Muscle for Life

As you probably know, I work hard to understand and promote high-quality diet, nutrition, and exercise science. That’s why I’ve spent and continue to spend a lot of time researching and writing, and why I reference quite a bit of scientific literature in my work. What I don’t do, though, is produce a research review where individual studies are broken down and analyzed because my plate is already overflowing with work as it is, and honestly, I don’t think I could do it better than the researchers whose work and research reviews I myself read regularly, like James Krieger, Eric Helms, Greg Nuckols, Mike Zourdos, Alan Aragon, and Bret Contreras. And so I had an idea: why not get those guys to come on my podcast to discuss studies they’ve analyzed in their reviews and share with us what they’ve learned, and how we can use that information to optimize our diets, exercise routines, supplement regimens, and overall lifestyle. In this episode, I have the one and only Dr. Eric Helms back on to discuss a study publish

I know some people (commies) believe you shouldn’t say this anymore but . . . MERRY FREAKIN’ CHRISTMAS . . . and happy holidays! I hope you’re having a fantastic time with the people you both love and tolerate (often one and the same, no?) and are ready to enjoy a good few weeks of “refeeding” . . . wink wink . . . :-) For my part, I am currently in the cold, northern reaches of Germany, where my wife and her family are from. And, yes, that means I’m surrounded by some of the most delicious bread, brats, and beer on the planet. I don’t drink (I’m weird), but you’ve never had bread like German bread. It’s so good it’s actually upsetting. I’m minimizing the damage though by following a few simple strategies that might help you get through the next couple of weeks kinda not fat, too. Let’s get to it. Want to get my best advice on how to gain muscle and strength and lose fat faster? Sign up for my free newsletter! Click here: https://www.muscleforlife.com/signup/

One of the first pieces of bodybuilding advice I was given was on pre-workout nutrition. If I didn’t eat protein and carbs immediately before training, I was told, I’d miss an opportunity to accelerate muscle growth, if not directly hinder it. And so I did, before every workout, without fail. Chances are you’ve heard the same things. Bodybuilders and gymbros alike have been singing pre-workout nutrition’s praises for decades. How important is it really, though? Does eating before workouts actually help us build muscle faster? Well, the long story short is this: Pre-workout nutrition isn’t as crucial as many would have us believe, but it’s not entirely without merit, either. And in this episode, you’re going to find out why. By the end, you’re going to know why pre-workout nutrition is even a “thing,” the ideal type of pre-workout meal, the truth about the “anabolic window,” and more. Let’s get started. Want to get my best advice on how to gain muscle and strength and lose fat faster? Sign up for my free newsl

This interview is about the processed food industry, which generates a trillion dollars in sales every year and specializes in creating inexpensive, highly processed foods that are hyper-palatable and hyper-gratifying. Thanks mainly to the advances of food science, they’ve mastered the art of making foods and beverages that can “hit the spot” in ways that natural, nutritious foods never will, which is why their products are much harder to resist and much easier to overeat. Michael gives us a fascinating glimpse into just how much work goes into engineering and marketing these products, how the leaders of the industry view themselves in relation to the meteoric rise of obesity and disease, how we might go about breaking our dependency on highly processed foods, and more. 5:26 - What’s the history behind the food industry making addictive food? 11:57 - What’s your opinion on the morality of food industry? 12:41 - How do we ease our dependence on highly processed foods? 14:39 - What’s the science behind making f

It’s cold and dark at six in the morning.And it seems even colder and gloomier when you have to get up and train. At that hour, it’s like gravity has tripled. Your eyes droop, your limbs drag, and your nervous system is running on fumes.It’s time like these that you thank the gods you have a pre-workout supplement.You fumble the top off, mix a (heaping) scoop in water, gulp it down, and the magic begins.Fifteen minutes later you feel like the star of the latest Marvel flick, ready to push, pull, and squat against the forces of evil.There’s no question that a pre-workout supplement can get you fired up to get to work in the gym. There are downsides, however.Many pre-workout drinks are stuffed full of ineffective ingredients and/or minuscule dosages of otherwise good ingredients, making them little more than a few cheap stimulants with some “pixie dust” sprinkled in to make for a pretty label and convincing ad copy.Many others don’t even have stimulants going for them and are just complete duds.The reality is i

This episode is part of a weekly series that I have dubbed “Motivation Monday.” (Yes, I know, very creative of me. What can I say, I’m a genius…) Seriously though, the idea here is simple: Every Monday morning, I’m going to post a short and punchy episode that I hope gets you fired up to tackle the workouts, work, and everything else that you have planned for the week ahead. As we all know, it’s one thing to know what you want to do, but it’s something else altogether to actually make yourself do it, and I hope that this series gives you a jolt of inspiration, energy, and encouragement to get at it. So, if you like what you hear, then make sure to check back every Monday morning for the latest and greatest installment. Want to get my best advice on how to gain muscle and strength and lose fat faster? Sign up for my free newsletter! Click here: www.muscleforlife.com/signup/

Hang around in the gym long enough and you’re going to hear about clenbuterol. Like steroids, “clen” is extremely popular in the world of bodybuilding and is the “go-to” cutting drug for many of the people that step on stage. Thus, it’s not surprising that it’s also a hot commodity among the general fitness crowd. If you want to shred fat as quickly as possible without losing muscle, the pitch goes, then you want to hop on the clenbuterol train. Or do you? Poke around on the Internet and you’ll find people that think otherwise. Clenbuterol, they say, isn’t actually all that powerful of a fat burner and is bad for your health to boot, and for your heart in particular, even when used in moderate doses. Who’s right? How much can this drug really boost your fat loss? Should you take warnings about side effects seriously, or are they exaggerated? Is there anything else you should know before deciding for or against clen? Well, you’re going to get answers to all of those questions and more in this episode. By the e

“Skinny fat” sounds like a paradox. How can you be both skinny and fat at the same time? Easy: have too little muscle and too much body fat. It doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things, of course, but hey, some of us just don’t want to be skinny fat. And we don’t have to be if we do three simple things: 1. Do a lot of heavy compound weightlifting. 2. Get our calories and macros right. 3. Don’t do too much cardio. These steps apply equally to men and women, too. Contrary to what most fitness magazines would have you believe, weightlifting doesn’t make women bulky, and cardio isn’t all that great for weight loss and maintenance. Weightlifting and maintaining a high body fat percentage is what makes women bulky, because any muscle added underneath a hefty layer of fat is just going to make you look fatter, and cardio should be used sparingly if you want to optimize your body composition. So, in this episode, we’re going to take a closer look at the three steps of not being skinny fat given above and l

Did you know that certain fat cells in your body are extremely “resistant” to being mobilized and burned? Did you know that these fat cells tend to accumulate in the dreaded belly, hip, and thigh regions of your body? And did you know that you can use a handful of science-based diet, exercise, and supplementation strategies to beat (and burn!) stubborn fat for good? Imagine having that tight waist and those washboard abs you’ve always wanted…all year round. Imagine never again having to suffer through strange diets or grueling workout routines…only to be disappointed in the results. Imagine knowing which supplements are scientifically proven to help you get lean and which are a waste of money. Well, you don’t have to imagine these things because I’m going to lay it all out for you in this episode. By the end, you’re going to know what makes belly fat so tough to lose and exactly what to do to get rid of it once and for all. Let’s get to it. 3:22 - Why is belly fat so stubborn? 4:51 - What is the physiology be

One of the first pieces of bodybuilding advice I was given was on post-workout nutrition. If I didn’t eat protein and carbs immediately after training, I was told, I’d miss an opportunity to accelerate muscle growth, if not directly hinder it. And so I did, after every workout, without fail. Chances are you’ve heard the same things. Bodybuilders and gymbros alike have been singing post-workout nutrition’s praises for decades. How important is it really, though? Does eating after workouts actually help us build muscle faster? Well, the long story short is this: Post-workout nutrition isn’t as crucial as many would have us believe, but it’s not entirely without merit, either. And in this episode, you’re going to find out why. By the end, you’re going to know why post-workout nutrition is even a “thing,” the ideal type of post-workout meal, the truth about the “anabolic window,” and more. Let’s get started. Want to get my best advice on how to gain muscle and strength and lose fat faster? Sign up for my free new

This episode is part of a weekly series that I have dubbed “Motivation Monday.” (Yes, I know, very creative of me. What can I say, I’m a genius…) Seriously though, the idea here is simple: Every Monday morning, I’m going to post a short and punchy episode that I hope gets you fired up to tackle the workouts, work, and everything else that you have planned for the week ahead. As we all know, it’s one thing to know what you want to do, but it’s something else altogether to actually make yourself do it, and I hope that this series gives you a jolt of inspiration, energy, and encouragement to get at it. So, if you like what you hear, then make sure to check back every Monday morning for the latest and greatest installment. Want to get my best advice on how to gain muscle and strength and lose fat faster? Sign up for my free newsletter! Click here: www.muscleforlife.com/signup/

If you want to know how to quickly master complicated information and produce better results in your work and life in less time, then you need to read this book. This is one of my favorite books I’ve read this year and one I will definitely be reviewing regularly. In it, Cal defines deep work as “the ability to focus without distraction on a cognitively demanding task,” and he argues that it’s the skill that will most help you achieve excellence in everything that you do and enjoy the deep sense of fulfillment that comes from reaching a level of true craftsmanship. In short, Cal believes that deep work is like a super power in our increasingly competitive twenty-first century economy, which is going to be radically transformed by smart and capable machines. Furthermore, this skill is becoming rarer and rarer as more and more people surrender more and more of their time to the frenetic whirlwind of email, social media, and on-demand entertainment, which means those that do master it will be in great demand and

There’s no way around it. If you want to gain muscle efficiently, you’re going to need to eat more calories than you burn each day. While eating slightly more calories than you burn every day is conducive to muscle growth, eating a lot more isn’t more so. That is, you’ll gain just as much muscle eating ~110% of your total daily energy expenditure as you would eating 120 or 130%. The only thing that will change, really, is how much fat you’ll gain. In this episode, we’re going to cover how to know how many calories you need to eat to gain weight, without just getting fat. I also created a simple and accurate calorie (and macronutrient) calculator to make these calculations easier: → https://legionathletics.com/how-many-calories-should-i-eat/ Let’s get to it. Want to get my best advice on how to gain muscle and strength and lose fat faster? Sign up for my free newsletter! Click here: https://www.muscleforlife.com/signup/

As you probably know, I work hard to understand and promote high-quality diet, nutrition, and exercise science. That’s why I’ve spent and continue to spend a lot of time researching and writing, and why I reference quite a bit of scientific literature in my work. What I don’t do, though, is produce a research review where individual studies are broken down and analyzed because my plate is already overflowing with work as it is, and honestly, I don’t think I could do it better than the researchers whose work and research reviews I myself read regularly, like James Krieger, Eric Helms, Greg Nuckols, Mike Zourdos, Alan Aragon, and Bret Contreras. And so I had an idea: why not get those guys to come on my podcast to discuss studies they’ve analyzed in their reviews and share with us what they’ve learned, and how we can use that information to optimize our diets, exercise routines, supplement regimens, and overall lifestyle. In this episode, I have the newly minted Dr. Eric Helms on to discuss a study published in

If someone feels they’re carrying around too much fat, they’ll probably say they need to lose some weight. Ironically, if that’s their only goal–reducing the number on the scale–they’re like to run into a new problem along the way: becoming skinny fat. You see, the phrase “weight loss” is tossed around by just about everyone, including myself, but what we really want is a bit more than that. We don’t want to just “lose weight”–we want to reduce our body fat percentage and thus improve our body composition. That is, we want to reduce our total amount of body fat without reducing our total amount of lean mass. If this is obvious to you, you’re in the minority. Most people don’t realize how much muscle they can lose with a poor “weight loss” diet and are puzzled when they succeed in losing weight only to be disappointed by a weak, soft physique staring back at them in the mirror. Well, in this episode we’re going to talk about how many calories you should eat to lose fat and not muscle. To make these calculation

This episode is part of a weekly series that I have dubbed “Motivation Monday.” (Yes, I know, very creative of me. What can I say, I’m a genius…) Seriously though, the idea here is simple: Every Monday morning, I’m going to post a short and punchy episode that I hope gets you fired up to tackle the workouts, work, and everything else that you have planned for the week ahead. As we all know, it’s one thing to know what you want to do, but it’s something else altogether to actually make yourself do it, and I hope that this series gives you a jolt of inspiration, energy, and encouragement to get at it. So, if you like what you hear, then make sure to check back every Monday morning for the latest and greatest installment. Want to get my best advice on how to gain muscle and strength and lose fat faster? Sign up for my free newsletter! Click here: www.muscleforlife.com/signup/

In this episode, I interview my buddy Sal from the hugely popular Mind Pump Podcast, which he hosts with Adam and Justin, and which you should definitely check out. I wanted Sal to talk about three topics that he’s particularly revved up about recently, and that’s gut health, overcoming systemic fatigue, and using mindful/intuitive eating strategies over more rigid, planning/tracking-based strategies. Here’s a little sneak peek of what we talk about in today’s interview: - What “leaky gut” is and how it can affect your body. - How artificial sweeteners can harm our gut health, and how that can in turn affect many aspects of our health and wellness. - What “HPA/HPAT Axis Dysfunction” is, why many people are suffering from it, and what you can do to beat it. - Some of Sal’s favorite mindfulness practices. - And more… 4:59 - Why is the health and wellness space flooded with bad information? 11:53 - How are anecdotes accelerating medical research? 19:04 - What is leaky gut? 22:47 What are glyphosates and how do t

Among all genres of supplements fat burners are surrounded by the most misinformation and blatant lies. We’re going through an obesity epidemic and it’s reaching far more than just the US. I mean, a third of the entire damn world is overweight according to BMI. The. Entire. World. It’s clearly an issue of habit formation, easy access to food that happens to be unhealthy but oh so delicious, and a society that places more value on mind than body leading to a lot more sedentary work than before. But as long as there is science to suggest that a pill could help you lose fat, which there is, and people promising that their pills will make all the pain go away, then there’s going to be a market for them. Don’t get me wrong, I do believe in the concept of fat burners. Even the best ones are far from magic bullets, but they can help speed the process up a bit… Want to get my best advice on how to gain muscle and strength and lose fat faster? Sign up for my free newsletter! Click here: https://www.muscleforlife.com/s

Once upon a time, my girlfriend (and now wife) packed protein bars in her purse when we went out for the day. They weren’t for her. They were for me. She did it because she knew that if I didn’t eat protein every few hours, Mr. Hyde would come out. I wouldn’t just get hungry. I would get angry. Hangry. It was kind of pathetic, I know, but I thought that if you went for more than a few hours without protein, you’d lose muscle. And when you think you’re losing muscle, you swear you can feel the your precious biceps disintegrating with every passing minute. Well, I eventually canceled my magazine subscriptions and wised up. You don’t have to eat protein every few hours to build muscle, and you could eat nothing for an entire day without losing any muscle to speak of. That said, what’s optimal for gaining muscle? Is there a difference between eating two and five servings of protein per day? And if so, why? Let’s find out. 3:58 - What is protein and why is it important? 6:46 - What happens in your body when you ea

Build muscle and lose fat at the same time.It sounds so simple, right? Why shouldn’t we be able to do it?Well, some people say it’s a fool’s errand. Others say you need to follow “special” forms of dieting and training. Others still say it takes steroids.They’re all wrong.Building muscle and losing fat simultaneously (or “body recomposition,” as it’s often called), isn’t beyond the power of us mere natties.It’s doable, and it doesn’t require esoteric knowledge, fancy or newfangled methodologies, or drugs.There’s a catch, though.You may or may not be able to do it, depending on your body composition, training experience, and more.So, in this episode, I’m going to help you understand how body recomposition works and exactly what to do to build muscle and lose fat at the same time. Want to get my best advice on how to gain muscle and strength and lose fat faster? Sign up for my free newsletter! Click here: https://www.muscleforlife.com/signup/