Why I’m not on steroids, a “day in the life,” and more…

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Hey, this is Mike Matthews from musclefullife. com. Thanks for checking out another episode of my podcast. In this episode, it’s just me and I want to talk about a few different things. One is a question that I get here and there and it’s a funny question, but it’s actually a good question. I thought I’d make a good podcast topic and that’s why I don’t do steroids.

Why am I not on steroids? The other thing I want to talk about is a, what’s a typical day I get [00:04:00] asked this fairly often too, in terms of how I eat and how I train and how I sleep and how I kind of work everything in. And then the other thing I want to talk about is if you have to miss workouts, what’s the best way of going about that?

Do you just double up and try to, sit, get in the gym for two hours on another day to make up for it? Or do you, is it best to change your split for the week or whatever? So I’ll talk about that as well. Alright, so let’s talk about steroids. So the question that I just got asked and it just reminded me that I’ve been asked this before and I thought I’d think it’d be something worth talking about is why am I not on steroids and why have I not done steroids in the past?

And it’s it’s a good question because some, a lot of guys in my position would be on steroids. Let’s face it. I, a big part of how I make my living is how I look and to some degree, I guess how I train. I don’t do as many training videos as other guys do because I think they’re boring just to watch somebody do the same workouts over and over.

And even if they’re getting a little bit stronger over time, it’s not, I don’t know, it’s just not my thing. But [00:05:00] looking good, being strong, being lean definitely helps me, make money and helps people be more interested in what I have to say. So why not be on steroids? And it’s a good question.

When I You know, if you’re familiar with my story for my first six or seven years of weightlifting, I didn’t really know what I was doing. I just did a bunch of bodybuilding kind of magazine type workouts. My diet wasn’t actually wasn’t horrible. It just was I never really, I didn’t know anything about energy balance.

I didn’t really know how to manipulate macronutrients. I didn’t know, okay, if I wanted to get lean, what do I really do? I thought, I would do the standard like I’ll just cut my carbs way down and I’ll do a bunch of cardio and yeah, I lose some fat. But that, that isn’t really after a month or so of that, I, I would get pretty burned out.

So generally my diet was I just ate a lot of food and I just hung out around. It’s probably 17 percent body fat, 16 percent body fat. And so not the worst. Actually if I would have been, if I would have known what I was doing with my training, I [00:06:00] actually probably would have done made decent gains simply because I was eating a lot of food.

So at least I wasn’t under eating. In that, during that time period I didn’t make great gains and in my first six to seven years, maybe I gained 30 pounds of muscle. Maybe it might’ve been a little bit less. I’ll link an article down below where you can see some of the big mistakes I made in that time period and you’ll see it in the uninspiring results.

And that, during that period would have been the normal, if someone was going to do steroids. And, if I was going to do steroids, it would have been in that beginning period. Because when other people come to me and I’ll have people that will email me and just openly ask, should they do one cycle just to see how it goes?

Hard gainer type of guys that they think maybe they’ll just never be able to build enough muscle. Maybe they do need to just do steroids. And that’s not the one I’ll get into why I wouldn’t recommend just doing one cycle. As a matter of fact, somebody, a guy I know in the gym this morning he was the exact same conversation.

This guy that he trains with is on drugs. He cycles on and [00:07:00] off. Which the guy says, which means he’s always on and whenever people say they cycle off, they don’t cycle off. Now it’s all about, you just are always on probably like at least low T, low doses of T. And then that’s like cruising and then you blast it with the other drugs and whatever, right?

So this guy that just this morning was like I’m going to, I’m going to cut down and I’m going to do a cycle with this other dude. And so I’ll have the conversation that I’m going to have now. And the reason why I never got into drugs when I was younger and I didn’t really know what I was doing.

I wasn’t making good gains is I guess I was never really, I’ve never been into drugs, never really was even into drinking. I’m not morally opposed to drinking or I don’t care if somebody smokes weed or whatever. Whatever it’s their body, it’s their choice. But for me personally, I just never got into it.

I don’t really like alcohol. I never did. I’ve never. tried any other drugs. It just wasn’t really my thing. So already naturally was inclined to not want to do steroids. And then I didn’t know anybody doing steroids. So I wasn’t exposed to [00:08:00] it. For those two reasons are the main, probably the main reasons why I never really tried it.

And then also, there is the legality point of it, not that I even necessarily agree that these drugs should be illegal. It’s your body. It’s not. With certain drugs, take testosterone. Some of the dangers, the risks of testosterone are very over played in the media.

If you’ve seen the documentary, Bigger, Faster, Stronger, you know what I’m talking about. I don’t even know exactly. I haven’t looked into it much because I never really had much, much interest in drugs, but I don’t even know really if the prostate cancer, if there really is any good evidence of an increasing risk of prostate cancer, that probably depends on dosing and such.

But yeah, so there is also that point that I, I generally try not to do illegal things. And so that was probably another reason why I never got into it. But now fast, fast forward to today. There are a few reasons why I am not on steroids and I’ll never do steroids. One is that point of there are definitely health risks that are associated with some of the other drugs that are [00:09:00] popular.

While, while I probably could run a load, a low. dose of tea and be okay in the long run. I, there may be a chance that I would be increasing my risk of prostate cancer. Again, I don’t really know. I haven’t looked into it that much and it seems contradictory and would really require some studying.

But then some of these other drugs that these guys are on that are very popular like a trend below and acetate, right? That’s a very trend. It’s just. The, what is called very popular drug, very interesting drug in the, in its effects in the body. You have these guys that they run like a low dose of testosterone and a high dose of trend balloon.

And I think a high dose of growth hormone as well as like the body builder the new age stack. Although I guess trend even go, it does go back. I think there was trying to run even in Arnold’s days. I think he even talked about doing it. I don’t know, maybe it’s just come back in popularity again, but the point is when guys run this stack of drugs, one, the changes in their physiques can be like, just staggering I’ll link.

[00:10:00] a, an example of this below of a guy named Boston Lloyd, who’s very open about his drug use and shows what a one year steroid transformation, hard steroid transformation really looks like. And it’s pretty ridiculous. So there are trembling is very powerful for building muscle, even when you’re in a calorie deficit.

And also particularly it’s strange in that it’s short circuits a process called de novo lipogenesis, which is the process whereby the body converts carbohydrate into body fat. So basically guys, these guys that are, running trend and then T and growth hormone, they can eat absurd amounts of food and absurd amounts of carbs and gain no fat and just stay shredded.

And so their workouts are obviously The just there’s a, another guy that works out in the morning, nice guy, cool guy. He runs all kinds of drugs and he’s very open about it. He talks to me about it and he actually is one of the guys that tells me don’t get on drugs and I’ll explain why in a minute.

It’s another one of the reasons why I’m not going to be doing steroids anytime in the future. He [00:11:00] said that when he’s on, his cycle, he, I think his last cycle was like it was testosterone of course. And then it was trend balloon and it was maybe deck I don’t remember and a couple other popular drugs.

And he said that basically he just feels like a God, like he, he has so much energy in the gym. He just feels invincible and not only in the gym, but in life. Like he, he, from the second he wakes up to the second he goes to bed, he’s just. On. And he the biggest thing that he regrets about getting into steroids is that he’s now psychologically addicted.

And he’s one of the, he’s an interesting, you’re not going to meet very many guys like this. A lot of guys that are on drugs are very secretive about it. They’re going to, they’re going to swear. They’re natural all up and down. And they’re going to talk all kinds of shit about guys that are on drugs and how steroids are so unnecessary and this and that.

And they’re running so many drugs, it would blow your mind. So this guy’s the opposite. This guy is very open about his drug. He doesn’t care. He’ll tell me here and there Oh, I just, just change my cycle this and that and tell me how it goes and stuff. And I find it [00:12:00] interesting.

And so then he’s also though, he has enough self awareness to know that he is fully addicted psychologically. He said that’s the problem now when he’s off drugs, he just doesn’t, he said it just being natural is almost like miserable in comparison to how good he feels when he’s on the drugs.

And that’s also one of the reasons why I will never do steroids is because I don’t want to put myself in that position. That’s like a, a heroin addict or it’s any where you, you feel life, under the influence of a certain drug. And then you can’t reproduce that feeling without the drug.

It’s just, you can’t, there’s nothing that’s going to do it. And. You get hooked to that feeling and you just go back to, and in the psychological stuff of similar to even smoking or triggers can come into play or certain things that trigger you to want to use the drugs and you’re constantly dealing with that.

That’s one of those cases where, in my opinion, you’re better off never even knowing what it feels like to, feel like he, what he, like he says, like a God superhero, just. Unlimited energy, just, ridiculous strength in the gym [00:13:00] and all that yeah, that sounds good until you realize that you have to inject yourself with quite a few drugs every week to get there.

And in the case of Tremblone this kind of comes back to the health point that I was talking about. There is research that shows that it is genotoxic, meaning that it can damage your DNA and that’s cancer shit. And that’s where you don’t, that’s something I never want to mess with.

If there’s one way I don’t want to die, it is suffering, with a disease like cancer. And I just don’t want to ever go down that road. And We’ll see when give, in 30 years, we’ll see what a lot of these bodybuilders today that are abusing, drugs like Trembolone and these other drugs that are popular, we’ll see what, what, where their bodies are at.

And given that it’s a very niche thing, it’s unlikely to get much in the way of funding. Trembolone is used with. To transport to, to, they use it with cattle to, to keep the lean mass on cattle while they’re transporting them to be slaughtered. So are we ever really going to know the whole effects in the human [00:14:00] body?

I don’t know. Is that ever going to really get enough funding research? I would be surprised. So it’s just very much like you’re taking your life in your own hands when you’re messing around with these drugs. And also, if we’re talking health stuff, obviously orals are very hard on the liver and guys that run a lot of orals are always fighting that.

And then, when it comes to abuse, you hear these stories of these bodybuilders. There was some guy recently that died and he had, some massive tumor in his liver or, there’s just, you, The more steroids you do and the longer you do them the, and especially if you’re going outside of just testosterone, which guys that run steroids, if you’re really into steroids, you’re not just running testosterone.

Yes, there are people out there and there are a lot of people out there that, have had no problems. You can definitely find stories of guys that, they’ve run drugs for 40 years and had no health issues. They’re, it’s not that everyone is screwed. And I don’t really know enough about it to know that the guys that do get screwed, is it because they [00:15:00] abused drugs, they abused the drugs so heavily and also abuse their bodies in other ways with.

Cause also a lot of these bodybuilders that are on a lot of steroids on a lot of other drugs too. They’re into cocaine, they’re into meth, they’re into all kinds of stuff. And alcohol of course. So is it all the whole picture that is the problem? Or is it mainly the steroids or what? I don’t know.

But it stands to reason that doing a bunch of steroids is not good for your health. It’s not going to improve your health. It probably is going to detract from it and you’re going to be constantly battling with that. So that’s another reason why I’m just not interested in messing with it.

And which kind of takes me to my next point in that doing steroids is not necessary for what I want to do with my body. I, right now I weigh about 190 pounds. I’m somewhere between about seven, seven and a half percent body fat. I like how my body looks. I don’t want to be bigger in general.

I could use some more calves. I could use some more shoulders, which is the never ending as a natural weightlifter. You’ll never have enough shoulders [00:16:00] basically. And my calves are a genetic weak point that I genetically, like I had zero cows before I really started training them. So now at least I have something, but they’re still they’re lagging.

And I’m, I’m working on it. It’s just it’s strange how stubborn my calves are. I’m surprised. But I not generally trying to just put on a bunch of size because I really don’t want to look like a bodybuilder. I guess you could say I look like a bodybuilder now, but when I think bodybuilder, I think more somebody like I couldn’t go compete.

In a bodybuilding class, I’m way too small. I could go compete in a physique class. And if even then, even if I went up against the drug guys and tried it, I would, if I got down to competition, four, 5%, I would look pretty small compared to, these other guys that that do well in physique.

With I can maintain the type of body that this is the type of body that I like. And I got here without doing drugs and I can maintain it pretty easily without doing drugs. In terms of diet, if you’re familiar with my work, you know that I’m very flexible in my dieting. I eat foods that I like right now.

My [00:17:00] calories are about 2700 a day. Which is right in the middle. It’s not, I probably could go a bit higher. But I found it’s an interesting thing that I’ve noticed. In terms of staying very lean is that technically like per the catch McArdle, my TD. My total daily energy expenditure is fairly high.

It’s probably about 200 calories a day. But I can tell you for with absolute certainty, if I already eat that much food right now, I would get fatter. And I’ve actually tried this multiple times. I’ve tried reverse dieting, like slowly increasing my calories up and that. I still, I get a little bit fatter and I can hang out if I were to eat that much food, I would hang out about nine or 10%.

And the only explanation that I have for that is that because my body fat levels are low, my leptin levels are going to be low or low ish lower than they would be if I had more body fat. So my metabolism is essentially and if you’re not familiar with leptin, by the way it’s a hormone [00:18:00] that regulates the metabolism among other things, regulates hunger.

I’ll link an article down below so you can go learn more about it. But basically the lower the leptin levels are in your body, the worse it is essentially to a point. It’s not having higher leptin levels is good, but if you have too much leptin, like obese people have a lot of a surplus of leptin, that’s bad as well.

Because I’m staying pretty lean, my leptin levels are low, which is probably keeping my metabolism a little bit down regulated, which might sound bad, it’s not going to impair my health. I’m not starving myself and eating plenty of food and my body feels good.

My training’s good. But the reality is if I wanted to be able to eat more and without gaining fat, I would have to if I wanted to eat more to reach my total daily energy expenditure or closer to it, then I would have to just be a little bit fatter. The only other option which I’ve done, which also does work, I actually talk about it in my book, Beyond Bigger Than You’re Stronger, is a surplus deficit.

Approach to dieting where I’m in a surplus five days a week on my training days, [00:19:00] slight surplus, and then I’m in a moderate deficit two days a week in my rest days to offset the surplus that I was, the little bit of fat that I’ve gained during the week in a surplus essentially.

So I could go that route. I, but I do that sometimes depends on what I’m doing in the week. And it depends on what I feel like eating. I like to be flexible with what I eat. The simplest method of dieting is just eating the same amount of food every day.

And I default back to that because I don’t like having to make a bunch of food decisions. I have a lot of things that I’m doing and I’m just busy with a lot of things and I don’t really want to have to sit down every day and think much about what I’m going to eat. I’d rather just plan it out, take the foods I like.

eat that every day, get on with my life, change things here and there when I really want to. So back to steroids, I don’t, at this point why do steroids? What would be the point? I’m not trying to my strength is decent. I’m fairly strong. My, my recent best numbers are, I’ve pulled about four 50.

It was give or take, I don’t remember exactly for two or [00:20:00] three reps. I’ve squatted about three 50 for about the same, which is not too great, but I neglected squats for a long time. So I’ve only really been properly squatting for probably about three years or so. And it just takes time. I tell you like to, I’m always impressed with people that can squat four plates in under two years.

That’s just, I’m normally strong. And also my legs, for some reason, I have were a weak point, so they didn’t come up as quickly as I thought they would. And I’ve on bench, I’ve put up two 95 for two or three and on military press, I’ve put up two 25 for two or three.

So I’m fairly strong. I enjoy my workouts. I have plenty of energy. At this point it just doesn’t really make sense for me to do steroids. Now, if I wanted to be, I’m 190, I’m 6’2 and if I wanted to be 210, if same 7%, 7 percent or whatever, 7 to 8%, there’s no way I could do that naturally.

No way. The most I think at this point that I could gain is probably another 10 pounds of muscle. It’d probably take three or four years and it would take, a lot of bulking and just doing what I [00:21:00] preach slower type of bulking and then cut to get rid of the fat and just, it really takes some work.

So maybe I could reach 200 pounds at about 7%, which kind of, which does align with some of the more. accurate models of how much muscle you can naturally grow or how big you can naturally get, which I’ll link an article down below, which I read that I wrote on this subject and you can see what these models would predict for you or for me or whatever.

So yeah, if I wanted to get, if I wanted to gain another 20 pounds of muscle, I would have to do steroids if it really mattered that much to me, but I don’t, I just want to. Keep my body the way it is now, bring up certain weak points a little bit more. I do have some strength I don’t know, I guess you could say milestones that I’d like to reach.

I would like to pull at least 500 for one or two with good form. Of course I would to, I would like to be able to squat 405 for a few reps. That’d be cool. And I’d like to be able to bench 315 for a few reps. And, I think 225 is pretty good on the military press. But if I could get that for [00:22:00] maybe four or five reps, that’d be cool.

Getting there is a slow process at this point because I’m not willing to eat a bunch of food. Essentially. I do want to keep my body fat where it’s at. So I I can make gains, but it’s just slower if I didn’t care. It’s like I did an interview and I’ve talked.

Subsequently, just, off, off the air with Mark Rippetoe a few times and, he’ll ask me to be like, so do the first thing he told me is you need to weigh, I think he was saying that I need to weigh like 210 ish or something like that, like right now, if you want to be strong, you need to gain some weight.

And he’s right. If I wanted to be if I just wanted to be strong and, push, pull and squat a bunch of weight, yeah. This is not the type of physique that I would want. I would want to probably, yeah, be up to somewhere around 200 to 10. I’d be around 10 to 11 percent body fat. I wouldn’t look bad.

I’d be big. I wouldn’t like I’ve had been up to that body fat percentage, a year or so ago. And I don’t like how it feels. Everything my, all my clothes are super tight and my, I can barely get on my pants and I just feel I don’t know. I like being lean. He always jokes with me about that and that’s true though.

If I [00:23:00] really wanted to get stronger, I’d have to get fatter. And so yeah, building up strength, that could be one reason to be on drugs, but it’s not that, I’m not, I don’t need it. I’m not trying to be compete in a show or as a bodybuilder or as a powerlifter or anything else. I’m just doing it to stay healthy and enjoy.

It feels good. So that’s another reason why I’m really not interested in doing steroids and why I never was interested in doing steroids. And another reason is I think it’s cool to to do it naturally. I think the, that the mentality of Wanting to cheat it and that’s the idea that steroids are cheating.

That’s cheating. Who what are you talking about? We’re, it’s some dude that wants to build muscle. So he’s taking drugs to help him do that. But it’s not cheating unless we’re like in a, if he’s in competing in a natural. Bodybuilding league with a bunch of other guys that actually are natural because a lot of the natural bodybuilding leagues are a joke, not actually.

Now these guys aren’t natty, but if some of the guys are, if let’s say a lot of the guys are natty, then [00:24:00] yeah, that’s cheating it. But if everybody’s on this, if everybody’s doing the same drugs and it’s not cheating and if you’re not competing, if you’re just like wanting to look good to attract, I don’t know, be attractive or whatever, feel good about yourself.

Cheating, who, what, how does it? Now The truth is though that steroids make a huge difference in terms of how quickly you can build muscle and get the body that you want. Again, I’ll link down below what a one year steroid transformation, hard steroid transformation can look like.

And generally speaking, it’s, if you’re going to run the drugs that you run, you probably can condense. Make about three years of gains in one year probably and if you’re not going to run a ton of drugs if you’re going to be more Moderate you could probably make two years of gains like your first two years Let’s say you started on drugs your first two years not that even be a good idea guys Even steroid guys will not recommend like ones that actually know what they’re talking about don’t recommend that newbies jump on drugs They recommend that you probably do your first one or two years natural and then do steroids if you’re gonna do that [00:25:00] so But so it’s that mentality though of where you’re impatient, you just want it now and you don’t want to wait for it and you want it to be as easy and quick as possible and so forth.

And I think that I think there’s some value in doing it naturally and learning to embrace the process and embrace the work that goes into it. And the amount of discipline that it takes being strict with your diet. And again, why, when I say strict, I don’t mean obsessing over clean eating, more just making sure that you’re hitting your numbers every day and not just being random with your diet and showing up to the gym every day and you have to work hard.

Definitely when it comes to training training on steroids is quite a bit different when you see guys in the gym doing all those super high rep drop sets, super set, giant set and big lean guys, they’re on drugs. You can’t train like that and get anywhere as a natural weightlifter and the reason why you will not.

See guys on a lot of drugs. Often they will not be doing very heavy weightlifting is because the muscles, they grow faster than tendons and ligaments can can [00:26:00] support them. So they need to watch out if they really, if they started throwing around the weights that they felt like their muscles could handle, they can get hurt.

You the. I’ve known quite a few guys that that have been on drugs that, they’ll go in and their workouts are, they’ll do, sets of 20 and sets of 30 and really go for the pump and go for the burn. And that’s just, I used to do that stuff as a natural weightlifter and didn’t really get far with it.

And It’s, that’s just a different style of training than, even mentally, I think it’s it takes a bit more toughness to, work in the four to six rep range or even do some heavier stuff go stand under 400 pounds of weight and squat it or go try to pull, a bunch of weight.

You do that, do a lot of that. It definitely has some residual effects on just your mindset and how you approach things. So I think there’s some value in, in doing it naturally. It’s also by doing it naturally. And this is something that I personally care about. Why, another reason why I’m not didn’t do drugs and won’t do drugs is [00:27:00] I want something that I can maintain for the rest of my life.

I want a lifestyle. I don’t want to just look good. I’m 30, I’m not trying to just look good for my thirties and then have things start declining as I get older. And I’m also would not want to be thinking that, to look the way that I want to look and have the type of body I want and the strength and whatever that I’m gonna have to be on drugs.

What for the rest of my life, like there are quite a few guys that’s how they look at it. They’ve 30 years or. whatever, and they’re going to be on drugs until they die. And that, I don’t know, that’s just, that, that does not seem appealing to me. I much, much, much prefer having a lifestyle that is a, is healthy and sustainable.

And yeah, I’ll never look as good as some of the guys on drugs. It’s, there are certain looks you can’t achieve without drugs. You just can’t. You can’t get all the muscle development, especially in the little muscles. You’ll see it in guys where their serratus is just ridiculous. And, all the way down.

And you’ll get these big [00:28:00] shoulders. big upper chest, these big traps certain drugs give you a very dense look. So you get that hard just where their skin looks paper thin cause they’re super lean and they’re vascular everywhere. You just don’t get that look without drugs. So yeah, I think there are certain, it goes too far.

I wouldn’t want to look like that, but there are certain looks like you’ve probably heard of ZYZZ, right? He was very open about his drug use. He’s, joke about it on the internet and stuff. So there are certain periods of his physique kind of changed over the years. But at the point when I think he looked the best, he was running all kinds of drugs and he talked about it.

And so there’s just that look. You’re just not going to get it naturally. And he was also using cutting drugs like Clenbunerol and such. I’m fine with that, whatever I, I’m happy with how my body looks and and I, I think that’s part of a benefit of being a natural weightlifter is you, once you have the body that you.

It’s very easy to maintain it. You get to eat plenty of food. You get to, if you overeat for a couple of days, big deal, then you [00:29:00] just reduce your food for a couple of days. And, but my point is you’re not relying on chemicals to, to keep your body in the shape that you like.

And another personal point of why I wouldn’t want to be on drugs is I wouldn’t want to have to constantly lie about being natural. Like a lot of these people in this space do that would just personally, it would just bother me. Especially because I, If I looked when with how my body is and I, I’ll talk, I talk with quite a few people that are experienced weightlifters and also just they’ve made their way around the fitness space and the people in the know.

So when they see my pictures and stuff, they think that their initial thought is that I could be natural. They’re not sure. I’m not clearly on drugs. I’m not clearly like some guys are clearly on drugs. It looks so good. And so over the top, some in some cases over the top, but in some cases it’s good and there’s just no question.

And then in some cases guys look so soft and bad and frail that you’re like, yeah, that guy’s natty. That’s clear. I’m somewhere in the middle of that. And in, but then guys that really didn’t know that are familiar with drugs, [00:30:00] if they look at my upper chest and look at my shoulders they look at my, just my core development and they look at certain parts of my body and, they go, yeah, he’s probably natural.

But if I got on drugs, it would be pretty obvious. Like you would see within two months of me starting a steroid cycle, you’d start seeing my pictures. You’d be like, Mike, what? So what what new supplement are you on? What, and then I have to start making up stories like everybody like, Oh, I started this new sick training routine where I’m, increase my frequency, this, that fix my diet, just doing a lean bulk just all that bullshit that these guys say.

And yeah, fine. Whatever they do. They, I don’t care if their bodies can do what they want. But me personally that’s just really not my style. I’m not like I’m a saint or anything, but just like I try not to do illegal things. Like I’m not into even downloading music. If I like someone’s music.

I just use Spotify actually, but if I couldn’t find something in Spotify, I’m probably going to go buy it. If I want to watch a movie, I’m going to go rent it on [00:31:00] Amazon because I like Amazon and I want to support them and support if I support the, whatever it is, the movie, the, even if it’s, supported the movie studio is fine for the most part.

Like they’re the ones that put up the money for the movies that I like. Just like how I, try to do that and live my life that way. I also try to be as honest as possible. Try not to lie. I tried to try to, and again, of course, everyone not saying I’m perfect or anything, but that’s, I’m, I, my inclination is more in that direction of just being honest and being open and not being shady basically.

Then. Being on drugs and lying about it because I’d have to lie about it. If I were on drugs, I couldn’t say that I was on drugs because then it would totally ruin my credibility. And yeah, a lot of people then would say, Oh, he’s just cheating and you would, it would appeal to guys that are on drugs.

But to your average guy or girl just wanting to get in shape, that’d be a huge negative turn off. If I were just open about it saying, yeah, I’m just doing all these drugs. That’s how I look good. Even. It’s not that not even necessarily that drugs are the key because there are plenty of guys like, you know I go to the gym early in the [00:32:00] morning.

It’s very empty So but I’ve gone in the afternoon before and it’s full of guys like I and that I guarantee you there are, you know Probably 50 percent of the guys in there Are either on drugs at this time period when I went, at least, or have done drugs. And the majority of them look terrible and they’re weak because they don’t know what they’re doing.

They don’t know what they’re doing in the gym and they don’t know what they’re doing with their diet. So it’s not like steroids are magic. It’s not like you can know nothing and just do, inject a bunch of stuff and all of a sudden, now. three months later, you look awesome. The guys that really make the, those impressive transformations, they not only do the drugs, but they also know what they’re doing with their training.

And that means they know how to train as somebody that’s on drugs cause it’s different. And they know what doing with their diet and that’s not so much different. The biggest difference is your depending on what drugs you’re doing, you’re probably just gonna be able to eat more than you would otherwise, but there’s not really that much of a difference otherwise.

So yeah, that’s really, I guess those are really the main points of why I’ve never did drugs and don’t really want to. So my [00:33:00] recommendation to you, if you’re considering steroids is of course, don’t do it. I just don’t think it’s necessary. I think that there are potential negatives way outweigh the potential positives.

When you can have all the positives that you want, you just have to wait longer for them and work harder for them. Unless you want to be like a hulking bodybuilder type of dude, if that’s how you want to look. If you’re like my, if you’re my height, if you’re six foot six foot one, six foot two and you want to be 230 pounds and lean, you’re going to have to do drugs like period.

I’m not suggesting that you do drugs, but if that’s really what you’re, have you, if you have your heart set on, then just in, you better be willing to do a lot of drugs. So yeah, you can have the type of body you want though without drugs. And the vast majority of guys, they just want to look, they want to have more type body that I want to have.

You want to be lean, you want to be athletic and muscular, but not over the top. And that, there’s also one thing that’s worth mentioning is A fair amount of the size. I don’t know. I’ve seen this. I’ve seen this both ways. For instance, this guy in the gym that’s [00:34:00] always on drugs.

He has talked to me about this, that depending on the drugs that he’s running, like he’ll run certain drugs and gain size quickly and be very strong in the gym and then come off the drugs and lose quite a bit of that size. Not necessarily all of it, but it’s not like you just do a cycle and then you just, you can just maintain that, cause I’ve run into people that had that idea too, which is understandable.

All right. If I just do let’s say I just drug for a year or two and then I have the body I want and I just get off drugs. Yeah, maybe to some degree, but it probably isn’t going to go exactly like that. When you get off, you are going to lose some of your size. You’re definitely going to lose a fair amount of your strength.

And then you’re going to deal with the psychological stuff, which is going to lead almost inevitably back to, doing drugs again. And then if you’ve done it a second time, yeah. Then it’s less likely that you’re even going to come off again. And then you just go down that slippery slope until you’re the guy in the gym who, is he is he likes the feeling of being on steroids, the physical feeling, but he does not like the psychological [00:35:00] aspect of it.

But it has right now for at least he’s really, he’s resigned himself to the fact that he can’t quit right now. That’s how he feels that he would be too unhappy. So I don’t want to mess with all that. And that’s why I don’t recommend that you do steroids. All right. So let’s move on to the next point here, which is just a typical day and how I like to balance things.

I get asked this fairly often, especially regarding how I eat. And I’ll go through it quickly because if you’re familiar with my work, there’s really nothing revelatory about this. It’s pretty straightforward. So I wake up early, I wake up at about six 30, let my dogs out, go to the bathroom, blah, blah, blah.

And I I go train and I get there at about seven 20 ish or so. Cause I also do some reading in the morning. So I usually am reading for about 20, 30 minutes and then I’m out just catching up with blogs that I follow and stuff. So then I’m training at about seven 30 ish or so, maybe a little bit earlier.

I’m there for about an hour and then I come to the office depending on what I’m doing with my training. I might have, if I’m cutting I’m going to be training fasted with a, [00:36:00] so I take some BCAs or why actually I take Lucene, but you can do Lucene or BCAs and also take you him bean. And I’ll link an article down below to explains why.

If I’m not cutting, then I’m going to have a pre workout meal of 30 or 40 grams of protein and about 50 or 60 grams of carbs really makes a difference in the gym. Quite a bit more strength just from the carbs alone, train, come to the office, have my post workout which is usually I do a shake.

I blend up a frozen banana with some rice milk and some. protein powder and cinnamon. It’s tasty, about a hundred carbs, 40, 50 protein, very little fat and just drink it down and get to work. In the morning, about an, about two hours later or so, I’ll usually have another snack. This time it’s just carbs or mainly carbs.

These days I have some Harry and David pears. Things are so good. So maybe it’ll be a couple of pears or. It’ll be like, I’ll do these what are they? They’re like spelt, they’re spelt English muffins and they’re really good. I’ll do it with some PB2 and jelly, just about 50 carbs or [00:37:00] so.

And my lunch these days around 12. 30 or so 12. 30 or 1, I’ll do something simple. I’ve been doing a salad recently, just a salad with chicken and I do some chocolate PB2, not in the salad, but I mix it with some water and just eat it after because it’s so good. I love that. stuff. I can eat a tub of it a day.

I think I just love chalk. I just love chocolate. I love peanut butter. So you combine them and I’m just, it’s so good. So I’ll do but yeah, my lunch and also I use this this dressing or these dressings from a company called bolt house farms. And they basically take these yogurt. base type dress or these dairy based dressings Caesars, what I’ve been eating every day recently.

And they make them with Greek yogurt and just lower fat ingredients. So you have, this Caesar dressing per Caesar dressing normally is ridiculous. Look at the calories of Caesar dressing. It’s delicious, but. To a few tablespoons is like 30 fat or something. So this Bold House Farms, this Bold House Farms, I don’t remember the macros off the top of my head.

I have it in my meal plan. I want to say two tablespoons, it’s ridiculous. [00:38:00] Two tablespoons is like Some protein, five carb and five fat or something like that. Two tablespoons. So all you need is, what, three tablespoons max for a, you can even do two tablespoons. I think that’s what the macros are. I don’t remember exactly, but it’s very low, very easy to fit into a meal plan because I don’t like doing high fat.

I’m not a high fat guy. My fat are, 50, 60 grams a day. And I want to load up on carbs because carbs make a much bigger difference in training. Give me a lot of energy and a lot of strength in the gym. Feel good. I need my body. You don’t need more than I don’t need more than that for fat to for my dietary fat for my body to do everything it needs to do.

So that’s my lunch and then around three o’clock or so I have a scoop of whey protein and water and I usually do my cardio. When I get home about, so I, I usually leave the office anywhere from five 36 and I go home and then I do my cardio at that point. I’m fasted again because if I’m only having a scoop of whey protein at about three.

Two to two and a half hours. It’s out of me and my insulin levels are back to baseline. So if I’m cutting, then I’ll do it fasted [00:39:00] cardio. I’ll take more yo him bean before the cardio. Do that for about 25 minutes and then eat dinner after. So my dinner 6630 maybe closer to seven, depending on what I’m cooking.

And my dinner is usually about, I just have it slotted as like About 130 to 140 carbs, 40 ish protein and 20 to 30 fat is what I generally will have for dinner. And then I have a little bit of a dessert after, have about 200 calories allotted for a dessert. So I’ll mix and match what that’ll be.

Sometimes it’s a little bit of chocolate. Sometimes it’s there’s like little coconut ice creams that are fairly low calorie that I like. Or even I have like little fudge bars that are low calorie. Just something tasty that, is about 200 calories. And then, before I go to bed I go to bed these days about midnight I don’t need that much sleep.

I sleep about six hours a night and that’s really just all I need. I could sleep seven hours, but I tend to wake up even before my alarm, whatever I’ll take it. So before I go to bed, I’ll have about 20 grams of protein, a slower [00:40:00] burning type of protein. Not because you’re going to go catabolic when you sleep.

That’s a myth, but research has shown there’s one study in particular that showed that just having a slower burning protein before going to bed, improved muscle recovery in guys that were weightlifting. And of course that makes sense because if you have your last protein at, let’s say 8 p. m.

and you go to bed at 12 unless your meal was huge and it’s really taking a lot of time for your body to get through all that food, your body’s going to be basically done processing what you just ate, by, by, by midnight, what you ate at 8 PM is already processed and the amount of available amino acids in your blood is obviously going to be lower than they would be if you had some protein right before you go to bed.

And if you’re, let’s say you’re sleeping eight hours, There is a point where your body just runs out of amino acids to rebuild itself with and doesn’t mean now you lose muscle It just means that you’re missing out in a sense on a little bit of potential recovery So I have some slow burning protein before I go to bed just to just so there’s amino acids in my blood that my body Can continue to use while I’m sleeping [00:41:00] And so yeah, that’s the simple breakdown of my day I’m doing, I’m weight, I’m lifting five days a week right now.

I’m doing cardio three days a week and I play some sports. I play some golf on the weekend, which can burn quite a bit of calories depending on what I’m doing. If I’m on the driving range, hitting a bunch of balls that actually, it burns a surprising amount of calories more than I thought. I think it was like.

Four hours of on the range was like a thousand calories burned or something like that. Which isn’t that much if you were doing cardio, but it doesn’t feel like cardio when you’re out there. It doesn’t feel, I don’t feel that active when I’m just hitting balls, but there’s quite a bit of whole body, total body energy that goes into that.

So that’s how I have my day broken down. If I’m going to be shifting things around sometimes I’ll cut, I’ll cut carbs for my post workout meal. I’ll cut it down to maybe 50 or so and then move those to dinner. If I’m going to be doing, like I’ve been trying different recipes cause I’m working on a new cookbook and sometimes I need more calories for dinner and I don’t really feel like just overeating.

So I’ll shift things around. I’ll take 50 carbs from my. post workout and I’m [00:42:00] going to move those calories or move those carbs to dinner so I can make some pasta dish that I’m trying out or something like that. And you can do that kind of stuff, especially when I’m maintaining, like I’m not cutting right now.

So I can do that and just be a little bit more loosey goosey with my intake. If I were cutting, I still could do the same thing, but I would definitely want to be make sure that I’m being strict on my numbers or I just slow the whole process down. And But yeah, types of foods, I don’t easily, I don’t get sick of foods easily, so I tend to eat the same stuff every day but if, if you really are into variety you can do that, you just have to plan for it, that’s all.

All right. So now let’s move on to the last little bit of this podcast and that’s going to be regarding if you’re missing training, how to best go about it essentially. So basically I have a simple kind of rule of thumb. If I’m going to miss a workout, I’m training five days a week right now.

My split is chest, back, shoulders, arms, legs, and there are also like, depending on. I’m doing a little bit of extra chest on my arms day. So I’m training my chest twice a [00:43:00] week. And my legs, between the heavy dead lifting that I do and the heavy squatting that I don’t do more on my legs.

And also I actually don’t want my legs are I need to measure them again, actually. But the last measurement, I think my upper thighs, I want to say we’re about 27 inches and I don’t really want more there. It’s already, there are certain brands of jeans that I just can’t wear that I would like to be able to wear.

And, Suits can be a bit like I’ve been, I went through, I think I went through six suits buying, I buy them on online like guilt rule of law. They’ll have sales on nice brands, product, YSL, whatever. And so I’ll try these different suits and Oh, it’s great up top, but then stupid pant. I can barely even get over my leg.

So it’s, I have to get it tailored. It’s a bit of pain in the ass. I don’t want bigger legs, so I’m not doing a ton of squatting. But I am. course, training legs every week. And I’m also dead lifting heavy every week. So they are going to grow to some degree, and so if I’m gonna move things, if I’m gonna miss a day, first to go is arms.

Arms is definitely the least important day. You don’t even, I can just [00:44:00] maintain my arm size and a lot of my arm strength. without even really training them. If I just kept up my heavy pulling and my heavy pushing, it would, my arms really wouldn’t change visually. I would lose a little bit of strength on the curl and on stuff like overhead dumbbell press and stuff like that, but you wouldn’t see it.

So arms would be the first to go. So if I knew I had to miss a day next week, I’m just not going to be doing arms. I’m going to be doing chest back, shoulders, legs. And then if I have to miss another day, Then I’m going to drop shoulders and probably what I’ll actually, I won’t drop it. I’m going to move, I’m going to take my military pressing that I do on shoulders day, and I’m going to move that to my chest day and turn into a push.

So basically I’m turning into push pull legs is what I’ll end up doing. So I’ll do my normal chest workout. And then maybe what I do normally, I’m doing nine to 12 sets or given for my chest. So I’d probably drop my chest sets to six and then do three sets of military press and three sets of side raises.

That’d be my push, get my shoulders and chest trained and then do my back or my pole. If I really [00:45:00] cared, I would move my bicep work to my back day. So turning it into a more traditional pole where you’re doing your back plus your biceps. And then I would do my legs. You could move legs to shoulders.

You can also do it that way. And that’s a very hard workout. You can do it that way though. Some people do prefer like they’ll go chest and tries back and buys legs and shoulders or push pull legs. I prefer push pull legs, but some people prefer the former. You would have to try both and see how does your body respond, which workout do you feel you can push yourself the hardest in, which do you enjoy the most and so forth.

And then if you’re only doing, if you only could lift two days a week, then I would just do an upper lower. I’ll link an article down below where I give an example of of how you can do that. And one day a week, then you have a whole body thing, of course, which is also in the article. But that’s, this is useful for if you’re traveling and especially now in the holidays, if you’re out of town and, What I try to do, even when I’m my wife’s from Germany.

So we’ll go to Europe usually every year. And I try, depending on how cool where we’re staying, is it close to a gym? Is it really feasible [00:46:00] for me to train every day? If it is, then cool. I’ll wake up early, do my thing, just normal. But if it’s not, then I’ll try to at least get a couple workouts in and you’d be surprised how much of a difference that makes.

If you just train two days a week, you can maintain everything that you have right now for. It doesn’t matter. You could be out of town for a month and if you’re just doing good, two good workouts a week, a heavy upper, a heavy lower workout a week, you’re going to maintain your muscle. You’re going to maintain your strength.

And it’s going to help mitigate the fat gain that’s going to come with fear out of town, eating a bunch of food. It definitely. Not working out at all, like being very sedentary and just eating a bunch of food is a recipe for travel disaster and just physique disaster in general. But if you keep your training in, it gives your body, you give your body things to do with the food other than store fat.

So so yeah that’s how I recommend you modify your week if you can’t get in the gym as much as you want. And that’s it for this podcast. I hope you enjoyed it, and hey, it’s Christmas this week. If I don’t see you before then have a [00:47:00] great Christmas. I hope that you get a lot of cool stuff and have a lot of great times, or good times with your with your family, with your friends.

It’s always a fun time of year for me. Yeah. Thanks again. And I’ll see you next time. Oh, one last thing before I go head over to legion supplements. com, L E G I O N supplements. com. Because we still have our cool Christmas deals and end of year deal stuff going. And we’re going to be kicking off a pretty cool, I’m pretty excited for it.

Actually. We’re gonna be doing a transformation contest, a new year new year, new you transformation. It’s going to kick off in January, similar to shredded summer, if you remember that. We’re going to do a whole cool thing for that. I’m excited for it. Yeah, if you are interested in checking out my supplements then head on over because now you can, save money and win cool stuff and we’re just having fun with it.

All right. Thanks again and see you next time.