really that it’s not, it’s really not that. difficult. It’s not complicated. It’s very straightforward. It’s just sticking to the plan and doing a good enough job most of the time.

And you get there and even getting down to 7 percent body fat, all that means is you just got to be a little bit tighter. It takes a little bit longer and you really have to tighten up toward the end. If you were to take where you stopped and then, getting to where the next level of leanness is in my experience, you’d want to cut out The random cheating, and you’d want to turn that into refeeding, which is like a plan to just higher carb intake, very low fat once a week.

It really comes down to mostly, yeah, you do your workouts. You just have to be a bit more OCD about your diet. You really have to make sure that you are accounting for all the calories you’re eating and you can’t really afford to slip up. Unless, it just really starts to make it take longer, but if you just can I’d say from where you were at.

If you could go another eight weeks from there maybe six weeks, six to eight weeks from there very strict, then you’d be there. And you, what you’ll find out if you do that is I would say as nice as it is to be very lean to be six, 7 percent body fat. It’s also difficult to maintain. And for me, I noticed less energy levels In, or just less energy in general, less energy in my workouts.

I noticed that yeah, I just wasn’t able to eat enough food. I wasn’t able to eat as much food as my body wanted without getting fatter. And but yeah, I think again, if it’s an experience that sounds interesting to you, you should do it just so you can say you did it. You can take some pictures with your kids and show them when they’re older.

Nick: Exactly. And you sparked another thought if you don’t mind. So when you talk about. The fact that it really isn’t that hard. Anybody can do it. Dude, I would attest to that a hundred fold. People that I work with and associate with, they would always comment, man, you’re looking really good. What are you doing?

And I would just, I would tell him, in fact, there was three or four guys at the gym that I would, I shared with him, Hey, you should read this book muscle for life. You should download this app. But they would say, Oh, I really want to do that. Yeah. And then they’d be eating, a half a dozen Oreos for lunch.

So it’s not hard to do. Anybody can do it. It’s just a matter of you got to do a little bit of planning. You got to have just a little bit of self discipline and consistency over time. And you could go from, these guys that I were talking to, they’re probably sitting at 30 percent body fat and they could probably shred that super quick if they just had a little 

Mike: bit of discipline.

Yeah. A hundred percent. They’re actually wrote. An article that’s going to go up that includes this little story I’m going to tell, but it’s, it just made me think of it. So there’s a guy I met in the gym, his name’s Josh. And similar kind of story. He had 30 plus pounds to lose.

He had tried different fad diets in the past that some resulted in some weight loss and then gained it right back. Others resulted in, in not much of anything. And so I’ve gotten to know him. And so he asked me all right, so what should I do? I want to be, I actually don’t even remember his starting weight, but he wants to be about 190 pounds.

What should he do? And I was, I told him eat 2000 calories a day, eat about 150 grams of protein about 150 grams of carbs, get the rest from fat. I don’t, at this point, I don’t even care what foods you eat. I’d recommend eating some nutritious foods. But that is immaterial right now. If we want to just get some fat loss going.

2000 calories a day. I don’t care how you get there. Just stick to the least the protein, at least the protein do that. And so he was a little bit. Taking it back first. She’s no, really? It’s that’s it. That’s what about carbs? What about sugars? What about gluten? What about, red meat, blah, blah, blah.

I don’t care about any of that. 2000 calories a day. Again, I would recommend that you don’t eat a bunch of sugar and a bunch of junk because it’s not going to be fun. You’re not going to feel very good, but if you feel Compelled to, you can use those calories however you want once you get your protein.

And so he had remarked that it reminded him he’s a, he’s interesting dude. So he has a degree in history and a degree in philosophy, but he works in finance. He went to school just to study stuff that he was interested in knowing that he’d have no use for it in life. He just wanted, that was his version of having.

Fun was that’s what he’s into. So anyways, he was like, it reminds me of something that Carl Jung said, which is that basically like the things that you most want to find in life will be in the places that you least want to look. And and he was like, I told, I’ve told myself for years now, I would never count calories.

I would never track calories. Never weigh my food. I never do anything like that. And now you, the fittest dude that I know Who has helped thousands and thousands of people get in great shape. You’re telling me that I need to track my calories like that’s exactly right. Take your 2000 calories and trust me, just do that.

And he’s down now like 20 pounds and he’s just all right, that’s that’s what I guess that’s what I’ve, that’s the place that I’ve least wanted to look all these years. And that held the. The secret, the big secret to you know, of the super fit, the super elite. 

Nick: And dude, it goes back to, it’s a small and simple things.

Really? It is. 

Mike: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It’s again, it’s the things that most people don’t want to look at. Most people don’t want to really have to, face face the energy balance. Cause it’s an ugly thing to face if you have a weird relationship with food. If you. Yeah, it’s just for whatever reason that’s it’s you have to get to that point in your fitness journey if you’re really going to make it where you just have to face reality.

You might not like reality, but that is reality. Unfortunately, this is how our metabolism works. This is many thousands of years of metabolism. Evolution have gotten us, this is not going to change. This is how it’s hardwired. We’re going to store fat from food we eat. And, it’s the first law of thermodynamics.

You can like it or dislike it is what it is. But once you can accept it, then you can actually make progress. Exactly. And track it and accept it. And away you go. Exactly. Thanks again, Nick. Really appreciate you taking the time and keep up the good work, man. Okay, man. Thanks, Mike.

Talk to you later. And if you dear listener want to learn more about my coaching service and how we might be able to help you reach your health and fitness goals faster, just head over to muscle for life. com slash coaching muscle F O R life. com slash coaching. Coaching. And you can learn all about it and schedule a free consultation call where my director of coaching, Matthew, we’ll get on the phone with you and talk about where you’ve been, where you want to go and how we might be able to help you get there faster and more enjoyably, which counts for something again, muscle for life.

com slash coaching. Check it out. Hey there, it is Mike again. I hope you enjoyed this episode and found it interesting and helpful. And if you did, and don’t mind doing me a favor and want to help me make this the most popular health and fitness podcast on the internet, then please leave a quick review of it on iTunes or wherever you’re listening from.

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