Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Exactly How I'm Eating, Training, and Supplementing Right Now

Episode Date: June 26, 2020

I get asked quite frequently about my personal training and eating habits. People who read my books, read my articles, or listen to my podcasts know what I recommend in terms of training and dieting, but what does my personal regimen look like? In other words, what’s really going on behind the scenes when you peel back the curtain? What’s my exact training routine and what do my meals look like? And which supplements am I taking and why? Well, if you check out my Instagram stories, you’ll get glimpses now and then. I occasionally post videos of some sets during a workout or pictures of a meal. But in this episode, I’m going to reveal the whole shebang. People ask to see a full day of eating or what a week of training looks like for me, and I understand. Seeing how someone who’s been dieting and lifting weights correctly for over a decade does things can be a valuable learning experience, so I’m going to give the people what they want. And while I’ve answered these sorts of requests in past episodes of the podcast, these routines change over time, so it’s due time I give a little update. My answer got quite long, too, so I also decided to make this its own episode, rather than sticking it into a shorter Q & A episode. So, if you’re curious how I’ve been eating and training during the COVID-19 lockdown, and what supplements I’ve been taking, find out in this episode. Timestamps: 4:07 - How are you eating and training during quarantine? 52:24 - What supplements are you taking during quarantine? --- Mentioned on The Show: Books by Mike Matthews: legionathletics.com/products/books/ --- Want to get my best advice on how to gain muscle and strength and lose fat faster? Sign up for my free newsletter! Click here: https://www.legionathletics.com/signup/

Welcome, welcome to another episode of Muscle For Life. I'm Mike Matthews, your host, and thank you for joining me today. This episode is a rather long-winded, but informative, I think you're gonna like it, answer to a question I've been getting recently, and that is, what does my diet and training look like these days?

And I guess we also throw supplementation in there. How am I eating? Like, specifically, what am I eating, when, and why? How am I training? Specifically, what am I eating? When and why? How am I training? How have I been training during the lockdown? What's my plan from here? Specifics like workout split, exercises, volume, intensity, and so forth. And then on supplements, what do I take every day and when and why? And I actually started this episode intending, when I was recording it, intending it to be a Q&A where I was going to answer this question plus others. But my answer to this one ran on so long that I called an audible and thought, hey, why don't we just

make this a standalone episode? Because this is something I've done in the past and it was quite well-received. It's something I probably should do on past and it was quite well received. It's something I probably should do on a regular schedule, like every quarter or so, or at least every six months, just give an update of exactly what I'm doing. Here's a full day of eating, a full day of training, a full week of training, rather, full day of supplementing and so forth. And so, yeah, here we are. That's what this episode is. And as usual, I go off on all kinds of tangents that are informative. I think you're going to pick up quite a few little tips and tricks that you may want to incorporate into your

eating and training and supplementing as well. And when you're listening, you will hear me refer to other questions I'm going to answer, talk about an upcoming book that I have, and I'll get to that. I don't get to that in this episode because again, I intended it for it to be me answering four questions, but that would have turned into like a two hour long marathon. And so what I'm going to do is I'm going to record another episode right after this, where I answer the three questions that I didn't answer in this one. I only answered one in this one, but the stuff that I'm gonna be referring to as if I were going to be talking about other things in the episode are just gonna follow

in the next episode that I'll publish. We'll probably publish it right after this. I'll have to see on the schedule, but it'll follow soon after this one. And that will just be a Q&A basically where I'm gonna pick up the three questions that I intended to answer this time around. Also, if you like what I'm doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, definitely check out my health and fitness books, including the number one bestselling weightlifting books for men and women in the world, Bigger Leaner Stronger and Th Leaner, Stronger, as well as the leading flexible dieting

cookbook, The Shredded Chef. Now, these books have sold well over 1 million copies and have helped thousands of people build their best body ever. And you can find them on all major online retailers like Audible, Amazon, iTunes, Kobo, and Google Play, as well as in select Barnes & Noble stores. And I should also mention that you can get any of the audiobooks 100% free when you sign up for an Audible account. And this is a great way to make those pockets of downtime, like commuting, meal prepping, and cleaning, more interesting, entertaining, and productive. And so if you want to take Audible up on this offer, and if you want to get one of my audiobooks for free, just go to

www.buylegion.com and sign up for your account. So again, if you appreciate my work, and if you want to see more of it, and if you want to learn time-proven and evidence-based strategies for losing fat, building muscle, and getting healthy, and strategies that work for anyone and everyone, regardless of age or circumstances, please do consider picking up one of my best-selling books, Bigger Leaner Stronger for Men, Thinner Leaner Stronger for Women, and The Shredded Chef for my favorite fitness-friendly recipes. friendly recipes. All right, so let's start with the first and that is how am I training and eating right now? What is my diet and training routine looking like? Well, not much has changed with my diet since the last time I gave an update on this, which was who knows how long ago, because I am very mechanical with my eating because I just don't

really care that much. I don't need that much variety in my diet to enjoy it. I generally look forward to my meals every day, even though I've been eating the same stuff for a long time now. And even if I don't look forward to it, I don't really care because it still tastes good to me every day. But let's go through specifics. So what I do is I wake up at 530 or six in the morning and I eat a banana and I have two scoops. I'll throw in supplementation too, because people also ask that. So I have two scoops of stim free pulse. And the reason I go with stim free and not stim is I like to have a cappuccino after I do

my cardio in the morning, which I'll get to. And I am more sensitive to caffeine as I've gotten older. When I was younger, I used to be able to do, I don't remember if I was doing two half servings of pulse a day or two full servings, but I would have a half serving or a full serving in the morning. So here's what I used to do. A full serving of stim pulse in the morning before I lifted. And then I would often do cardio at least several times per week around 7 p.m. And I would have a half serving of pulse. So 175 milligrams of caffeine around 7 p.m. Sleep totally fine. No problem. Did that for years. As I've gotten older though, I've gotten more sensitive to caffeine and I cannot do that. I cannot have caffeine at 7 p.m. now. My sleep will be terrible. I'll probably fall asleep fine, but I'll wake up seven times. I'll wake up every hour if I were to do that now.

And I probably get a bit of that from my mom. She's super sensitive to caffeine. She doesn't even have it at all. If she has caffeine, if she has a cup of coffee at 9 a.m., it will mess her sleep up. That's how sensitive she is. Now, fortunately, I'm not that sensitive. So what I'm doing now is I'm having the stim free pulse because that contains all of the goodies, but no caffeine. And the theanine is taken out as well because without the caffeine, you don't need the theanine. In fact, you wouldn't want theanine by itself in a pre-workout because it can have a sedative effect. And so I have the full serving, two scoops of Stim Free Pulse. Right now I'm doing the green apple flavor, which is nice and tasty.

I also like the blue raspberry. That's what I'm going to switch to next when I'm out of the tub of green apple that I'm working through. And then I go into an infrared sauna that I have and I read for about an hour or so. And why the infrared sauna? Well, if you head over to legionathletics.com and you search for sauna, you'll find an article that I wrote on it. I think I also recorded a podcast on the infrared sauna and why I decided to get one. It doesn't provide as many benefits as the sauna sellers would have you believe, but there is good evidence of several benefits that

it can provide like increased blood flow, possibly enhanced recovery, and also reduced inflammation in the body, particularly in the joints. And I've noticed that in particular. So I hit the infrared sauna and then I read for a bit. And then I go and do 30 minutes of low intensity cardio on an upright bike that I have, which is kind of a piece of shit. It's not very comfortable and it's kind of noisy, but it was super cheap. It was like $200. I think though it's time to get something better because I'm using a lot more than I used to in the past. So pre-Rona, I would do 30 minutes or so of low intensity cardio two days a week, Saturday and Sunday when I wasn't lifting. And since the Rona, since the lockdown, I'm not driving to the office.

I'm not driving to the gym. I have extra time in the morning. And so I was like, I'll add some extra cardio. And also I read while I'm doing it because it's low intensity. It's a little bit obnoxious to read at the same time, especially because I like to clarify words I don't understand. And I can do that with my phone. So I can use, I have a Google phone. I can use the, I think they just call it Google assistant to check words. So I can say define blah, and it'll pull the word up. And if the first definition doesn't fit, then I have to go find the definition that does. It works. It's kind of clunky and unwieldy. I don't know of any better way to do it, but it works. I get extra reading time in. So I hop on the bike for 30 minutes. And in case you're wondering, oh, is that too much cardio? No. So I'm doing a few hours, two to three hours of cardio per week,

and I'm doing five or six hours of lifting per week. And my general recommendation is to not allow your cardio to exceed half of the time that you're spending training your muscles because there is going to be an interference effect to some degree. That's my general advice. And something else to keep in mind, though, with what I'm doing is that is low intensity cardio. Now, it's not as low as walking. I am working up a sweat, but I can have a conversation comfortably. So that does qualify as low intensity cardio. Now it's not as low as walking. I am working up a sweat, but I can have a conversation

comfortably. So that does qualify as low intensity cardio. Moderate intensity cardio would be where you could have a conversation, but you couldn't talk like I'm talking to you now as if you're barely even exerting yourself. And really what I'm doing with the cardio is just burning some calories and reaping some of the additional, particularly cardiovascular benefits of doing cardio. And I'm not also really concerned with impairing anything in the way of muscle and strength gain because one, I've been doing home workouts, which I'll get to in a minute, and I don't have a great setup. I have some dumbbells, some adjustable dumbbells, and I have some bands and that's it. I have a pull-up bar and a dip station. So that's plenty for maintaining muscle and a fair amount of strength, but I'm not going to be gaining. I haven't gained anything in the

last couple of months, but I also haven't lost anything. So that is a win actually. And then if we also consider that where I'm at in my personal fitness journey is there's very little left for me to gain period, regardless of what I'm doing. Even if I had a full proper home gym setup, or if I was able to just work out like I normally was before the virus for the last couple of months, not much would have changed anyway, because I'm really at the end of my genetic rope for muscle and strength gain. I can gain back, I think, a bit of what I had when I compare where I was at before the virus to my previous personal bests. And I was getting close. I was getting back to my personal records on the squat bench and deadlift. And obviously there's a little bit of extra muscle that would come with that, but I don't think that I'll much exceed the standard for good natural strength, which, yeah, I'd say it's good.

It's not great. Maybe it qualifies as very good, which is you could think of it as 3-4-5. Three plates on the bench, so 3-15-3 on either side of the bar. Four plates on the squat, 4-0-5. Five plates on the deadlift, 4-95. And those are one rep max numbers for men, by the way. And if you can do that, you've done well. And I would say that's probably also the ceiling for most men. If you have great genetics and we're talking about natural again, if you have great genetics, if your body is just built to be really

strong, you can probably exceed those numbers. But if you don't, and I would put myself in that camp, I have decent muscle building genetics, but I don't have good anatomy for weightlifting because for example, I have long legs and long femurs in particular, I have long arms. So that means my squatting and pressing are just harder than they should be. My muscle insertions are not great for strength. I'd say they're probably okay. And the advantage that I gain on the deadlift for my long arms is mitigated by my long legs. So I've always made decent progress.

Probably my best progress actually out of the big three has been on the deadlift, probably for that reason. Whereas the squat and the bench press have always been a pain in the ass. So anyways, coming back to what I was saying is I'm not going to be able to gain much muscle and strength at this point anyway. I'm really kind of in a permanent maintenance mode, which is totally fine. And I've accepted that and I enjoy my training and I like how my body looks and I have other reasons for doing what I do than just get bigger and stronger. And so I don't care if my cardio is in fact interfering with my muscle and strength gain that isn't going to happen anyway.

Okay. So I do my 30 minutes of cardio and then I go make cappuccino and that is four shots of espresso because I like it strong. And I guess it's more like a cortado, which is equal parts espresso and milk. It's something in between a cortado and a cappuccino, kind of getting into the whole coffee thing, actually. That's why I sound like a pretentious douchebag. But I make my coffee. And then for a bit, I was making a protein shake. I would mix one scoop of Legion's Whey, usually vanilla or cereal milk, with one scoop of legion's plant plus, usually vanilla or chocolate. So two scoops of protein for a total of about 50 grams of protein, a little bit less. That'd be my breakfast. And the last couple of weeks, I've

just been skipping that and eating more protein later for no particular reason other than just not wanting to go make a shake because I get started working right away and then I don't want to take a break and there's nothing wrong with I don't need to eat protein right after doing cardio. I actually am getting some protein from the milk. Technically, it's not much, but there's no great reason for skipping the shake other than just not feeling like it, I guess. And so anyways, then we fast forward to lunch, 12 PM or so. I make a salad, a very simple salad because I don't want to take the time to make it fancy. I've been buried in work the last couple of months, which is cool. I'm not complaining. It's been nice to have a lot of work to occupy myself with, but I've had three book projects that I was working on. So one is the 40 plus fitness book, men and women that I'm working on for Simon and Schuster.

And that's the top priority. I need to deliver the manuscript this month and I will, it's just taken a lot of work. I mean, the last probably month or so it's taken five to seven hours of my days and six to seven days per week. In the last couple of weeks, it's been seven days per week to make sure that I can deliver it on time. And then I've had this Beyond Bigger, Leaner, Stronger 2.0 project that I'm going to talk about. And what I was doing is just working on it concurrently. So I would make sure that I got enough done on Muscle for Life, which is the tentative title of the 40 plus book, and then put whatever time I could outside of my other duties and tasks

related to Legion, for example. I still have regular Legion work I have to do, of course. I put that into BBLS 2.0. And so that's how that came along. And then I also have a book that is titled Fitness Science Explained. And that's a book I co-wrote with James Krieger, and that's how that came along. And then I also have a book that is titled Fitness Science Explained, and that's a book I co-wrote with James Krieger, and that's going to be coming out soon. It's kind of out of the blue, out of nowhere. And that's something that we worked on some time ago, and I was going to release it as a digital course and then decided against digital courses for reasons I won't go into here. I won't get off on a tangent, but if anybody's interested, you can email me, michaelmosforlife.com. I'll explain. But basically, I just don't think that

business model is very viable. It used to be great and now it's on the decline and I don't think that's going to change. And so we had this manuscript really, and I was like, shit, we should actually just publish it as a book. And so that book is going to be coming out by the end of July. And so most of the work was done, but I did have to do some reviewing and some editing and make some changes to that. And then of course, there was just the random stuff that comes up when you run businesses, right? It's kind of like firefighting. Things are always on fire and you have to decide which fires you're going to put out and which ones you're going to let burn. And so being that busy, I just don't really care to put too much thought or creativity into my meal plan. Again, especially because I don't need to,

I can just enjoy a simple salad of lettuce and I'll mix in some arugula, just kind of like the taste of it and some spinach. That's the base to make sure I get in plenty of dark leafy greens. That's where I get in my dark leafy greens, is my lunch, is a salad, and some sort of protein. Sometimes it is chicken. Sometimes it is lean beef. Sometimes it's fish. If it's fish, it's usually salmon. Just kind of depends what I feel like when I do my meal prep, which I do on Sundays. I cook my protein for my salads and that's it. That's all I'm prepping these days because I don't need to prep anything else. So that's my lunch. And then in the afternoon, I'll have a protein shake. So what I'm doing

these days is two scoops of Legion Plant Plus. And what I like to do is I like to mix, how much water is it? I'd have to, maybe it's eight ounces. I would say six to eight ounces, enough water that I can stir it up into a pudding so I can eat it. And why do I like that? I don't know. I'm weird, but I prefer that over drinking it. Even though drinking it's fine, it tastes the same. I just like the consistency, I guess, of eating it like a pudding. And so I'll do that. And I should probably also say that up until this point, I've probably also snacked on some strawberries that my kids are eating. It's usually a fruit of some kind that I'm snacking on some blueberries. Maybe I'll eat an apple, but nothing else substantial other than what I've talked about so far. I'll have some hummus at lunch too. I like to just eat hummus

straight out of the container. I'm a weird person. I'm an acquired taste. That's what I tell people. Okay. So this is somewhere between three and four. I've had my protein pudding. And then we, let's see, around six, 30 to seven is usually when I'll stop working. And then I go and I prepare my dinner and I'll usually have some carbs. So sometimes it is some pita bread again, that I just eat plain because I like it. I toast it. And I particularly like white pita bread, wheat pita bread is okay, but I like white more. And then I make what I just call vegetable slop. That's my dinner. It's been my dinner for so long now because it tastes good. And there are easy ways to change the taste of it while also providing a lot of vegetables and a variety of vegetables, which is important if you really want

to optimize your diet. You don't have to do that. You can just ensure that you're getting three to five servings of vegetables per day. I would say minimally work in some dark leafy greens, but otherwise you don't have to put too much thought into what those vegetables are. Just the stuff that your mom would tell you to eat basically. But if you want to try to, I guess, get as much benefit from the food that you're eating as possible, it is smart to choose some vegetables over others. And this is actually something I talk about in BBLS 2.0 in a chapter where I'm kind of talking shit about superfoods because that is just a marketing buzzword. And I prefer the term functional food and some foods are more quote unquote functional than others. And so in my vegetable slop will go some of these highly

functional foods like garlic, for example. And what I do specifically there is I chop the garlic up and let it sit. And that preserves some of its unique molecules, some of its unique benefits. If you just chop garlic up and then go throw it in some olive oil and cook it up right away, you will destroy some of its unique benefits. And then it really just becomes a decent antioxidant. But by letting it sit for, I believe there's research on this actually, I believe it's 10 or 15 minutes. So mine sits a bit longer, but if you let it sit for 10 or 15 minutes, so you can preserve an enzyme that maintains a unique molecule that can benefit you further beyond just the garlic's antioxidant capacity. And so anyway, what goes

into this vegetable slop is there's always cruciferous veggies of some kind. So these days I like to do a mixture of broccoli, cauliflower, and Brussels sprouts. So those are the cruciferous. There's always mushrooms that go in there. There's always onion, just kind of like the taste. There's always some sort of colorful vegetable. That's a good rule of thumb is you remember the whole eat the rainbow thing, eating a variety of colorful vegetables is good for your health. So there's some sort of pepper. Sometimes it's red, green, yellow. Really, I just decide randomly when I'm grocery shopping, what do I feel like buying in the moment? And there's carrot as well. I put

carrot in there. That's another specifically chosen functional food, so to speak. And I'm cooking these vegetables in some olive oil. So that's good polyunsaturated fat. And I'm adding a few spices. These days it's pepper. It is black cumin, the little seeds. That's also a functional food that I've chosen specifically. And again, these are things I talk about in BBLS 2.0. And I'm using rosemary, thyme, and pepper. That's what I'm using right now. And I also have some liquids, some sauces that I put in there. I put some soy sauce and I put some hot, it's just called chili oil. I've also used spicy sesame oil, which I've been trying to find. I was able to buy it once and they didn't have it. And it was quite good because I like the taste of sesame oil. And oh, I also use sesame

seeds. That's another thing I throw in there because I like the taste of sesame and rice vinegar. I love vinegar. And so that's the vegetable slop, right? Put all that into a big pot and turn it on low, cover it. And then I go and I do my lifting. Now, for the longest time, I was lifting first thing in the morning. And given the setup of my life at the time, I preferred that because it just fit my schedule best. When I was going to an office, the gym was in the same complex. So it was convenient that I could drive to the office slash gym, work out, go upstairs. And I preferred that over working out later just to get it out of the way, I guess, was really the main thing. I'm stronger if I train later. Probably my best time to train,

and many guys will find this, is 3, 4, 5 p.m., something like that. So I'm not even optimizing it in that regard. I'm training around 7 p.m., something like that. So I'm not even optimizing it in that regard. I'm training around 7 p.m., maybe even as late as, I might even start as late as 8, depending on how late I was working. But I do find that I am a bit stronger training later in the day, even if it's that late versus what I was doing in the past, which was anywhere from, let's say as early as 6.30, maybe even six in the morning, and then as late as maybe 7.30. And the fact that I now I'm just working out at home, I don't have to drive anywhere. And the fact that I'm doing cardio as well and reading while I'm doing the cardio, I prefer to do that in the morning because I find I have more attention,

more energy. I can focus better on what I'm reading first thing in the morning versus 7 or 8 p.m. at night after I've already done a workout in the morning and worked all day. And the vast majority of my work requires mental energy. It's not just droning through repetitive tasks. I really have to think and I'm not exhausted by the end of the day, but I can definitely feel a difference in terms of energy levels and focus. So I would rather do my lifting at night as opposed to my cardio and then try to read have a pair of adjustable Bowflex dumbbells that go up to 90 pounds and they're an awkward 90 pounds. So they feel heavier. I feel like I get more resistance, more mileage out of them just because they're awkward. And I have powerlifting bands. So they go up to 125 pounds of resistance. And it's just a collection of big rubber bands,

basically. And I have a pull-up bar from Icon Fitness, I believe is the name of the company. It's sturdy. It works, goes into a doorway. I can put it away simple. And I have a dip station, which is great for dips and inverted rows. And so what I've been doing for my workouts is kind of a BLS 1.0, a bigger, leaner, stronger 1.0 first edition, old school, just a simple body part split where I'm getting 12 to 16, depending on really what I feel like doing, 12 to 16 hard sets per major muscle group per week. That's really all I'm going for, which is plenty to maintain. I could maintain my physique on quite a bit less than that, actually, probably half of that, maybe even less than that, depending on what exercises

I'm doing. But that's a sweet spot where I'm, 45 to 60 minute workout. 45, if I'm doing 12 sets, I'd say I get most of those workouts done probably in 45 minutes. If I want to do 16 sets, maybe it's a 60 minute workout. Work up a sweat and burn a fair amount of calories. And again, know that it's plenty to maintain my physique, which is not only my goal during the lockdown, but really just my goal in general. Now that said, before the lockdown, what I was doing is I was doing BBLS 2.0, and that's a more difficult training program than what I've been doing at home. It's still about, let's say 15 to 16 hard sets per major muscle group per week, maybe as low as 12 on

some of the smaller muscle groups, but it averages out to about 15. However, due to the programming, due to the periodization and the exercises, of course, just doing barbell stuff is a lot harder than dumbbell stuff, period. It was a more difficult training routine. And I enjoyed that. I did that for about six months while I was writing the book and refining the programming and going through all the workouts, like the specific workouts that I'm recommending in the bonus material. So similar to Bigger, Leaner, Stronger, BBLS will give you one phase. It'll give you all the principles of the programming, so you can just do it yourself. Then it'll also give you a phase, one macro cycle of training, 16-week macro cycle of training that gets you started. And from there, you'll be able to create your own programs based on what you've learned,

or you'll be able to just continue with my programming that I'm giving you in the bonus material, which will have a year's worth of workouts. And so that's what I was doing before, and I was really enjoying it. Again, I was getting back to my previous personal record numbers. I was enjoying my workouts, even though I knew not much was going to change with my physique. That wasn't really the reason to do it. It was just to make sure that I was happy with exactly what's in the book and that I had worked out as many kinks as I could. I'm already getting into my next question, which is a BBLS question. Anyway, so let's see. I do my home workout for the specific body part split. What I'm doing is chest on Monday, of course. And so I'm doing pressing, pushing stuff on Monday, pulling stuff on Tuesday, shoulder stuff on Wednesday, leg stuff on Thursday and arm stuff on Friday. Very simple. Again, that's just like a BLS 1.0 style workout, getting in 12 to 16 hard sets per major muscle group per week. There's not much overlap between

those workouts. Obviously there is some, a chest workout or a press or push workout is also providing volume for your triceps, for example. And so that means that my individual sessions are 10 to 12 hard sets per major muscle group per session. You don't want to go too far beyond that because you really have reached the point of diminishing returns as far as training stimulus goes. And so let's see, as far as deloading goes, I should mention that I haven't been deloading as frequently as I was previously because my training just isn't as intense. It doesn't require it. So on BBLS 2.0, you deload every fourth week. So you're deloading once a month, three weeks of hard training, deload, and you just rinse and repeat. I have deloaded once since the Rona hit. And really

all I did was I just didn't lift weights for, I believe, four days, maybe five days. I continued doing cardio because again, it's low intensity. It's not stressing my body at all. And I just dropped out the way. I just didn't do anything for my muscles for about a week or so. So it took a little break and I just did that on feel the symptoms that I start to notice when I need to deload is my training weights start to feel heavy. All of a sudden, like the weights I'm used to using, just start feeling heavy. and I start losing motivation to train. Like I don't look forward to my workouts. I don't want to do them. And that can happen obviously for other reasons. But when it's kind of a consistent thing for me, that's a red flag that I probably

need to back off, turn the volume dial down a little bit for a week or so. And I'll usually notice some joint issues of some kind. It could be some pain. It could be some clicking. My joints just tend to get a little bit irritated if I train for too long without deloading. And often my sleep will get kind of messed up too. And so in this case, what I noticed is mostly just the training weights and the motivation point. My joints were okay, again, because I'm doing no barbell work. There's no barbell squatting. There's no dumbbell or sorry, a barbell deadlifting. It's all dumbbell stuff. And a dumbbell front squat actually is pretty difficult. I think you can replicate the barbell squat fairly well with a dumbbell front squat, but the dumbbell deadlift is just not the same. I mean, we can start with the load, right? My dumbbells go up to 90 pounds each. And before the virus, I've checked

my training logs, but I believe I was up to about four. My 1RM was around 435 or 440. So I remember doing sets with 405 on the deadlift, maybe a little bit heavier. And so there's no comparison there, right? That's it on the training side of things. Oh, and as far as progression goes, I didn't even track those home workouts and wasn't trying to progress because again, it didn't really matter. I didn't even really have the setup for it. I was just trying to get a good workout in every day. I was making sure that the weights were heavy and I was going close to technical failure and feeling like I had really exerted myself at least maybe at a six or seven out of 10 and that was enough. So after I'm done working out, I go and I eat my vegetable slop and I'll add some carbs because as

you have probably caught on to, by this point, I haven't eaten that many calories. Again, there's been some snacking in there, usually some fruit, sometimes some nuts, maybe even some yogurt, like some skier. But my main meals have not been very big because I prefer to have more calories at night. I don't like feeling very full when I'm working because I find it kind of distracting. So I eat light throughout the day and then I load up calories later. And so I've had some carbs before I worked out. Now, after I work out, I have oatmeal and that's another very functional food. So I'll make some oatmeal, something else I just like. I really like oatmeal. And in the past,

I've gotten fancy and made oatmeal dishes where you would bake them. You can find recipes actually over at legionathletics.com when I was into it, if you search for oatmeal recipes. And these days, I don't bother with it just because of the time. And I like eating oatmeal just with some maple syrup and some milk and some salt. And so I make anywhere from a half of a cup to a full cup dry of oatmeal. I like steel cut oats more than instant. Instant, of course, cook faster, but I like the chewiness that you get of the kind of old fashioned. I believe steel cut is the proper term for that, but you know, the old fashioned oats, the thicker oats and the amount depends on what I'm doing with my diet. So for the first couple of months

of the lockdown, I was cutting because why not? I was like, eh, I'm doing with my diet. So for the first couple of months of the lockdown, I was cutting because why not? I was like, eh, I'm doing cardio every day. This should be pretty easy actually, because I still get to eat basically how I was eating before, which on average, maybe 2,700, 2,600 calories a day, 26 to 2,800 calories a day there, if you average it out. And so I was like, to 2,800 calories a day there if you average it out, right? And so I was like, eh, I could actually just continue eating that way and lose some fat because why not, right? And it worked well. So I kept my calories probably around 2,400, maybe as high as 2,600. But by adding the cardio in every day, my total daily energy expenditure obviously went up a bit, probably hovered around 3,000. When you factor in, of course, my lifting workouts and then just other physical activity,

some days I would go for a walk as well with my family. Nothing vigorous, maybe just 15, 20-minute walk. But hey, that adds up if you do it several times per week, right? And so I was cutting for the first couple of months. I lost five or six pounds and am quite lean. I would say I'm almost shredded. I don't think I'm there. I'm not shredded yet, but I'm pretty lean, like ab vascularity starting to come back, arm vascularity where you get these kind of spidery looking veins that go across your biceps

and stuff, you know, weird neurotic bodybuilding things that us weightlifters are just into. We're just into it. And so that has worked well. And then for the last couple of weeks or so, I've gone more into a maintenance phase in terms of my calories. And on some days, that means I'm trying to eat around 3,000 calories. On other days, it means that I'm eating a little bit less because I plan on eating more on the weekends. And I should preface my explanation of what I'm doing in that regard with this isn't ideal. If you're trying to maximize muscle and strength gain, it's not ideal to be in a deficit at all. You actually want to just be in a consistent

surplus. But even if you're trying to do like a lean gains kind of maintenance with benefits approach, it's not ideal to be in a slight deficit several days during the week when you're training. So then you can eat a lot on the weekends. It's much better to actually flip that around and be in a slight surplus throughout the week when you're training and then a deficit on the weekends when you're not training. At least if you're like most of the people listening, you're working out Monday through Friday and then, or you're lifting Monday through Friday, and then you're not lifting on the weekends. That's a better way to cycle your calories. But coming back to my personal situation, it doesn't matter whether I do it that way or I do

it the way that I'm doing it. The results are going to be the same, which is maintenance, which is why I really don't care that much. And so the amount of oatmeal that I'm eating kind of depends on what I want to do in the week. And so for example, it was my birthday on the 13th. Happy birthday, me. I'm 36, by the way, in case you're wondering. And my parents came and visited and I knew there's just going to be more random food around. And so why not? I'll snack on the chips. I'll snack on the French fries. I'll snack on the pizza or pizza crusts, or I'll grill the ribeye steak and eat more fat, maybe a dinner than I would normally eat, whatever. And so the amount of oatmeal that I was eating and really just my basic meal plan, I would stick to the salad. I would stick to the protein shakes. I would stick to getting

in vegetables, but I was kind of flexible with all the other stuff. But now that they're gone, I'm back on track. And so a half a cup dry is my lower calorie option. And a full cup dry would be my higher calorie option. Again, depending on how I'm going to eat on the weekends. And oh, one other thing that I'll have every day just because I like it is some dark chocolate. That's my little treat. Not much because I don't really care to eat that much, maybe 100 or 150 calories of dark chocolate a day. And there's a brand called Choco Love. That's the name of the brand and it actually is very good. I've tried quite a few chocolate brands at this point, including some fancy kind of connoisseur gourmet brands. And some of those were better than Choco Love, but Choco Love is available at Whole Foods right off the shelf. And it's quite good actually. And I like the dark stuff. I don't know the exact percentage. I think it's like 77 or 70 something percent. I like mostly dark. There is a point where it gets too bitter and it almost just tastes like baker's chocolate.

And I don't like that, but I don't really like the milk chocolate either. I like something stronger, similar to coffee actually. And so then the weekends that I've been talking about, weekends are different because I'm not lifting. I'm just doing some cardio and I've skipped one or two of my weekend cardio sessions. So it's just usually one per day. I've skipped those a couple of times in the last couple of months, just based on how I felt. So there was one, I remember one Friday night, I just didn't sleep that well. And I woke up with kind of mucus that I was spitting out and I didn't feel like I was getting sick, but again, this was back when I felt like, eh, maybe it's time to take a little break, take a little deload. And so I didn't feel like I was getting sick, but again, this was back when I felt like, and maybe it's time to take a little break, take a little deload.

And so I didn't sleep very well. And I just felt like my body would appreciate if I didn't do any sort of even remotely vigorous physical activity for a day. And so I would skip the cardio session. I did skip it in that case. And that's when I would currently until I'm back to my more regimented training routine where I'd just be deloading on a schedule. That's how I'm auto-regulating. It really is just how does my body feel and not getting in the way of myself

by being neurotic about my workouts, right? So if my body felt like, you know, Mike, it would be nice if you just really gave me a break. Like that's the message I was getting. I didn't override that with like, well, I gotta, I gotta burn my calories. I gotta get my workout in or I'm going to gain fat or I'm going to not be able to eat as much or whatever. It's just being objective and understanding that it doesn't matter if I don't work out for a couple of days, especially if I have a good reason, which is just to enhance recovery. And so I do that. Now, as far as my food on the weekend goes, what I normally do is I'll skip breakfast,

which again, I guess I have been doing for the last couple of weeks. Otherwise, for the longest time, I didn't do that. I always have a protein shake for breakfast, which I'll probably put back in. Again, there's no good reason not to do it, but I'll have my coffee in the morning and then I'll usually start eating around 12 or so. And so that's not intermittent fasting because the coffee does have, I guess it's probably six to at most eight ounces of milk. So I'm not fasting anymore. I'm just condensing my calories for the day into fewer meals. And so what I'll have is what these days, what I like to do is around 12 PM or so on the weekends, I will take two packages. They come in these little packages or

see it's about 40 grams of protein from skier yogurt. So that's Icelandic high protein yogurt, which I like more than Greek yogurt. I mean, obviously the brands matter here. So I'm eating Icelandic provisions and there's another brand. Oh shit. I don't, I'm not going to remember it. It's new. It has blue packaging. That was even better, but Icelandic Provisions is quite good. And I like it because the macros are the same or even a little bit better than Greek yogurt, but it's much creamier, at least than the Foyer yogurt that I used to eat. And one or two other brands of Greek yogurt I've tried, Icelandic Provisions beats them out. So I'll take about 40 grams of protein from that. No, it's a bit more

actually. It's probably closer to 50. And then I'll mix a scoop of Plant Plus, Legion's vegan protein, plant protein. It was called Thrive, but we had to change the name because another company had that trademark and they were cool about it. They reached out to us and said, hey, you probably didn't know this, but we actually do have this mark and we do need to protect it. So can you please change the product name? No problem. So now it's called plant plus. So what I'll do is I'll mix a scoop of that, usually vanilla, sometimes chocolate, or I'll mix a scoop of whey plus legions whey isolate protein, usually cereal milk or vanilla in with the skier to add some protein and to also just make it taste better. I should also mention this is plain. So I go with plain skier to add some protein and to also just make it taste better. I should

also mention this is plain. So I go with plain skier yogurt and I'll mix protein in it to give it flavor and to add some protein and it's nice and tasty. And so that's like a solid 75, 70, 75 grams of protein. And then I'll have some fruit as well. I'll eat usually a banana. It's kind of like my go-to for the first bit of fruit in the day. And I will have usually an apple as well, or some strawberries or blueberries, or sometimes raspberries, depending on what we have. And then a few hours later at three or four or so, I'll have some more protein. And this can kind of vary. Sometimes I'll make myself like a homemade hamburger with 90-10 beef. Sometimes I just have

my little two double scoop of plant plus my protein pudding concoction. And sometimes it might be some chicken, it might be some fish, but it's usually some protein powder again, or a homemade hamburger. And I might have some more fruit. I'll probably have some hummus and little bits of calories, but the main meals so far are just the protein, basically the two servings of protein. Because what I'm trying to do is trying to come into dinner with maybe 50 more grams of protein that I need to eat, but a lot of my carbs and fat because I eat a pint of ice cream. And so my dinner is going to be some vegetables just to keep some vegetable intake in. Not that it really matters. Like, you know, I'm so strict with my eating and I really get in a lot of nutritious foods throughout the week. Does it really matter

that Saturday and Sunday I don't eat any vegetables? No. In the scheme of things, it doesn't matter. And sometimes that happens. Sometimes it just happens that way. But I usually do try to get in some, maybe it's not five servings of vegetables like it normally is throughout the week every day, but you know, a couple of servings. And so dinner will be some protein, again, usually some meat of some kind with some vegetables, a smaller vegetable slop basically, or a simpler version of the vegetable slop. So it might be, again, that I have some meat, maybe I'll grill it, maybe I will bake it. Like we baked some chicken, simple baked chicken

recipe a couple of weeks ago that was super delicious. You can get half chickens and bake them. And if you do it right, it is very tasty. You get all of the breast meat, obviously, and you can get some thigh meat in there as well. And with simple marinades, you can make it really, really good. And then you throw in a couple of servings of vegetables. Again, simple that you can also cook on the grill if you have the right little pan for it, or you can just cook it right alongside your protein in the oven or after, depending on what recipes you're following, what you're trying to do. Simple dinner there, and then a pint of ice cream. So that's a thousand calories of ice cream that I'm putting down. And for a while I was eating this brand called Dolcezza, which is a local brand.

So I live in Northern Virginia and they're based in this area. And so if you're not from this area, the Acela corridor, you probably, or if you don't live in this area, you probably haven't heard of Dolcezza. But one of the reasons I was eating it is their butter pecan, it was like Southern Georgia butter pecan or something like that, was very good and supposedly 500 calories a pint. So I was able to eat a pint of ice cream and then some other random little knickknacks, whatever I kind of felt like eating. So again, it might be some pita bread, or it might be some extra chocolate, just relatively non-nutritious foods. Let's put it that way. And I was eating that for some time. And then, you know, these 500 calories, I had a hard time believing it. And a couple of the people who work with me were also eating this specific, it's not just the brand. It was actually that flavor because other flavors were higher and that didn't quite make sense, but we went with it tentatively, assuming it's fake

news, assuming that the calories were higher. We were like, all right, this other flavor here, what was it? Some sort of berry marsh Capone flavor or something was like 700 calories. All right. We'll assume that the butter pecan is probably about the same. And just recently they updated their calories and just the calories, the ingredients are the same. The taste is the same. It's the same product. Calories fucking double. Fuckers. They were lying. That is not a little oopsie. Oh, sorry. No, they were straight lying. I refuse to believe that was just an oversight. Oops. We got the calories wrong by 50%. Oh, okay. My guess is maybe they got called out. Maybe people came to the same conclusion that I,

and again, the people who work with me came to like, this can't be right. And I don't know, maybe they reported them to the FDA or something because the FDA allows, I believe it's still up to 20% variance, but not that much variance, not 50% lower. You can't do that. And so I no longer eat Dolcezza because that's not worth their thousand calories is crushed by a brand called Jenny's, which again is available here on the East coast. Jenny's has an actual like ice cream parlor in Washington, DC. I think actually it's a national brand. So wherever you are, if you're in the United States, you probably can get Jenny's, J-E-N-I, and it is quite good. Now, I am not an ice cream expert. I have not tried very many brands. So if

you are, and you're scoffing at Jenny's like, peasant, please, Jenny's, then let me know, actually, what beats Jenny's because fuck Jenny's is good. Definitely email me, mikeatmosforlife.com. Let me know what I should try instead of Jenny's because it's like peanut butter chocolate. Basically, it's a peanut butter base with chocolate chips in it is so good. Also, I believe it's called Bramble Berry Crisp or something like that is good. Those two flavors from Jenny's. So I'll have a pint of the ice cream from Jenny's. So there goes a thousand calories down the hatch, a lot of carbs, a lot of fat. And if I have some protein left that I need to eat, usually I don't. Again, I'm hitting about on my weekdays. I should probably talk about my

macros. I'm sorry for the scattered nature of this. This is really just me kind of shooting from the hip, but on the protein, I'm going for about 180 grams on my weekends, which is totally fine. I mean, shit, I could go quite a bit lower and it wouldn't really matter, but that's plenty. Let's say 150 to 180 grams. And then throughout the week, it's a little bit higher. I would say it's probably 180 to 200 grams. And as far as my carbs go, when I'm just cruising at maintenance throughout the week, which is mostly what I'm doing now, my carbs are around 400-ish grams. So to do some math there, we have, let's say 200-ish grams of protein throughout the week. That's 800-ish calories. We have 400-ish carbs. That's about 1,600 calories. And then I'm getting 50-ish grams of fat per day, which is 450-ish calories. So we're right there around 3,000 calories a day, 2,800 to 3,000 calories a day, really.

And as far as the fat, it's coming from the milk in my cappuccino. It's coming from the olive oil that I put in my salad, about a tablespoon of olive oil in my salad, another tablespoon of olive oil in my dinner that I cook with. And then about a half a tablespoon to a tablespoon of either sesame oil or the hot, again, right now it's just chili oil. I haven't even looked at what kind of oil it is, but more oil on top of that. And obviously there are some trace amounts of fat in the, well, not even trace amounts, actually. There are at least a few grams per serving in the protein that I'm eating, whether it is the meat in my salad or the meat at dinner, which I realized I may not have mentioned that actually, that I'm having five

to six ounces raw of meat in my vegetable slop as well. I don't think I did mention that. And my lunch serving of meat is about the same, five or six ounces. And so yes, that's the weekdays. And on the weekends, my protein goes down a little bit and my fat goes up a bit and my carbs go down a little bit because I'm going for at 24, 25, maybe 2,600 calories per day on the weekend. And that again is just maintenance. I'm really just trying to hover around where I am burning. And when I was cutting, I was doing the same thing. So I was in a deficit throughout the week and on the weekends, not as much. I was more just kind of eating around maintenance. So in a sense, I was getting these little mini diet breaks throughout my cut, which can be nice for minimizing side effects.

And I have to say, I didn't really notice any side effects. And that is probably at least partly because of the addition of cardio as opposed to just the further restriction of calories. There is a difference experientially between burning 3000 calories a day on average and that, I would say four to six hours of weightlifting per week and two to three hours, about half of that, of cardio per week. That's a good rule of thumb for a ceiling for training while you're cutting. And I would rather see people work up to that again than just cut their calories more. So let's say somebody starts with four hours of lifting per week on their cut and they're in a deficit and things are going well, and then things stall because they will eventually, instead of just keeping their lifting at four hours a week and just cutting their calories further out, or rather they work up to six hours of lifting per

week. Let's see, can we make that jump? Is that enough of a change to produce enough of a deficit to produce more fat loss? If it is, okay, let's ride that out. All right, once they've stalled there, instead of keeping their lifting at six hours and cutting their calories down, I would rather have them add some cardio. Let's keep your calories where they're at. Let's try to burn more energy. Let's add some cardio. Okay. Let's work that up to the maximum amount of recommended cardio and then start restricting calories more, then start dropping calories more. And again, I don't know if there are great examples of this in the scientific literature, but there is a lot of anecdotal evidence that if you do it

that way, you will get better results both in terms of subjective and objective criteria. So it's going to be easier on you, you could say psychologically and emotionally. And it will be easier physiologically as well. And it will be conducive to retaining as much muscle as possible, which unless you're a newbie, that really is the goal, right? When you're cutting, if you're an intermediate or advanced weightlifter, if you're an experienced weightlifter, you are not going to be gaining any muscle and strength to speak of when you're cutting. You just want to retain as much as you can. And doing it the way I've just described definitely produces better results than four hours of lifting per week. That's it. And we're just going to keep on dropping calories until we're lean enough. So that is a very long winded summary of what I'm doing with my diet and training right now. I hope you've found it

helpful. And as far as where I go from here, I'm going to get a proper home gym setup, and then I'm going to go back to BBLS 2.0 style of training. I'll probably keep the cardio in, I'll probably do at least three to five sessions per week. I may continue doing six or seven sessions per week because I do like it and I'm going to spend that time reading anyway. So if I can just hop on the bike and burn some extra calories and improve my health a little bit and do what I was going to do regardless, then I think that's a win-win. And my calories will have to go up a little bit when I get back into my more intense training because I'll just be burning more calories in my workout. Oh, and one other thing, I apologize for the hazardness of this

podcast, but I didn't go into this with an outline. I probably should have. I just was like, this won't take, I'm at 54 minutes now. I didn't think it was going to take this long. I'll just quickly break down what I'm doing. If you like what I'm doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, definitely check out my health and fitness books, including the number one bestselling weightlifting books for men and women in the world, Bigger Leaner Stronger and Thinner Leaner Stronger, as well as the leading flexible dieting cookbook, The Shredded Chef. Supplements. Let's just quickly cover that.

So I have first thing in the morning, I do my full serving of Stim Free Pulse and I wait about at least 30 minutes. It's like 30 to 60 minutes before my cardio session. And it does make a difference. It's nice. It makes the cardio session a bit easier. It reduces the perceived effort of it, which is nice, especially because I'm also trying to read, right? And then with my first meal, so I was doing this at about, I don't know, 9 a.m., maybe 9.30 when I was doing the protein shakes. If I'm not doing the protein shakes, my first real meal is around 12. That's where I kind of load up with a bunch of my pills. So as far as Legion stuff goes, when I was cutting, I was taking Phoenix, a full serving of Phoenix, one of our fat burners,

the one that doesn't contain you, I mean, the one that you don't have to take for a fasted workout. And in addition to that, I take a half of a serving of Triumph, Legion's multivitamin. Of course, I'm taking the one for men, not for women. And then I'm taking a serving of Triton, four pills of Triton, which is Legion's fish oil, which is providing about two and a half grams of EPA and DHA, omega-3 fatty acids. And in addition to that, I'll do all the Legion stuff first. I take one serving of Legion Genesis, which is our greens. That's not a pill. I mix that up and drink it with the pills. And I'm taking a serving of our immunity booster, Immune. I'm taking a serving of our nootropic, Ascend. Sorry

if this is just a long legion pitch, but this is honestly what I do every day. I use all of my own stuff. That's a good sign, right? And I'm taking a serving of recharge, which is our post-workout and is my source of creatine monohydrate as well as a serving of fortify, which is our joint supplement. So I have a handful of pills that I wash down and I guess I'm good at swallowing pills. So I put them all in my mouth and then I swallow like half of them. I've gone for all and almost choked. So it's a full mouth of pills, kind of swallow half and then with one gulp and then the other half of the other gulp. And in addition to those, I do add a few more actually. I add glucosamine, which we don't sell

and we don't have it in any of our products because it's not great. Its effects are very minor, but it's cheap and it does appear to help preserve joint cartilage in athletes. Again, the ingredients in Fortify are better for this, honestly, but glucosamine would be additive. And because it's not expensive and I don't mind swallowing pills, I throw it in. So I take a full serving of glucosamine, which it's four pills. I don't even remember exactly what that is. I think it's about one and a half grams. I believe that's the clinically effective dose, one and a half to two grams of the glucosamine. And lastly, I am throwing in some PQQ, which is a vitamin-like molecule that has several interesting effects in

the body. It has been shown to reduce inflammation levels as evidenced by reductions in C-reactive protein levels. It has been shown to reduce fatigue, to reduce pain, to improve sleep quality, to reduce stress. And it's actually an ingredient that we would love to include in one of Legion's formulations, but it's so damn expensive if you want to use a proper dose. Like the brand, I believe I get my PQQ from Gero, which is a brand I recommend. They are inexpensive and they don't rip you off. You get what you pay for. Now Foods is another good example for just getting single ingredients. Jero and Now Foods are my go-tos. And I believe the PQQ is 20-ish dollars a bottle and that lasts a month. So a single ingredient. And yes, of course,

there are markups in there, but again, Jero, they don't work on massive margins. And I don't remember the price of, because we were looking at adding PQQ to Triumph 2.0, which we released a couple of months ago, the reformulation of Triumph and splitting it into men and women. We wanted to include PQQ in it, but I believe it was around $5 to $6 a bottle, my cost to add the proper dose. And that was a sad day for those of us at Legion, particularly for the scientific advisory board, because we were excited to add PQQ, but that just doesn't work. I mean, that product is already very expensive. I believe right now it's probably around $15 to $17 a bottle, plus then their shipping costs. So it costs me upward of $18, $19, maybe even $20 a bottle to create a bottle of Triumph and send it to you when it's

all said and done. And that's why it's not cheap. It's $45 a bottle, but that's also not that expensive considering the costs. I mean, many supplement companies are marking their products up six, seven, eight times. Five times from the manufacturer's cost to the consumer's cost is considered okay. Eight is considered good or maybe even very good. And 10 plus is considered outstanding, right? So I'm not marking this up very much. And I can get away with that because I don't have to spend nearly as much as my competitors on marketing and advertising. I can just do stuff like this and be able to make up for what I'm lacking in, you could say, advertising horsepower, right?

And however, if the costs to me go up from, let's just call it on average, $18, $19 a bottle to now $24 or $25 a bottle because I'm adding one ingredient, What do I have to do with the price then? I got to raise it further and I can only charge so much and I don't want to price even more people out of Legion than I'm already doing. That is the number one objection I hear from prospective customers, people who don't buy is it's just too expensive. As much as they like the brand and they appreciate the quality and they understand why it's expensive, they just don't have the budget. And I totally get that. And that's also why, by the way, I'm creating an economy line.

That's not a great marketing term. Maybe I'm not going to present it that way because I don't want to give people the wrong impression that, oh, these are just low quality supplements because they're not going to be. It's going to be very similar to Legion, but they are not going to be as good, but they are going to be about half of the price. So for example, I will have an economy quote unquote version of Pulse in this economy brand, which is going to be called Regimen, by the way, R-E-G-I-M-E-N. So Regimen pre-workout will be similar to Pulse. It just won't be as good. It's going to have similar ingredients. They just won't be dosed the same way. They'll still have clinically effective doses, but the regimen is going to be on the lower end of the clinically effective range, whereas legion is almost always on the

upper end. Sometimes we go in the middle, sometimes even the lower in special cases where more isn't necessarily better, but often more is better. And that's what you get with legion. You just get the largest clinically effective doses within reason, because sometimes what you'll see in products is they'll overdose ingredients where it's not harmful, but you're not getting anything else out of it. Like beta-alanine, it really should just be in the range of three to four grams per serving if you want to get most or all of its benefits. And having six grams a serving isn't going to hurt you, but you're just wasting money essentially. And the supplement company, the manufacturer is also

wasting money because they only have so much money they can work with. And so a lot of thought goes into legion's formulations in terms of weighing the costs versus the benefits. And sometimes it actually just makes more sense to go with a lower effective range in one ingredient so you can go higher in another and so forth. And so that's the story with PQQ and with Triumph. It's not going to be going in Triumph. We may actually be able to work it into a beauty product that we are working on because evidence suggests that it can enhance skin quality in particular, skin health in particular. And for that, you don't need as much as some of the other benefits that I

was talking about. You don't need as much as you would need to put it into a multivitamin. And we'll see where that goes though. Again, it depends on the price, but so far it's actually looking promising. And one final little bit of my supplementation routine is my pre-sleep routine. Now, Legion has a sleep supplement called Lunar that has clinically effective doses of melatonin, of glycine, of lemon balm extract, and also something called rutacarpine, which we believed at the time there was good evidence to suggest that it could help clear caffeine out of the body. But we're actually reformulating lunar and we're taking it out because in talking with Curtis, again, who is my director of research, he just said that the research hasn't advanced and he has found better options. Basically, it's not that the rudocarpine

doesn't work as intended. We just don't know yet if it does. Unfortunately, it's still the case as it was many years ago when Legion started because, well, we didn't have this when we started, but we created this product early on. And so he has taken the rutocarpine out, but we're keeping in the glycine, lemon balm, and melatonin, of course, because those are well-established ingredients. Now, I don't like the flavor. I don't like the taste of Lunar. Straight up, do not like it at all. And we're fixing that too. If you're like me and you like the idea of taking Lunar, you just hate the experience of it, I totally understand. And we are fixing that, 100% fixing it. And so what I've been doing

is instead of Lunar, I've bought magnesium powder, glycine powder, theanine powder, as well as lavender, the patented, it's called Calm Aid. I believe the patented name is Silexin, I believe. It's something like that, if you want to get exactly what I'm getting. And the reason I chose that is that is a standardized lavender extract and it is exactly what research has been done on to show reductions in stress, reductions in anxiety and improvements in just well-being and possibly sleep. I actually would have to look at literature again if it has been shown to directly improve sleep. I believe it has, but it certainly can indirectly by making you more chilled out, right? So that plus a serving of valerian root, which has worked really well for me for the same purposes of just helping bring me down. I don't have anxiety, but I am a higher strung person. And I've found that as I've gotten older, what'll happen is

if I am not truly relaxed and a bit sleepy by the time I go to bed, I'll fall asleep fine, but I'll wake up several times at night. Now it's normal to wake up, let's say one to three times, maybe. But when you start getting like five, six, seven wakings, that sucks. That's not normal. That's not good. You can't get good rest that way. That's what will happen pretty consistently if I don't take some time before I go to bed to get relaxed. And what I've found is by making my little concoction. So I mix the powders and in terms of dosing, it's like 300 to 500 grams of the magnesium powder. It's a couple of grams of theanine and a couple of grams of glycine. Put some water in it, not too much because I'm

taking this about an hour before bed. I go to bed about 10, latest would be 1030. And so I'm having this around nine, maybe 915. Mix some water in it. I don't boil the water, but I heat it up in the little tea maker to like 160 degrees. Put some ice in it, drink don't boil the water, but I heat it up in the little tea maker to like 160 degrees, put some ice in it, drink it down, and then have the serving of lavender and the serving of valerian root. And as far as dosing goes, it's two pills of the lavender, which is 160 milligrams, and then three pills of the valerian, which I get from Now Foods. That's one and a half grams. And those are the clinically effective doses. And what I'll notice is within 30 minutes or so, I will be more relaxed. It is notable. I'll start to get sleepy. And of course, I've done with and without my pre-sleep supplements,

all of the powders and the pills, and I've slept fine without them, but I would say that it's more of a coin toss, actually, in terms of how relaxed am I going to be, how sleepy am I going to be, and then how well am I going to sleep? Whereas if I take the supplements, I am consistently relaxed. And I really, really do notice a difference, actually. The valerian root in particular, which I know is kind of a hit and miss supplement. It has a number of drug interactions that contraindicate it. So it doesn't do well with the sedative effects of depressants like alcohol or benzos or narcotics. It also can interfere with prescription medicines. So if you are on any prescription medicines or if you are ingesting

any drugs of any kind regularly before you add valerian root, just check with your doctor. And lavender has similar contraindications, just not as many and the effects aren't as severe. But if you are taking sedative medications of any kind, just check with your doctor before adding the lavender as well. And so yes, that's it for supplements. And I think that is it for everything. That's my life right now. All of that plus a lot of work, plus some family time, and that's it. That's my life. Welcome to my life. All right. Well, that's it for this episode. I hope you enjoyed it and found it interesting and helpful. And if you did, and you don't mind doing me a favor, please do leave a quick review on iTunes or wherever you're listening to me from in whichever app you're listening to me in,

because that not only convinces people that they should check out the show, it also increases search visibility and thus it helps more people find their way to me and learn how to get fitter, leaner, stronger, healthier, and happier as well. And of course, if you want to be notified when the next episode goes live, then simply subscribe to the podcast and you won't miss out on any new stuff. And if you didn't like something about the show, please do shoot me an email at mike at muscleforlife.com, just muscle, F-O-R, life.com, and share your thoughts on how I can do this better. I read everything myself and I'm always looking for constructive feedback, even if it is criticism, I'm open to it. And of course you can email me

if you have positive feedback as well, or if you have questions really relating to anything that you think I could help you with, definitely send me an email. That is the best way to get ahold of me, mikeatmuscleforlife.com. And that's it. Thanks again for listening to this episode

and I hope to hear from you soon.