0 (1s):
Coming up on the get lean, eat clean podcast.
1 (4s):
I generally recommend that you want to stand what your workout between a five to six hour interim meal window. So if you have a pre-workout meal that you don't want to wait more than five to six hours before you have the post-workout meal, if you, that means you have the pre-workout meal directly before the workouts, 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 normal meal, solid meal. A lot of them have two slammed on a protein shake, which also of course the marketing angle from those supplements companies. That's if you need it within say 15 minutes, then realistically, all you can do is slam on a protein shake.
0 (41s):
Hello, and welcome to the get lean eat clean podcast. I'm Brian grin, and I'm here to give you actionable tips to get your body back to what it once was five, 10, even 15 years ago each week. I'll give you an in-depth interview with a health expert from around the world to cut through the fluff and get you long-term sustainable results. This week I interviewed best-selling author exercise and nutrition, scientist, Menno Hanselmann's we discussed. Should you train in a fasted state training frequency for muscle growth, can caffeine age or workout his optimal routine to enhance productivity? And it's one tip to get your body back to what it once was.
0 (1m 21s):
I really enjoyed my interview with minnow. I know you will too. Thanks so much for listening and enjoy the show. All right, welcome to the get lean eat clean podcast. My name is Brian grin and special guest today is Menno. Hanselmann's welcome to the show.
1 (1m 38s):
I'm blessed to be here.
0 (1m 40s):
And meadow is a author. He's a physiques physique coach. I'm also a scientist and exercise 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 each area.
0 (2m 21s):
And w which one would you pick regarding diet pro productivity and then excelling?
1 (2m 29s):
I'd say my main specialty is the Dyess parts and you'll see that section of the book is the largest one. So, but the other ones are also very important. And as you said that you say it's there for the areas you were 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.
0 (3m 3s):
Right. How long did it take you to write the book
1 (3m 7s):
And total five years or so? I mean, the actual writing was two or three years in terms of, by the time I had had some work on paper and I was like, this is going to be a book, but if you count down time for my notes, well then it's like 10 or 11 years, but I guess yeah, depends on how you
0 (3m 30s):
Write. I hear it. And what sort of, before we go into more detail, what, what got you into, you know, nutrition and, and, you know, mastering physique and things like that. What, what sort of led you down that path?
1 (3m 45s):
I've always been into these things. I got more serious when with volleyball, we started doing some formal strengthening and I was also, yeah, I picked up on that very well. And I started doing strength, training myself, going to the gym. But even as a kid, I was already doing workouts at home with stumbles, since that not really effective stuff, but clearly the motivation was there. And then I just became more and more diligence and research 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 sciences association, it was more of a test for myself and the article, more of an ideal, you know, does what I think actually make any sense or I'm at just kind of playing here.
1 (4m 35s):
And yeah, it went from there. 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 would you get these kinds of results? How do you coach people? So I went sort of a level up and I started my what's on my PT course, which coaches, which coaches, coaches, essentially trains people how to become good coaches and things just flew very organically for me or for me, because it's something that had always had my passion.
0 (5m 13s):
Yeah, no, I, I would say I I'm, I'm the same way. It's just, when you're passionate about something and it's something and something that you want to 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 where there are few tips that sort of stuck out in your mind, maybe regarding diet that I've held truth have hold truth for a long time.
1 (5m 39s):
A lot of them, I mean the value of consistency and many of the tips are things that I've 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.
0 (5m 51s):
Yeah.
1 (5m 52s):
You know, there's no magic in a book like all of the year, he already super caloric foods and this is the magic way, fit those into your diets. And the calories magically wants counts. Right? It's about things that really work that are call anything, a hack maybe to the MSG soup. One is close to a hack, but anything that's in there, it's just solid practical tips that have been proven both to work in the field or if my clients or myself and in research.
0 (6m 21s):
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, which is podcast. I've had him on a couple of 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?
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And you know, whether it's right for some people and not others.
1 (7m 4s):
I think the carbohydrate requirements that you typically see advocated for strength for the knees are dramatically overblown and lack of credible 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 fields, even the evidence-based field has been a little dogmatic in AXA accepting the notion coming mainly from endurance training that strengthening these also need high carbohydrate insights. But the fact that no systematic review had been done, there have been lots of reviews, but none of them been systematic. So if you don't have a systematic review, you can essentially just pick the data as you'd like and build a case for, you know, you can, it's like an opinion piece to put it very bluntly.
1 (7m 50s):
And a systematic review is you have to weigh the pros and cons. You cannot exclude any studies. You have to create the April. I, you have to define what, what you are 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 was actually not a single well-controlled ISO caloric 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've been multiple studies recently over the last few years, that's challenged the idea that it's even a physiological mechanism to begin with that you eat something.
1 (8m 46s):
One of the studies that I like the most is where they have people eat up a seat, placebo breakfast. So they give them certain gels. And some people eat gels that have a lot of calories, 500 calories or so. And some people have gels that are practically devoid of galleries. And then you see that the people that ate 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 in a recent study that followed up on that. We're going to show it as 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.
1 (9m 28s):
So people think they need carbs. There's this research to support this by my job at all. And Carol dreck showing that when people think they need scarps, 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 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 movements.
0 (10m 3s):
Very interesting. So would you advocate then, like for example, I work working out in a facet state, let's just say resistance training. Is that, that something that you would advocate or that you practice in your own life?
1 (10m 20s):
No, 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 do, you know, even on the ketogenic diets, you can do it as two targets to gently guide. You can still get 15 grams 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 faster versus non facets, there is a trend that's facets is worse.
1 (11m 3s):
Nice might be because of psychological mechanisms. People are used to being not used to training fast debts, people being hungry, those kinds of things. Nevertheless, there is a transport for evidence in favor of non facet 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 transport, greater performance with protein intake, pre workouts, and also greater anibolism 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 have no substrate. So you can build new muscle, the best case scenarios.
1 (11m 45s):
Essentially if you're training your biceps, facets that your body's going to break down your quads to build your biceps. And that's not really a positive either because the next workouts you're to train, maybe your quotes and then the breaking down your biceps to builds or quads. So you, you need the protein and the workout periods is one of the most prime periods to the prime real estate in terms of timing for protein intake. So I see no reason to even risk that, even though I, I would agree that the research is not terribly strong, that you need to train
0 (12m 16s):
Right
1 (12m 16s):
With free workouts feeding.
0 (12m 19s):
And what about posts? What about that anabolic window? I've heard it's like two days long.
1 (12m 24s):
It is. Yeah. So yeah, the molec window thing 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 supplements industry ideal for like one to two hours post workouts and Ellen, our bonus going 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 facets, but if you train, if you ate pre-workouts, you don't need to run through the locker room and slammed out a protein shake to have immediate post-workout feeding. It's moral, generally recommend that you want to sense what your workout between a five to six hour inter meal window.
1 (13m 10s):
So if you have a pre-workout meal that you don't want to wait more than five to six hours before you have the post-workout meal, but if you, that means you have to pre-workout meal directly before the workouts, 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 normal meal, solid meal. A lot of them have to slam down a protein shake, which was of course the marketing angles from the supplements companies that if you need it within say 15 minutes, then realistically, all you can do is slam down a protein shake.
0 (13m 40s):
Okay. And just for pre-workout I know 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 with all these other w w can you touch on that maybe briefly if you know what I'm talking about?
1 (14m 2s):
Yeah, that was, it was funny. There was even a recent study that showed that pure anhydrous caffeine. So caffeine powder or capsules, and a greater ergogenic effect. So greater performance enhancing effects, then a popular pre-workouts combo with like all the good stuff that you see With. Yeah. It's already in citrulline. Think about title nine was even in there, like yeah, 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 stock into that as being a negative, but it's certainly very solid evidence that these compounds don't eat your results. Like just caffeine probably is doing 95% of what you're doing.
1 (14m 44s):
And the offers did raise some points about the no negative interactions. We tend to think, you know, if this works and 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 really the siphoning, how it works, but there appear to be negative interactions between caffeine and create a team and the short-term circumstances and particular the loading phase. And that those are also things where most people would say, yeah, caffeine spreads create things, grave. 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.
1 (15m 28s):
One study found that if you combine creatine and caffeine, I think it was strength development or muscle growth attempted to say it was muscle growth, but the group that just have creatine at the best results. In fact, they were the only group that had significantly greater results. Whereas the group that has caffeine and creative team, they didn't get significantly greater gains. So it would appear that the caffeine was actually, and that's a significant net negative in that context when you combine it with,
0 (15m 58s):
Okay. So speaking of all this, why don't we build a little bit of a routine for a day? W what would you say? And 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 that you have a pre-workout shit, you know, sort of talk us through that. How does that work for you?
1 (16m 19s):
Well, there are a few angles to this. So in my book, I go through the angle of productivity as well, which are, for me, it's also very important. So I kind of build on these concepts here, but I think they work together very well, because if you look at research, for example, you'll see that most world records and most high-level performances by athletes are in the afternoon and early evening. And research also suggests that score body temperature is highest at that point. And there is some research showing that you'll may also get better games. 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, be workout and in turn, most professors and writers report that they do their highest quality work in the mornings.
1 (17m 9s):
And this is dependent on sleeping. Well, of course, because there are a lot of people that they wake up and it takes them hours to get going, but that's a problem with your biorhythm and your sleep. And I can say from experience because I was exhausted, I was exactly there. I had massive problems with sleep in college, even mild to Somnia. So
0 (17m 28s):
How did you help? How did you help get that better,
1 (17m 32s):
Meticulous by rhythm 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, daylight lamp with 10,000 Lux to mimic the sun essentially has been shown to elevate your mood and subjective wellbeing. And also it essentially does what sunlight does in that it's prime. Sure. Or by rhythm to tell your body, okay, now it's time 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 of where your body says, okay, now it's nighttime. So we're going to get sleepy. And one of the big things that happens then is that the body produces melatonin.
1 (18m 15s):
My body though produces not enough melatonin or too late, which is why I benefited a lot from supplementation. And it's consistent times of everything. So your body can adapt to almost anything. It's not like many people will say are sort of an ideal schedule. And there is an ideal schedule, but you can kind of switch that schedule around it. As long as you do everything consistently, then your ideal schedule can be quite flexible, but there are a few components such as male training class. That's probably training later in today. If, if possible, otherwise you want to use caffeine pre-workouts and only pre-workouts and always train in the mornings. And then in the mornings, you do your most intellectual creative work.
1 (18m 58s):
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. Then the visual cortex. So most things like in general, social interaction is inherently quite arousing. So we can, we can always do, you know, 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 can 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 wrecks 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 rest of the day a lot.
1 (19m 43s):
Whereas if you do those things at the end of the day, they are quality during them. It's 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 ban at different times. And then based on that, you want to have your meals at relatively consistent times. And again, some twitching to work out between a five to six hour inner meal interval. And then remaining days you could spread across the day. Intermittent fasting can work on all the big, final, fast, live 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.
1 (20m 27s):
So we take, those are the key principles.
0 (20m 28s):
Yeah, those are all great principles. And I try to buy that. I feel like I buy a lot of them. I try to do all my, like, you know, like important work techs, techs, like testing things in the morning. And I do find as the day goes on, it's like, I try to just put all this stuff that maybe I don't need to concentrate as much on towards 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 to, if I tried to write a book, 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 so not like first I used to be first thing in the morning.
0 (21m 14s):
I don't want any more. I do enjoy the mid day workout. If I was going to 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 it through the workout?
1 (21m 31s):
Yeah. Is it your first meal of today or your seconds?
0 (21m 34s):
Yeah, it would be my first. Yeah.
1 (21m 36s):
If it's your first, I would ideally have at least an hour between the meal and the workouts.
0 (21m 40s):
Right.
1 (21m 42s):
I think most people into it to feel so 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 she wants beak, hyper amino acid Demia to a Corker with the workouts. Basically you wants your amino acid levels that you get from your foods. We were protein sources. You want those to be elevated in the blood by the time you're doing your workouts so that the body registers that the substrates is available for animalism. And there's an enzyme called mTOR. It's integrates the signals for animalism for muscle growth and want a key signal is hyper amino acid EMEA, and the other shake and all is of course, the mechanical tension on the muscle fibers and the, that what you create with the workouts.
1 (22m 30s):
So when you have both those signals at the same time optimized, you should get maximum muscle protein synthesis and long-term muscle growth.
0 (22m 39s):
So one, the two hours you'd say, and as far as what you're eating, you probably don't want to go crazy. Maybe some eggs exiting, you know, something.
1 (22m 49s):
Yeah. It doesn't even matter. 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. Okay.
0 (22m 54s):
Okay. Right. So what you would normally do. Okay. And then, and then, you know, let's say you do that and then you work out, maybe then your next meal, you could wait maybe three, four hours until your next meal.
1 (23m 8s):
Yeah. And I mean, yeah, in terms of macronutrients, like I said, you don't want the pre-workout meal to have at least 15 gram carbs, but you know, it's should be not, that's very, very
0 (23m 19s):
Difficult. What is that? An apple?
1 (23m 21s):
Yeah. Yeah. You're pretty much there. And at least point free and probably at least 0.4 grand per kilogram protein. So like 20 gram high-quality protein is a good rule of thumb at a minimum. You can go higher, much higher if he wants, but that seems to be the minimum to stimulate a robust, a muscle protein synthesis events.
0 (23m 42s):
Gotcha. Now, is that your typical routine, would, would you, when do you typically work out in the afternoon?
1 (23m 49s):
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 about nine had breakfast. And then at about two, I had a meal to breakfast was a big ball of Greek yogurt with raspberries and sweetener. And then at two, I had a big blades off whole grain spaghetti with pesto sauce and chicken and an olive oil. And then I worked out before this, this call start for me at five, I have to call.
1 (24m 35s):
And after this, I'm going to think we're going to go for sushi.
0 (24m 39s):
Okay. But
1 (24m 40s):
Maybe you
0 (24m 40s):
Mentioned that in your book.
1 (24m 42s):
Yeah. I'm a big sushi fan.
0 (24m 45s):
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 you typically like to stay like what's your carb count? Like macronutrient look like
1 (25m 2s):
At the moment I'm a, I'm kind of winging it like main, main gaining my carb counts probably at least 20% fat intake. I think I'm about 30, about 30% of my energy and fat. And then protein intake is about 200 grams and remainder is carbs and I'm at $37 galleries.
0 (25m 21s):
Okay. So you're getting 200 grams of carbs. Do you typically do one gram per body weight?
1 (25m 27s):
No, I don't. I don't actually count the carps. Like I don't even know.
0 (25m 30s):
Oh, I'm sorry. I meant to, I meant to say protein.
1 (25m 34s):
Yeah. It's I mean, I'm getting, I'm following my, the general recommendation of at least 1.8 grand per kilogram or 0.8, two grams per pounds of total body weights per day. And I'm a good 200 pounds. And then I typically go over that 10, I ended up about 200 or something.
0 (25m 53s):
Okay, cool. I like hearing about routine. 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 talk about it with you've talked on other podcasts. What is, what is good training volume optimally for muscle growth? Would you say?
1 (26m 16s):
It depends a lot on the individual volume is like energy balance energy balance is to own the diet science and volume on the training side. These are like the big two sort of scale or balances that you want to optimize for a given individual, depending on their goals, because volume will depends on it's almost stress level and sleep. I'll watch take a recover in general or recovery factors, impact falling tolerance. What are they're bulking or cutting if they're an untrained individual or advanced typically for a trained individual with somewhat normal life circumstances, the volume is going to be in the range of like 10 to 30 sets per week per muscle group.
1 (26m 58s):
And then after some outliers, like one famous example is psychosis, IFB, pro woman, Nina Ross, and her volume, I think was 48 sets. I think we're at four to glutes. Like she trained twice a day. She had just everything, everything going well. So he 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 put bumped in more volume, more volume results got better, better, better. So as she's natural, by the way. So that's a pretty crazy example.
0 (27m 34s):
Right.
1 (27m 36s):
But then on the other hand, I have some hard gainers that just get crushed by anything more than even 15 sets per week per muscle group or so.
0 (27m 45s):
Okay. Got it. So it really depends on the individual and just figuring out what works. So you probably say four weekly training sessions for the average individual four to five.
1 (27m 57s):
Yeah. If you want, I mean, if you want to do it in two and you want optimal results, I don't think that's possible and free. You kind of get optimal results, but they're going to be very bad ass workouts with four, for sure. You can get optimal results.
0 (28m 10s):
And what's your thoughts. I know you going back to Dr. John Jake wish, cause I talk about the X three quite a bit on air with, with Rivera variable resistance. I don't know if that's something you guys touched on and you know, he's a big proponent of doing, you know, like one set to fatigue and you just start 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 the x-ray?
1 (28m 36s):
Yeah, I mean, I'm a big proponent of variable resistance, but combined with other resistance, I think just band training typically, doesn't, that's 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 routes, the sets. 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 this position, when 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 at BurgerFi and research has found that the stretch position is the most important part of the movements because you stimulate not just active mechanical tension, but also passive tension.
1 (29m 25s):
And your strength level is quite high from the mid point or more shallow. So the sticking point is kind of in the opposite direction out. If you do a barbell bench press sticking point, it's usually a few inches off the chest. So then adding a bands can be a great way to overload the top parts, which otherwise from under stimulated. So then you get a very good compromise between the two, but just balance. I would even say it out often, like during COVID I love my clients that just had body weight workouts, and lot of people ask me, what do I buy? And typically they would, I would tell them, you know, rings, bodyweight, workout stuff. If you can get barbel dumbbells, that's a fourth grades, but otherwise we will mainly do we'll mainly work with body weight type exercises.
1 (30m 9s):
Cause just bands. I don't think you're going to get great results. They're almost isometric contractions and often in many cases.
0 (30m 17s):
Gotcha. Wonder did you guys talk about with him or no,
1 (30m 21s):
Not really. I think we have different views on, on points and topics. The main convergence we have is on carbs.
0 (30m 28s):
I carved. Got it. Yeah. I mean, I will say I've been using the X three ant along with some dumbbells mixing it up here and there. And it, I will say it is a little bit easier on the joints. Right. Cause you know, you talk about the sticking point where you're at. You're almost like you're, 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 and 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.
1 (30m 58s):
Yeah. And there was research to back that up as well. That's people benching with either chains or banned state or experienced left shoulder pain that people just just bench with a barbell.
0 (31m 8s):
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'm assuming way some type of way. And, and, and, and creating. Is there anything else that, that you liked for muscle growth?
1 (31m 30s):
I actually wouldn't even recommend way, I think way, just go with whole foods then more satiating. And there's actually research to show that if you rely on weigh a lot, the main need to either have a very high protein intake or meal frequency because whey is absorbed too fast to sustain or spaniel anibolism. So the supplements companies always aggregate way as like the best, because it's the fastest, but fast absorption and digestion speed is actually not a benefit in many practical contests 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 a it beaks. So you can elevate hyper amino acid EMEA to greater and greater levels, but you won't get greater muscle protein synthesis.
1 (32m 14s):
That's muscle. The muscle is full if you will. And it's with way you're going to hit that point very quickly. But then the protein is going to come in very quickly still, which means your body has an excessive amino acids. And what does the body do with an accessible amino acid? It oxidizes them. And it's not what you want as the metabolic fatal. If your protein, you want it to be used for both supportive services. So when you look at studies that compare whey versus casein, for example, then the supplement companies will tell you, look here, if all these studies here that show way beats Gacy, but they're older short-term studies. If you look at the studies that are six hours or longer, casein actually wins, it's at least equal.
1 (32m 57s):
And I think one or two studies or even more, I'm pretty sure it's at least two, 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 benefits of way 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 weight weighs more like if you can't get whole food or something and then, you know, way is okay, but even then I would say, is that really the problem?
1 (33m 39s):
I think also behavioral changes the problem, just like people say, I can't eat the workouts. And I say, okay, that's nonsense problem. One is that you think that that's true because it's objectively. It is not, it takes absolutely no time. It takes five seconds to pull out some smoke poultry from the fridge or to get some re Gilberts or something, making a protein shake is more work than eating a, some canned tuna, you know, it like it really is. You have to make the shake, shake it clean. It's nice. It's literally faster. So that, that is not the physical issue.
0 (34m 17s):
So yeah, I'm sure that the com the way companies would like to hear that. So, but, but, but I would agree. I think anytime you can have some type of whole food source, your best, your best off, I think a lot of it's just a marketing campaign for a lot of these companies. What about your thoughts were on essential amino acids? Cause there's a lot of those companies, you know, regarding like getting the correct amount of leucine and things like that.
1 (34m 42s):
Mm yeah. Supplement companies are very inventive and now 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. They give you the essential amino acids, then almost essential ones. The brown Stan amino acids, all the amino acids are in there. That's literally what the fines, high quality protein source, that it has a complete protein profile of all the amino acids. And also in proportions that have 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're getting worse results, just essential amino acids. They actually don't give you the same results as also including the non-essential ones, because it still substrates for muscle building.
1 (35m 26s):
It's still protein that your body wants to use. That the fact that your body can create it doesn't mean that it always will because it's still more, it's still easier still for the body to get from your diet. That produces itself. Cholesterol, for example, is a compound that's from food. And 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 encasing, it already gets a little worse because as we just discussed way as some limitations, and then if you take away from the way the normal central amino acids, you just have to essentially make immuno acids.
1 (36m 14s):
It gets worse still. And if you hydrolyze, it, there's also some research suggesting it, it gets worse. And then if you just take away to 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 the they'll be happy to sell it to.
0 (36m 39s):
Right. And what, what, what would you say would be one of your favorite post-workout meals?
1 (36m 50s):
Just any meal? Pretty much
0 (36m 52s):
An email. Okay. So like
1 (36m 53s):
The creatine works, I mean, creatine is 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 before adds of 15 to 20 grams for five days. And you should, if you're a responder, you'll, you'll see some benefits from bath, increasing body weights, increasing work capacity, and a minor increase in long-term gains. Now, along with some health benefits, potentially,
0 (37m 20s):
Would you say, I'm sorry, interrupt. You, would you say for creating that's something that is probably the only thing, maybe if you're going to supplement with something that would be, it sounds like, just because you can't get as, like, how much do you get from a steak as opposed to, you know,
1 (37m 36s):
Yeah, not much. I mean, there is creatine and steak, but it's not so much that you're going to saturate your muscle creatine stores, which is also what determines if you'll respond or some people are naturally quite saturated and maybe just eating meats is enough and other people not nearly. So yeah. Creatine is something that I generally recommend, but many people are unimpressed with it and I stopped taking it. Yeah. And if you're not impressed with creatine, you're not going to be impressed with anything else. That's legal and safe.
0 (38m 8s):
Got it. And, okay, this was good. Yeah. What, what would you say regarding, and going back to, 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 work with your clients on, like getting some type of filtration or buying a quality or, you know, organic, you know, being,
1 (38m 38s):
Yeah. I recommend filtered coffee. You want the paper filter to get the . I think that's how you pronounce it. And if you don't research finds that recent meta analysis confirmed this, you got a substantial increase in cholesterol because these sites Europeans, they erase the bad LDL cholesterol levels, quite substantially. The effect is larger than that. Of most other foods categories, which is very significant for something that doesn't even have macronutrients value.
0 (39m 16s):
Right.
1 (39m 17s):
So yeah, Starbucks is, is usually not tailored. And I think most of the commercially available coffee is not filtered,
0 (39m 25s):
Not filtered right
1 (39m 26s):
Now.
0 (39m 28s):
Yeah. Cause that's a pipe it's such a popular drink. And I think it's probably just almost over-consumed and relied on upon a lot of people,
1 (39m 38s):
Penis, widely regarded as the most abused drug on the planet. Yes.
0 (39m 42s):
Yeah. Yeah. I try to use it strategically, like you were talking about as almost like a pre-workout.
1 (39m 50s):
Yeah, it works funny enough though. It does not work as well as a hydrous caffeine
0 (39m 56s):
As what I'm sorry.
1 (39m 57s):
S caffeine powder or bills. So anhydrous caffeine that has not been dissolved Research. There've been a few studies showing that it works better when it's an hydrous 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 workouts, it is probably due to a similar mechanism. So yeah, typically I recommend when possible and hydrous buts, I mean the effects of caffeine are mostly psychological. It's mostly just a psychological kick up the butts to make you train harder.
1 (40m 38s):
It really doesn't do much physically, if anything, especially not in dosages that you can say, I mean, research says, it'll look at increases strength and everything. And the years when you were talking about those sort of six milligram per kilogram, that's like six red bulls for the average guy. So unless you're going to slam that down every pre-workout then any benefits you get are most likely, mostly if not exclusively psychological. And with that in mind, you know, if you like coffee more by all means.
0 (41m 8s):
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 you get around people who struggle with comfort, eating
1 (41m 23s):
Comfort, eating is extremely common and very misunderstood. And I think the most important thing to note with conference meeting and what people should learn when they experience it is that 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 that the cause is that 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. 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 sign.
1 (42m 5s):
And in that state, you really want to know that the cause is not a physical, it's an happiness 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 caught you to guards. That's it's in these cases when people try to rationalize and that makes it so much worse. If you is that realize, look, you're just unhappy and you need to find a way to make you happier.
1 (42m 48s):
And food is one such way, but it's a very, very ineffective way. I mean, the effect of eating on your happiness is super transients. It's not major and it's, it doesn't solve any of the problems that made you and happier so much awful. And Brahms, of course, it's comes with galleries if it's not good to maybe health implications, et cetera. So what you can also do is just watch an episode of a, your favorite comedy series, or have a talk with a friends or better yet with stress, if you can solve the actual problem. That's of course, really preferred, active coping instead of passive coping works a lot better in research and, and you know, it doesn't have to be a nutritional thing there.
1 (43m 31s):
That is I think the most important thing to, to realize.
0 (43m 34s):
Okay. Yeah, no, that's a great point and a few more questions and we'll wrap it up. I noticed 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, it depends on height and things like that, but w what would you say healthy body fat percentage? What did you come across?
1 (43m 56s):
So it's low. You have to be leaned, like not overweight for sure. And then it's mainly a question, especially in men, mostly men, right? Yeah. Okay. So I'll focus on mine. I'll give you the notes for any women listening, but for women, typically at 10% is going to be a bit similar, but women are more tolerant to higher body fat levels, but that's, yeah, that's, that's roughly
0 (44m 20s):
10%,
1 (44m 22s):
10%, but yeah, for guys, it's at least until 15%, the Lord a 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 diverse results. So the health benefits of fat loss exists at every level. When I had some tropical virus infection or allergy thing in Brazil, during my prep, I went to the hospital. They had every possible scan on the imaginable. Couldn't find out what was wrong, but they in the process, at least eight looked at all my auto markers and my heart rates while I was on caffeine was 30, 30.
1 (45m 8s):
My heart rate was 30 beats per two seconds. So I basically had the heart rates of an ultra professional high-level endurance athletes, which is a good thing. My blood pressure was like not low, but like super low for, for a muscular strength, serenity and all measures, insulin sensitivity was through the roof. Like, you know, pretty much like on the top end of the scale and all measures pretty much were super good. And as, 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, the oil improve without loss and the leaner you get the better to guess.
1 (45m 56s):
So the health benefits of fat loss are pretty significant 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 going to have the creases in your anabolic hormone levels. Now it's contentious to how much that actually hurts your health. And I think you're going to reach a point earlier where your virtue and your vitality, not so much your health, which means your, your wellbeing, your energy level, and after that's probably also your health.
1 (46m 40s):
Well, then your, your libido, those things they're going to tank earlier, the pure physical health in terms of longevity. It might actually still improve at least until, you know, at some point, it certainly thanks because, you know, we have an essential body fat level. If you diet blown that you can literally die of starvation. So that clearly is not healthy, but I think most people underestimate how largely the health benefits of fat loss are. It's it's well known. It's calorie restriction is the most promising way to extend human life that we currently have available. And that calorie restriction and its fat loss are essentially one of the same thing, you know?
0 (47m 21s):
So would you say that, so when you talk about calorie restriction and not show you have a client, is this something that like, if they're, you know, let's say their baseline is 2,500 calories, are you keeping them in just a little bit of like, like 2200 or 2300 over a period of time and, and, or just like a self experimentation on, on as far as how much, how many calories would work.
1 (47m 47s):
Yeah. You want to estimate their total daily energy expenditure, and then you want to set there, look at the weather. Their ideal energy balance is so say maybe it's a 20% deficit or a 40% deficit. Well, then you subtract 40% 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. If you have various mechanisms, though, for one they're eating less, they're going to, if they're are reducing their body weight, that's reducing their energy expenditure. And then something called adaptive from agenesis occurs. Basically the nervous system becomes more efficient with how with energy expenditure.
1 (48m 29s):
And typically that manifests itself also has a decrease in what's called needs or spot spontaneous physical activity or non-exercise activity thermogenesis. So basically are just activity level that you're not really aware of bobbing your head nodding walking. When you think shifting around to your sheets, those kinds 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. The other answer, if you get a lot of muscle, for example, it may actually be that your metabolism speeds up,
0 (49m 1s):
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 keeping protein at a good level.
1 (49m 14s):
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 also impacts muscle growth.
0 (49m 32s):
Gotcha. Okay. And then do you ever do days on rest days where you're in more of a, a catabolic state, would you do, I know you talked about some fasting do, do some fasting and off days and stuff. And then maybe on days when you know, you're training, you increased calories.
1 (49m 50s):
Yeah. I like calorie cycling for more than fonts clients, at least. And 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 today, after the workouts, not necessarily literally before the three, 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 nutrient partitioning and your diets, 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 can potentially improve nutrient partitioning with calorie cycling and moving more of your nutrients towards your anabolic windows.
1 (50m 36s):
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 going to be pretty much on for the whole week, but for more needs, that's probably not the case anymore. And then it can benefit you too. If you have, for example, you don't train into weekends, you train during the workweek, but not on the weekends. Then you can have lower calorie calories in the weekends. For example, you have to figure out if that is practical for you, but that would be physically a good way to go about it.
0 (51m 12s):
Okay. And last question I typically ask all my guests is what would you say if you were going to 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?
1 (51m 31s):
Well, I think 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 age 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 deconditioned to let yourself go a bit. But up until age 40, even 50, there is very, very little difference and muscle growth girlfriends. Some research looks at 90 year olds and compressed to 20 year olds. And if you look up the percentage gain of muscle mass, at least during your first eight weeks, 12 weeks of a program, it's actually the same.
1 (52m 12s):
There's no significant difference yet. So your total maximum potential of watch how much muscle you can pull down to it's most likely going to be less when you're 90 compared to when you were 20. But if you are as a nine-year-old, when you start lifting, you'll make gains like a new lifter pretty much mean you have a very poor baseline at that point. It's probably, but you can still make very big changes through 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 I think is one of the big things where a lot of people these days think, you know, determines th th the big freed free, oh, for 30 or 40 physiologically speaking those numbers, they don't mean Jack.
1 (52m 57s):
It really is, you know, your lifestyle changes that that has certainly big implications. How you think about things, how you train those things may change, but what your body escapable off it is not really decreased. Yes.
0 (53m 12s):
I'm sure that's good news for a lot of people. Well, oh, this is great. I appreciate all the knowledge you dropped on us today. Where's the best place for people to find you
1 (53m 23s):
Sure. If you, if you're new to my work, then probably the best way is to go to mental health smiles.com on the top, or immediately in your screen. You'll see the sign up 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 to most things that became more, most popular on social media, you've got 14 free lessons, and that's a, I think, a great way to get in touch with all the work I do,
0 (53m 51s):
Obviously.
