Brian (1s):
Coming up on the GET, LEAN Eat, Clean Podcast.
Menno (3s):
I generally recommend that you want to sandwich your workout between a five to six hour Interm meal window. So if you have a pre-workout meal, then you don't wanna wait more than five to six hours before you have the post-workout meal. But if you, that means you have the pre-workout meal directly before the workout, then you have quite some time before you can have your post-workout meal. And for most people, you can just go home, take your time, shower, have a, a normal meal, solid meal, rather than enough to slam down a protein shake, which was of course the marketing angle from the supplement companies that if you need it within say 15 minutes, then realistically all you can do is slam down a protein shake. This
Brian (35s):
Week I'm rebroadcasting my interview with Bestselling author, exercise and nutrition specialist Menno Henselmans We discussed Should You Train In, a Fasted State Training Frequency For Muscle Growth. Can caffeine aid in your workout the optimal routine to enhance your productivity and his one tip to get your body back to what it once was. This interview has tons of great info, was done in July of 2022. I think it's relevant until today. If you haven't listened to it, I highly recommend my interview with Menno. Thanks so much for listening and enjoy the show. All, right Welcome to the Get Lean Eat Clean podcast. My name is Brian Gryn and special guest today is Menno Henselmans. Welcome to the show.
Menno (1m 15s):
My pleasure to be here.
Brian (1m 16s):
And Menno is a author, he's a physique physique coach, also a scientist, an Exercise and Nutrition Scientist. So glad to have you on here. I actually just recently, I was telling him I just got his book, so definitely check it out there. It is The Science of Self-Control, and I'm not through it all yet. I've only had it for about a week, but 53 tips to stick to your diet, be more productive, and excel in life. And those are three areas I always, I'm working on every day. And my question, my question for you was perhaps pick one, one part of, of each area, And, what, which one would you pick regarding diet, product, productivity, and then excelling?
Menno (1m 59s):
I'd say my main specialty is the diet part, and you'll see that section of the book is the, the largest one. So, but the other ones are also very important. And as you said, you say that's the three areas you're working on. The reason I wrote this book is that I think these are all things that should be relevant for basically anyone. So I think, yeah, I, that's why I was confident in going a little bit more mainstream because you can always go to the, the mainstream in the sense of things that everybody will benefit from.
Brian (2m 30s):
Right. How long did it take you to write the book
Menno (2m 33s):
In total? Five years or so. I mean, the actual writing was two or three years in terms of, by the time I had it had some work on paper and I was like, this is going to be a book. But if you count down the time from my notes, well then it's like 10 or 11 years. But I guess, yeah, depends on how you
Brian (2m 53s):
Right.
Menno (2m 54s):
Count it. Yeah,
Brian (2m 55s):
I hear it. And And, what sort of, before we go into more detail, what, what got you into, you know, nutrition and, and And, you know, mastering physique and things like that. What, what sort of led you on that path?
Menno (3m 7s):
I've always been into these things. I got more serious when with volleyball we started doing some form of strength training and I was also, yeah, I, I, I picked up on that very well and I started doing strengthening myself, going to the gym. But even as a kid, I was already doing, you know, workouts at home with dumbbells and the, the not really effective stuff, but clearly the motivation was there and then I just became more and more diligent and researched with it. Anything I do in life, I like to do well typically. So for myself, I researched it a lot and I became quite knowledgeable. And the very first article I wrote and the certificate I got with the International Sports Science Association, it was more of a test for myself and the article, more of an idea of, you know, does what I think actually make any sense, or, I mean, I just kind of playing here and yeah, it, it went from there.
Menno (3m 57s):
Things just grew. People started asking me for coaching, which is not really something that was planned. I just started writing first right then. And then it became a business and then people started asking me, how do you get these kind of results? How do you coach people? So I went sort of a level up and I started my what's now my PT course, which coaches, which coaches, coaches essentially trains people how to become good coaches. And yeah, things just flew very organically for me, for me because that it's something that had always had my passion. Yeah,
Brian (4m 29s):
No, I, I would say I, I'm, I'm the same way. It's just when you're passionate about something and it, it's something and something that you wanna do in your own life, it's easy to sort of help spread it to others. Right. And what would you say, just regarding the book, I mean, there's a lot of tips were there's few tips that sort of stuck out in your mind, maybe regarding diet that have just hold truth, have whole truth for a long time?
Menno (4m 54s):
A lot of them, yeah. I mean, the value of consistency and many of the tips are things that have been very long established that people simply don't like to hear. They need to hear them, but they don't like to hear them.
Brian (5m 4s):
Yeah.
Menno (5m 5s):
You know, there's no magic in the book, like, oh look here, here are these super caloric foods and this is the magic way to fit those into your diets. And the calories magically won't count. Right? It's about things that really work that are, I wouldn't call anything a hack, maybe the, the MSG soup one is, is close to a hack, but anything that that's in there is just solid practical tips that have been proven both to work in, in the field or with my clients or with myself and in research.
Brian (5m 31s):
Gotcha. And, and I was also commenting on, on your Instagram page, tons of Great, definitely check that out because tons of great research you have on there regarding everything regarding muscle gain, fat loss, and I recently just had Dr. Bill Campbell who had a similar type page. And one of the things that I wanted to touch on first, and I know you were on Dr. John Jake, his podcast, I've had him on a couple times, and you guys touched upon carbs and, and whether you need to do, you know, whether you need carbs for muscle growth and performance. And I'm just curious, what are your thoughts around implementing carbs And, you know, whether it's right for some people and not others?
Menno (6m 12s):
I think the carbohydrate requirements that you typically see advocated for strength release are dramatically overblown and lack credulous evidence to support them. Which is why we, we worked on this paper and it's the first systematic review, which in itself should tell you something that I think the field, even the evidence-based field has been a little dogmatic in accepting the notion coming mainly from endurance training, that strengthening these also need high carbohydrate intakes. But the fact that no systematic review had been done, there have been lots of reviews, but none of them have been systematic. So if you don't have a systematic review, you can essentially just pick the data as you like and build a case for, you know, you can, it's like an opinion piece, to put it very bluntly and a systematic review is you have to weigh the pros and cons.
Menno (6m 59s):
You cannot exclude any studies. You have to create the AP priori, you have to define what, what you're going to research, what the terms are, and then you have to dig through the entire literature and you have to discuss everything. and we found that there's actually not a single well controlled isocaloric study that finds higher carbohydrates outperform lower carbohydrate intakes, none, not a single one. All of the research, which is not that much to begin with, that finds benefits of higher carbohydrate intakes. It's not calorie controlled. So it's, it just means more energy drives greater performance. And of course that's a very different saying from saying you specifically need carbohydrates. And there have been multiple studies recently over the last few years that challenge the idea that it's even a physiological mechanism to begin with, that you eat something.
Menno (7m 48s):
One of the studies that I like the most is where they have people eat a placebo breakfast So, they give 'em certain gels and some people eat gels that have a lot of calories, that 500 calories or so, and some people have gels that are practically devoid of calories. And then you see that the people that eat breakfast compared to those that just drink water, they perform better. But there's no difference between the ones that eat the gels with or without calories, which goes to show. And then a recent study followed up on that going to show that it was the degree of appetite suppression that seems to have a positive effect. So a lot of these mechanisms, which is also a central theme of my book, are much more psychological than physiological.
Menno (8m 28s):
So people think they need carbs. There's this research to support this by, by job petal and Carol Drag showing that when people think they need carbs, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. And when people always eat breakfast, they kind of need their breakfast to perform well because otherwise they'll be hungry. They, they think they won't perform well. So there are a lot of these mechanisms in play that actually don't have much to do with the traditional theory of carbohydrates as a fuel source that you need to directly stimulate energy expenditure and perform movement.
Brian (8m 59s):
Very interesting. So would you advocate then, like for example, like work working out in a facet state, let's just say resistance training? Is that, is that something that you would advocate or that that you practice in your own life? No,
Menno (9m 13s):
I don't, I don't recommend it In the book we also specifically advise against it because that's a case where you have only potential cons and no potential pros. So, we recommend at least 15 gram net carbohydrates within one to two hours or within a few hours of the workouts. And that's, I mean, that's very easy to, to do, you know, even on a ketogenic diet, you can do that to a targeted ketogenic diet. You can still get 15 gram net carbs in. So I think that that's very doable for anyone. And there's basically no reason not to do it because if we, in our review, if we look specifically at the studies of fasted versus non-fat, there is a trend that fasted is worse.
Menno (9m 53s):
This might be because of psychological mechanisms, people not used to being, not used to training fasted, right? People being hungry, those kind of things. Nevertheless, there is a trend for, for evidence in favor of non-fat training and with protein intake, we also see this, which is, we don't have a lot of research on this, but we have a few studies showing trends for greater performance with protein intake pre-workout and also greater anabolism, greater direct muscle protein synthesis, mTOR signaling, and probably also reduced protein degradation because if you're training and you haven't consumed any protein, then you are, you, you have no substrate, so you can't build new muscle. The best case scenario is essentially if you're training your biceps fasted, that your body's gonna break down your quads to build your biceps.
Menno (10m 39s):
And that's not really a positive either, because the next workouts you're gonna train maybe your quads and then it's breaking down your biceps to build your quads. So you, you need the protein and the workout period is one of the most prime periods through the prime real estate in terms of timing for protein intake. So I, I see no reason to, to even risk that, even though I, I would agree that the research is not terribly strong that you need to train
Brian (11m 3s):
Right
Menno (11m 4s):
With, with free workout feeding
Brian (11m 6s):
And. what about post, what about that anabolic window? I've heard it's like two days long.
Menno (11m 10s):
It is, yeah. So the anabolic window thing is, is interesting. I think history often develops in a pendulum like fashion So. we swing from one direction to the other. and we really saw this with the anabolic window where when I started, the idea of the anabolic window was kind of the supplement industry idea of like one to two hours post-workout and Lan agon coined this, the anabolic people theory, which I like. And then it turns out that that's probably not really the case. I mean, you don't want to train fasted, but if you trained, if you ate pre-workouts, you don't need to run to the locker room and slam down a protein shake to have immediate post-workout feeling. It's more of, I generally recommend that you want to sandwich your workout between a five to six hour inter meal window.
Menno (11m 56s):
So if you have a pre-workout meal, then you don't wanna wait more than five to six hours before you have the post-workout meal. But if you, that means you have the pre-workout meal directly before the workout, then you have quite some time before you can have your post-workout meal. And for most people you can just go home, take your time, shower, have a, a normal meal, solid meal, rather enough to slam down a protein shake, which was of course the marketing angle from the supplement companies that if you need it within say 15 minutes, then realistically all you can do is slam down a protein shake.
Brian (12m 24s):
Okay. And just for pre-workout, I know, I know you, you brought a study up regarding like caffeine and how the effects of caffeine along with like these other pre-workout supplements had the same effect, you know, with all these other WW Can you touch on that maybe briefly, if you know what I'm talking about?
Menno (12m 46s):
Yeah, there was, it was funny, there was even a recent study that showed that pure and hydrous caffeine, so caffeine powder or capsules had a greater ergogenic effect, so a greater performance announcing effect than a popular pre-workout combo with like all the good stuff that you see,
Brian (12m 59s):
Right? Like to
Menno (13m 0s):
Ized with, yeah, Toine Citruline, I think Bat Alion was even in there and like, yeah, all, all the, all the popular pre-workout ingredients basically together. And that was, I mean, I wouldn't take, I wouldn't put too much talk into that as being a negative But. it, it's certainly very solid evidence that these compounds don't aid your results, right? Like just caffeine probably is is doing 95% of what you're doing. And the offers did raise some points about unknown negative interactions. We tend to think, you know, if this works and this works, we put it together and then we have even more benefits. But that's not necessarily how it works. We have some pretty compelling research at this point, although it's, we're still in the infancy of it really deciphering how it works.
Menno (13m 46s):
But there appear to be negative interactions between caffeine and creatine in the short-term circumstances, in particular the loading phase. And that's, those are also things where most people would say, yeah, caffeine's great, creatine's great. Those are certainly one of the more established supplements that those that work and if you combine them well, you don't necessarily get better results. One study found that if you combine creatine and caffeine, I think it was strength development or muscle growth, tempted to say it was muscle growth, but the group that just had creatine had the best results. In fact, they were the only group that had significantly greater results. Whereas the group that had caffeine and creatine, they didn't get significantly greater gains.
Menno (14m 26s):
So it would appear that the caffeine was actually a net, a significant net negative in that context when you combine it with creatine
Brian (14m 36s):
Routine. So speaking of all this, why don't we build a little bit of a routine for a day? What would you say, and may maybe, you know, maybe this is something that I'm sure you implement, what is your typical routine as far as, you know, do you have something pre-workout, eat a little something, then do you have a pre-workout? you know, sort of talk us through that. How, how does that work for you?
Menno (14m 54s):
Well, there are a few angles to this. So in, in my book I go through the, the angle of productivity as well, which are for me is also very important. So I, I kind of blend these concepts here, but I think they work together very well. 'cause if you look at research for example, you see that most world records and most high level performances by athletes are in the afternoon and early evening. And research also suggests that core body temperature's highest at that point. And there is some research showing that you may also get better gains if you consistently train in that time. If you're very consistent, you can probably make similar gains in the mornings, especially if you also use caffeine strategically only in the mornings preworkout and in turn, most professors and writers report that they do their highest quality work in the mornings.
Menno (15m 38s):
And this, this is dependent on sleeping well, of course, yeah. Because there are a lot of people that, you know, they, they wake up and they, it takes them hours to get going, but that's a problem with your BioRim and your sleep. And I can say from experience, because I was, I was exactly there, I had massive problems with sleep in college, even mild insomnia, So, we,
Brian (15m 57s):
How, how did you help, how did you help get that better
Menno (15m 59s):
Meticulous BioRim control? So I still use melatonin every day, three to five milligrams. If I don't get adequate sunlight exposure, I use a full spectrum data lamp with 10,000 l to mimic the sun essentially has been shown to elevate your mood and subjective wellbeing. And also it, it essentially does what sunlight does in that it prime show bio rhythm to tell your body, okay, now it's time to, to be alert, to be active. Just like if you, if you don't have that effect, then at night you don't get the effect where your body says, okay, now it's nighttime, so we're gonna get sleepy. And one of the big things that happens then is that the body produces melatonin, but my body though produces not enough melatonin or too late, which is why I benefit a lot from supplementation and consistent times of everything.
Menno (16m 47s):
So your body can adapt to almost anything. It's not like many people will say there's sort of an ideal schedule and there is an ideal schedule, but you can kind of switch that schedule around. As long as you do everything consistently, then your ideal schedule can be quite flexible. But there are a few components such as mal training, fasted, probably training later in the day if, if possible. Otherwise you want to use caffeine, pre-workouts and only pre-workout and always train in the mornings. And then in mornings you do your most intellectual creative work and then you want to do things like meetings and calls. You want to do those later because the auditory cortex is more resistant to fatigue than the visual cortex.
Menno (17m 28s):
So most things, like in general social interaction is inherently quite arousing. So we can, we can always do, you know, a a a business meeting, especially if it's not one where you have to do something very, very difficult or if you just have to listen, you, you could pretty much always still do that at the end of the day. And if you do it in the morning, I've certainly found that it, it res havoc on the rest of your day. If you start the day with say, an interview and two meetings, then you are mentally very tired and it impacts your, the rest of the day a lot. Whereas if you do those things at the end of the day, then your quality during them is going to be very similar, but the rest of the day, the quality of your work is going to be a lot higher. So there's also a difference in what kind of work I plan at different times.
Menno (18m 10s):
And then based on that you want to have your meals at relatively consistent times. And again, sandwiching the workout between a five to six hour interal interval and then remaining day you could spread across the day. Intermittent fasting can work not a big fan of fast of more than say 16 hours, but in general it's, it's very viable, especially when cutting, when trying to lose fat and for certain individuals. So would you, I think those are the key principles.
Brian (18m 35s):
Yeah, those are all great principles and I, I, I try to abide, I feel like I abide by a lot of them. I try to do all my like, you know, like important work tax, tax, like tasking things in the morning when, and I do find as the day goes on, it's like I try to just put all the stuff that maybe I don't need to concentrate as much on towards the end of the day. And you are right, like an interview like this, we could do this in the afternoon, it would be just as good as probably in the morning as opposed if I tried to write a book Right. I'm probably better off doing that in the morning and not waiting till eight o'clock at night to do that. And then as far as workouts, like for example, like I usually do my strength training sessions like let's just say around one o'clock.
Brian (19m 16s):
So not like first I used to be first thing in the morning, I don't anymore. I do enjoy the midday workout. If I was gonna have a pre something, what would you recommend as far as food and how many hours do you think you need to give yourself before you then go into do, do the workout?
Menno (19m 30s):
Yeah, is it your first meal of the day or your second?
Brian (19m 32s):
Yeah, it would be my first. Yeah,
Menno (19m 34s):
If it's your first, I would ideally have at least an hour between the meal and the workout. Right. I think most people intuitively also prefer that. And then in terms of what you eat, it doesn't matter so much. I mean if you, you have like a really fatty high fiber meal, maybe you want to wait more than an hour, 90 minutes, two hours because you want peak hyper amino acidemia to a coker with the workout. Basically you want your amino acid levels that you get from your food, from your protein sources. You want those to be elevated in the blood by the time you're doing your workout so that the body registers that the substrate is available for embolism. And there's a, an enzyme called mTOR, it integrates the signals for anabolism for muscle growth and one a key signal is hyper amino acidemia.
Menno (20m 21s):
And the other signal is of course the mechanical tension on the muscle fibers and the cr what you create with the workout. So when you have both those SI signals at the same time optimized, you should get maximum muscle protein symphysis and long-term muscle growth.
Brian (20m 34s):
So one to two hours you'd say. And as far as what you're eating, you probably don't want to go crazy. Maybe some eggs, eggs, And, you know, something.
Menno (20m 44s):
Yeah, it doesn't even, it doesn't matter so much I think you don't really have to think of it as a pre-workout meal. Just a meal.
Brian (20m 49s):
Okay, okay. Right. So what you would normally do. Okay, and then, and then, you know, let's say you do that, then you work out maybe then your next meal you could wait maybe three, four hours till your next meal.
Menno (21m 1s):
Yeah. And I mean you in terms of macronutrients, like I said, you do want the pre-workout meal to have at least 15 gram carbs, but you know, it's should be not, not very d not very difficult.
Brian (21m 10s):
That's like what, what is that? An apple?
Menno (21m 12s):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're pretty much there.
Brian (21m 14s):
Yeah.
Menno (21m 15s):
And at least 0.3 and probably at least 0.4 gram per kilogram protein. So like 20 gram high quality protein is good rule of thumb. At a minimum you can go higher, much higher if you want. But that, that seems to be the minimum to stimulate a robust muscle protein synthesis event.
Brian (21m 31s):
Gotcha. Now is that your typical routine? Would you, would you, when do you typically work out in the afternoon?
Menno (21m 38s):
So today, for example, I have my breakfast a little earlier than normal. Normally it's more like maybe 10, but this morning I had a call at 10 which couldn't be moved to another time. So at, at about nine had breakfast. And then at about two I had a meal, two breakfast was a big ball of Greek yogurt with raspberries and sweetener. And then at two I had a big plate of whole grain spaghetti with pesto sauce and chicken and an olive oil. And then I worked out before this, this call started for me at five and I have a call and after this I'm gonna, I think we're gonna go for sushi.
Brian (22m 21s):
Okay. But maybe, but you mentioned that in your book.
Menno (22m 23s):
Yeah, yeah. I'm a big sushi fan.
Brian (22m 25s):
Yeah. Okay. So you typically do three meals and then you'll fit your workout in between, between the meals, And. what about as far as are do you typically like to, to, to stay? Like what's your carb count like macronutrient look like at
Menno (22m 40s):
The moment? I, I'm kind of winging it like main, main, gaining my carb count's probably I'm at at least 20% fat intake. I think I'm at 30, about 30% of my energy intake's fat. And then protein intake is about 200 grams and the remainder is carbs and I'm at 3,700 calories.
Brian (22m 57s):
Okay, so you're getting 200 grams of carbs. Do you typically do Yeah, for sure. One gram per body weight?
Menno (23m 1s):
No, I don't, I don't actually count the carbs. Like, I don't even know
Brian (23m 4s):
Oh, the pro, I'm sorry, I meant, I meant to say protein.
Menno (23m 7s):
Yeah, it's, I mean I'm getting, I'm following my, the general recommendation of at least 1.8 gram per kilogram or 0.82 grams per pound of total body weight per day. And I'm, I'm a good 200 pounds and then I, I typically go over that and I end up about 200 or so.
Brian (23m 22s):
Okay, cool. Just, I, I like hearing about routines, so just curious. And what would you say I, I, I looked at a few of your different studies that you posted as far as volume is concerned. I know you talked about it with, you've talked on other podcasts. What is, what is good training volume optimally for muscle growth would you say? It
Menno (23m 41s):
Depends a lot on the individual volume is like energy balance, energy balance is the d on the diet side and volume on the training side, these are like the, the big two sort of scale or balances that you want to optimize for a given individual depending on their goals. 'cause volume will depend on someone's stress level and sleep, how much they can recover. In general, all recovery factors impact volume tolerance, whether they're bulking or cutting, if they're an untrained individual or advanced. Now, typically for a trained individual with somewhat normal life circumstances, the volume is gonna be in a range of like 10 to 30 sets per week per muscle group. And then have some outliers.
Menno (24m 21s):
Like one famous example is I coach IFPB pro woman Nina Ross. And her volume I think was 48 sets. Wow. I think we were at for the glutes, like she trained twice a day. She had just everything, everything going well. She has good genetics, good, good everything, perfect, dedication, everything perfect. So, and then also typical female high work capacity and everything. So it was just, we bumped in more volume, more volume results got better, better, better. So, and she's natural by the way. So that's a pretty crazy example. Right. But then on the other hand, I have some heart gainers that just get crushed by anything more than even 15 sets per week per muscle group or so.
Brian (25m 0s):
Okay, got it. So it really depends on the individual and just figuring out what works. So you'd probably say four weekly training sessions for the average individual four to five.
Menno (25m 12s):
Yeah, if you, I mean if you want to do it in two and you want optimal results, I don't think that's possible. In three you can get optimal results, but they're gonna be very bad as workouts. Okay. With four for sure you can get optimal results.
Brian (25m 25s):
And what's your thoughts, I, I know you going back to Dr. John Jaquis 'cause I talk about the X three quite a bit on air with, with ver variable resistance. I don't know if that's something you guys touched on and you know, he, he's a big proponent of doing, you know, like one set to fatigue and you, you're starting to see that more and more. I don't know if you guys discussed that or do you have any thoughts around variable resistance and, and and the X three? Yeah,
Menno (25m 49s):
I mean I'm a big proponent of variable resistance, but combined with other resistance, I think just band training typically doesn't net a very good resistance curve. So what you want from the resistance curve is that it aligns somewhat with your strength curve so that you can get high levels of mechanical tension throughout the set. So if you're doing a, a band press for example, then you get very high resistance at the top of the press and basically no resistance in a stretch position. So, you know, in, in this position when your, your elbows are back now, if anything you want it to be the other way around because it's a stretch position where you can stimulate stretch media hypertrophy and research has found that the stretch position is the most important part of the movement because you stimulate not just active mechanical tension but also passive tension and your strength level is quite high from the midpoint or no show.
Menno (26m 40s):
So the sticking point is kind of in the opposite direction. Now if you do a bar bench press sticking point is usually a few inches off the chest. So then adding a band can be a great way to overload the top part which otherwise remains understimulated. So then you get a very good compromise between the two. But just bands, I would even say that often, like during Covid, a lot of my clients that just had body weight workouts and a lot of people ask me what do I buy? And typically they would, I I would tell them, you know, rings body weight workout stuff. If you can get bared dumbbells, that's of course great. But otherwise we, we'll mainly do, we'll mainly work with body weight type exercises. 'cause just bands, I don't think you're gonna get great results.
Menno (27m 22s):
They're almost isometric contractions, you know, in many cases.
Brian (27m 25s):
Wonder did you guys talk about that with him or no?
Menno (27m 29s):
Not really, no. I think we have different views on quite some topics. The, the main convergence we have is on on carbs. On
Brian (27m 35s):
Carbs. Got it. Yeah, I mean I've, I will say I've been using the X xray and along with some dumbbells, mixing it up here and there and it, it, I will say it is a little bit easier on the joints, right. Because you know, you talk about the sticking point where you're at, you're almost like your, I would say your weakest, right? Where you're talking, where you've got the dumbbell close to the, to the chest, it's a little bit easier when you're in variable resistance in the, in the bands. And as you're pushing, obviously you're getting stronger because your arms are extending. And so I did find it was a little bit easier on the joints from that perspective.
Menno (28m 4s):
Yeah. And there was research to back that up as well. That's people benching with either chains or bands. They experienced less shoulder pain that people just, just bench with a bubble.
Brian (28m 14s):
Right. Okay. And, what would you say some of the your favorite supplements for muscle growth are? I know you talked about creatine, so like, let's just say a post-workout, obviously I, I'm assuming whey some type of whe and, and and and creatine. Is there anything else that, that you liked for muscle growth?
Menno (28m 32s):
I actually wouldn't even recommend whey. Okay. I think whey just go with Whole Foods, they're more satiating and there's actually research to show that if you rely on whey a lot, you may need to either have a very high protein intake or meal frequency because whey is absorbed too fast to sustain postprandial. Anabolism. Interesting. So the supplement companies always advocate whey is like the best 'cause it's the fastest but fast absorption and digestion speed is actually not a benefit in many practical contest context because your body can only have a certain level of muscle protein synthesis at that point your muscles reach what's called the muscle full effect and it peaks. So you can elevate hyper amino acidemia to greater and greater levels, but you won't get greater muscle protein synthesis.
Menno (29m 17s):
That's muscle, the muscle is full if you will. And with whey you're, you're gonna hit that point very quickly, but then the protein is gonna come in very quickly still, which means your body has an excessive amino acids And, what does the body do with an excessive amino acid? It oxidizes them. And that's not what you want as the metabolic fate of your protein. You want it to be used for SSO protein synthesis. So when you look at studies that compare whey versus a casein for example, then the supplement companies will tell you, look here have all these studies here that show WHE beats casein, but they're all the short term studies, if you look at the studies that are six hours or longer, Cain actually wins. It's at least equal. And in I think one or two studies or even more, I'm pretty sure it's at least two.
Menno (30m 1s):
I can recall casein wins in terms of protein balance and in at least one study, I think muscle growth longitudinally. So that's, yeah, there's absolutely no benefit of whe versus beef or dairy or eggs, poultry, any high quality protein source. And those are all also have the benefit of having more nutrients and satiating you more. So I wouldn't even recommend whey whe is more like if you can't get whole food or something in then you know, whey is okay. But even then I would say is it, is that really the problem? I think often behavioral change is the problem. Just like people say like, I can't eat preworkout. And I say okay, that's nonsense problem one is that you think that that that's true because it's objectively it is not.
Menno (30m 45s):
It takes absolutely no time. It, it takes five seconds to pull out some smoked poultry from the fridge or to get some Greek yogurt or something. Making a protein shake is more work than eating some can tuna, you know, it like, it really is, you have to make the shake right, shake it clean, it can tuna is is literally faster. So that is not the, the physical issue.
Brian (31m 8s):
So yeah, I'm sure the, the comp, the, the way companies will like to hear that. So, but, but, but I would agree I think ha anytime you can have a, some type of whole food source you're best, you're best off. I think a lot of it's just a marketing campaign for a lot of these companies. What about your thoughts around essential amino acids? 'cause there's a lot of those companies, you know, regarding like getting, you know, the correct amount of leucine and things like that. Yeah,
Menno (31m 31s):
Supplement companies are very inventive in how they take a product and they make it worse and they sell it for more. So you have nature gave you a package deal with protein sources, right? They give you the essential amino acids, the normal essential ones, the brand chain amino acids, all the amino acids are in there. That's, that's literally what defines high quality protein source But. it has a complete protein profile of all the amino acids and also in proportions that correspond to human needs roughly. That's a defining feature of what defines protein quality. So when you take away some of these amino acids, then you find you, you get worse results. Just essential amino acids, they actually don't give you the same results as also including the non-essential ones. 'cause it still substrates for muscle building.
Menno (32m 13s):
It's still protein that your body wants to use. The, the fact that your body can create it doesn't mean that it always will because it's, it's still more, it's easier still for the body to get it from your diet that produce it itself. Cholesterol, for example, is a compound that's from food in some research has been shown to increase muscle protein synthesis and in some research also correlates with muscle growth. But your body can produce cholesterol itself, but that doesn't mean it will to the proportion that is optimal for muscle growth. So in almost all of these cases, the research is very, very clear that it just gets worse. Like if you take a whole protein source and you split it into weighing encasing, it already gets a little worse. 'cause as we just discussed, weigh has some limitations. And then if you take away from the way the non-essential amino acids, you just have to essential amino acids, it gets worse still.
Menno (32m 58s):
And if you hydrolyze it, there's also some research suggesting it, it gets worse. And then if you just take away the, just get the BCAs, it's worse again. And then just the leucine and it's still worse and then well you can metabolize it even further and then you get HMB, which is mostly bunk probably so, but yeah, of course they, they'll be happy to sell it to you.
Brian (33m 19s):
Right, right. And, what, what, what would you say would be one of your favorite post-workout meals?
Menno (33m 26s):
Just any meal. Pretty much
Brian (33m 28s):
Any meal. Okay. Yeah, so like
Menno (33m 29s):
Creatine works. I mean, creatine is as, as good as it gets, which is not very impressive. But just simple crediting monohydrates, three to five grams per day. I prefer to with a loading phase beforehand, or 15 to 20 grams for five days. And you should, if you're a responder, you'll, you'll see some benefits from that. Increasing body weights, increasing work capacity and a minor increase in long-term gains now along with some health benefits potentially.
Brian (33m 54s):
Would you say, I'm sorry to interrupt you. Would you say for creatine that's something that is probably the only thing. Maybe if you're gonna supplement with something, that would be, it sounds like Yeah, just because you can't get as like how much do you get from a steak as opposed to, you know,
Menno (34m 8s):
Yeah, not much. I mean there is creatine and steak, but it's not so much that you are gonna saturate your muscle creatine source, which is also what determines if you're a responder. Some people are naturally quite saturated and maybe just eating meats is enough and other people not nearly. So yeah, creatine is something I generally recommend, but many people are unimpressed with it and they stop taking it. Yeah. And if you're not impressed with creatine, you're not gonna be impressed with anything else that's legal and safe.
Brian (34m 36s):
Got it. And, okay, this was good. Yeah. What, what would you say regarding, and going back to I, I saw one of your posts regarding unfiltered coffee. And I always tell my wife, like for example, like Starbucks everywhere, right? I'm assuming their coffee is probably not the greatest quality. Is this something that, you know, you, you work with your clients on, like getting some type of filtration or buying a quality, you know, organic, you know bean?
Menno (35m 1s):
Yeah. I recommend filtered coffee. You want the paper filter to get the di diet terpenes. I think that's how you pronounce it. And if you don't research finds that recent meta-analysis confirmed this, you get a substantial increase in cholesterol because these, these diet terpenes, they raise the bad LDL cholesterol levels quite substantially. If the effect is, is larger than that of most other foods categories, which is, you know, very significant for something that doesn't even have macronutrient value.
Brian (35m 33s):
Right.
Menno (35m 34s):
So yeah, Starbucks is, is usually not filler. And I think most of the commercially available coffee is not filtered.
Brian (35m 41s):
Is not filtered. Right. Yeah. Yeah. 'cause that's a pop, it's such a popular drink and I think it's probably just almost over consumed and, and relied on upon a lot of people.
Menno (35m 51s):
A ven is widely regarded as the most abused drug on the planet. Yes.
Brian (35m 55s):
Yeah. Yeah. I try to use it strategically, like you were talking about as almost like a pre-workout.
Menno (36m 2s):
Yeah. It, it works funny enough though it does not work as well as anhydrous caffeine
Brian (36m 7s):
As what? I'm sorry,
Menno (36m 8s):
As caffeine powder or pills. So anhydrous caffeine that has not been dissolved.
Brian (36m 13s):
Okay. Research
Menno (36m 14s):
Therefore been a few studies showing that it works better when it's anhydrous caffeine compared to when it's in coffee or dissolved. And it's unclear why it doesn't appear to be a factor of the absorption or anything, but just like the recent study showing that the anhydrous caffeine performed better than the pre-workout, it is probably due to a similar mechanism. So yeah, I typically, I, I recommend when possible an hydrous, but I mean, the effects of caffeine are mostly psychological. It's mostly just a psychological kick up the butt to make you train harder. Yes. Yeah. Like it, it really doesn't do much physically, if anything, especially not in dosages that you can take. I mean, research says it'll increases strength and everything, and usually you're talking about dose of six milligram per kilogram, that's like six red bulls for the average guy.
Menno (36m 57s):
So unless you're gonna, you know, slam that down every pre-workout, then any benefits you get are most likely mostly if not exclusively psychological. And that with that in mind, you know, if you like coffee more by all means.
Brian (37m 12s):
Yeah. And I'm curious, you talk a little bit about like comfort eating and I think that's something that a lot of people do. How do you, how do you work with clients or, I know you mentioned maybe even in the book a little bit, how do you get around people who struggle with comfort eating?
Menno (37m 26s):
Yeah, comfort eating is extremely common and very misunderstood. And I think the most important thing to know with comfort eating And, what people should learn when they experience it is that it, it doesn't work. It's not effective. So the idea is that you, you feel bad, and this is also something you have to realize. The the cause is that you, you feel bad, you're stressed or you're unhappy or depressed or anxious. And that causes your brain to seek for forms of instant gratification. And food is one such thing. And if you put people in scanners that look at your brain activity, you can see that they become more sensitive to signs of instant reward, such as a dollar shine.
Menno (38m 7s):
And in that state, you, you, you really want to know that the cause is not a physical, it, it's unhappiness or just not feeling great emotional discomfort. That that is the cause of the problem. And the solution is, again, not really something physical. It's not like, and this is what people tell themselves, which makes it a lot worse. And it's, I think fed by many media and people that say your body is sort of, you know, searching for that food or it needs the carbs or it's usually carbs that's, it's in these cases, people try to rationalize and that makes it so much worse if you instead realize, look, you are just unhappy and you need to find a way to make you happier. And food is one such way, but it's a very, very ineffective way.
Menno (38m 50s):
I mean, the, the effect of eating on your happiness is super transient. It's not major it, and it's, it doesn't solve any of the problems that made you unhappy so much often. And problem is, of course it comes with calories and if it's not good food, maybe health implications, et cetera. So what you can also do is just watch an episode of your favorite comedy series or have a talk with a friend, or better yet with stress, if you can solve the actual problem, that's of course greatly preferred active coping instead of passive coping. Works a lot better in research and And, you know, it doesn't have to be a, a nutritional thing that is, I think, the most important thing to, to realize.
Brian (39m 27s):
Okay. Yeah, no, that's a great point. And a few more questions then we'll wrap it up. I, I noticed in on, on your Instagram handle, you talk about like a healthy body fat percentage and I think, you know, I have a lot of my clients do DEXA scans and obviously I'm assuming it depends on height and things like that, but what would you say healthy body fat percentage, what did you come across?
Menno (39m 47s):
So it's low, you have to be lean, like not overweight for sure. And then it's mainly a question, especially in men. Your audience is mostly men, right?
Brian (39m 56s):
Yeah.
Menno (39m 57s):
Okay. So I'll focus on men. I'll give in a note for any women listening, but for women typically at 10% it's gonna be a bit similar, but women are more tolerant to higher body fat levels. But that's, yeah, that's, that's roughly at
Brian (40m 8s):
Decent version. Oh, you said add 10? Add add 10%. Gotcha. Yeah,
Menno (40m 11s):
Add 10%. Gotcha. But yeah, for guys it's at least until 15%, the lower the better. Now when you go below 15%, then it gets a little more complex because there's not as much research and below about 10% you get divergent results. So the health benefits of fat loss exist at every level. When I had some tropical virus infection or allergy thing in Brazil during my prep, I went to the hospital, they did every possible scan on the imaginable, couldn't find out what was wrong, but they, in the process at least they looked at all my other markers and my heart rate while I was on caffeine was 30.
Brian (40m 50s):
Was what?
Menno (40m 51s):
30? My heart rate was 30. Wow. One beat per two seconds. So I basically the heart rate of an ultrapro professional, high level endurance athlete, which is a good thing. Yeah. And my blood pressure was like, not low, but like su super low for, for a muscular strength. Any and all measures insulin sensitivity was through the roof. Like, you know, that pretty much like on the, on the top end of the scale and all, all measures pretty much were, were super good. And it's because fat loss improves all of these markers. Blood pressure, not so consistently, but pretty much any other measure of cardiovascular health, cholesterol levels, inflammation markers, insulin sensitivity, they all improve with fat loss. And the linear you get, the better they get.
Menno (41m 32s):
So the health benefits of fat loss are pretty significant. Yeah. Only at a certain level they become offset by potentially suppression of the immune system. And this is below 10% typically then you get, okay, you still get those benefits, but you're kind of maxing, you're kind of maxing out systems that are already probably very healthy. On the other hand, you are gonna have decreases in your anabolic hormone levels. Now it's contentious to how much that actually hurts your health. And I think you're gonna reach a point earlier where you're hurting your vitality, not so much your health, which means your, your wellbeing, your energy level, and after that's probably also your health.
Menno (42m 14s):
Well then your, your libido, those things, they're, they're gonna tank earlier. The pure physical health in terms of longevity, it, it might actually still improve at least until, you know, at some point it certainly tanks because, you know, we have an essential body fat level. If you diet below that you can, you literally die of starvation. So that clearly is not healthy.
Brian (42m 34s):
Sure.
Menno (42m 34s):
But I think most people underestimate how largely the health benefits of fat loss are. It's, it's well known that calorie restriction is the most promising way to extend human life that we currently have available. And that calorie restriction and fat loss are essentially one of the same thing, you know. So
Brian (42m 51s):
Would you say that, so when you talk about calorie restriction, and let's say you have a client, is this something that like if they're, you know, let's say their baseline's 2,500 calories, are you keeping them in just a little bit of a, a like a like 2200 or 2300 over a period of time and, and, and or just is like a self experimentation on on as far as how much, how many calories would work?
Menno (43m 15s):
Yeah, you want to estimate their total daily energy expenditure and then you want to set their look at the, what their ideal energy balance is. So say maybe it's a 20% deficit or 30% deficit, but then you subtract 30% from the total expenditure and they need to monitor their progression over time they should lose fat, otherwise something's wrong probably. But over time their metabolism will adjust via various mechanisms. So for one, they're, they're eating less, they're gonna, if they're reducing their body weight, that's reducing their energy expenditure. And then something called adaptive for agenesis occurs. Basically the nervous system becomes more efficient with how with energy expenditure. And typically that manifests itself also has a decrease in what's called needs or spa, spontaneous physical activity or non-exercise activity for agenesis.
Menno (44m 2s):
So basically your just activity level that you're not really aware of, bobbing your head, nodding, walking when you think, shifting around to your sheet, those kind of things. You start doing less of those when you get really lean and that decreases your energy expenditure. So you may have to adjust your markers on the other end if you gain a lot of muscle, for example, it may actually be that your metabolism speeds up.
Brian (44m 22s):
Right. And that would probably be the key, right? If you're doing a little bit of restricted calories to keep, keep the muscle up, obviously get the fat loss down and ways to do that, obviously resistance training and and keeping protein at a good level.
Menno (44m 36s):
Yeah. And anything that builds muscle also works to preserve muscle. So nutrient timing, the things we talked about earlier, not training, faster nutrient timing considerations, sleep, stress, everything. Yeah. Also impacts muscle growth. Gotcha.
Brian (44m 51s):
Okay. And then do you ever do days on rest days where you're in, in more of a catabolic state, would you, do you, I know you talk about some fasting, do you do some fasting and off days and stuff and then maybe on days when you know you're training you, you increase calories?
Menno (45m 5s):
Yeah, I like calorie cycling for more advanced clients at least. And there, there are a few studies to support that if you move nutrients from the pre to the post-workout period, meaning like the first part of the day to later in the day after the workout, not necessarily literally before to literally after the workout directly, it improves nutrient partitioning, which is the ratio of muscle to fat that you gain or lose. So if you have good nutrient partitioning and your diet, then you lose fat and not muscle, maybe you even gain some. Whereas if you have poor nutrient partitioning, if you're an energy deficit, you lose mostly muscle mass, which is of course not desirable for basically anyone. So you, you can potentially improve nutrient partitioning with calorie cycling and moving more of your nutrients towards your anabolic windows.
Menno (45m 48s):
Now as We discussed, those are not one or two hours, those are potentially even a day or sometimes multiple days in a beginner. In which case if you're training four times a week, you probably don't have to bother with nutrient timing because your anabolic window is gonna be pretty much on for the whole week. But for more advanced trainees, that's probably not the case anymore. And then it can benefit you to, if you have, for example, you don't train in the weekends, you train during the work week, but not on the weekends, then you can have lower calorie calories in the weekends for example. And you have to figure out if that is practical for you. But Right. That would be physically a good way to go about it.
Brian (46m 23s):
Okay. And last question, I, you typically asked all my guesses, what would you say, if you were gonna give one tip to an individual who was maybe a middle aged male who was looking to get their body back to what it once was, maybe when they're in their twenties and thirties, what one tip would you give them? Well
Menno (46m 40s):
I think the, the biggest tip would be that you want to start, stop seeing yourself as a middle aged male. Because if you look at the research, middle aged really has no bearing on your capacity to build muscle and lose fat. Your energy expenditure may be slightly decreased, but that's mostly if you've been sedentary and you've just, you become dis deconditioned to let yourself go a bit. But up until age 40, even even 50, there is very, very little difference in muscle perforate. Some research looks at 90 year olds and compares to 20 year olds. And if you look at the percentage gain of muscle mass, at least during the first eight weeks, 12 weeks of a program, it's actually the same.
Menno (47m 21s):
There's no significant difference yet. Yeah. So your total maximum potential of what, how much muscle you can hold onto, it's most likely gonna be less when you're 90 compared to when you're 20. Right. But if you are as a 90-year-old, when you start lifting, you'll make gains like a new lifter pretty much. I mean you have a very poor baseline at that point probably, but you can still make very big changes to your body and energy expenditure. There was a recent study that showed it doesn't really decrease if you maintain your muscle mass until say 65 plus. So that, that I think is one of the, the big things where a lot of people these days think, you know, they turn the, the, the big, the big 3, 3 0 30 or 40 physiologically speaking those numbers, they don't mean jack it, it really is, you know, your lifestyle changes that that has certainly big implications how you think about things.
Menno (48m 12s):
Are you trained, those things may change, but what your body ISEs capable of it has not really decreased yet.
Brian (48m 18s):
I'm sure that's good news for a lot of people. Well, mano, this is great. I appreciate all the knowledge you dropped on us today. Where's the best place for people to find you?
Menno (48m 27s):
Sure. If you are, if you're new to my work, then probably the best way is if you go to mental health smiles.com on the top or immediately in your screen, you'll see a signup button for my newsletter. And if you sign up there as a new member, you get a tour of my most popular contents. So the things that help people the most things that became more most popular on social media, you get 14 free lessons and that's a, I think a great way to get in touch with all the work I do.
Brian (48m 53s):
Okay. Yeah. There and obviously Instagram and you can check out his book, the Science of Self-Control, and I'll put some Links in the show notes for that. So meow, I appreciate you coming on the show and thanks so much.
Menno (49m 5s):
My pleasure. Thanks
Brian (49m 6s):
For listening to the Get Lean Eat Clean Podcast. I understand there are millions of other podcasts out there and you've chosen to listen to mine and I appreciate that. Check out the show notes at Brian Gryn dot com for everything that was mentioned in this episode. Feel, feel free to subscribe to the podcast and share it with a friend or family member that's looking to get their body back to what it once was. Thanks again and have a great day.
