Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - Says You! Low-Bar vs. High-Bar Squats, Recreational Weed, and Fasting For Health

Episode Date: December 10, 2020

I’ve written and recorded a lot of evidence-based content over the years on just about everything you can imagine related to building muscle, losing fat, and getting healthy. I’ve also worked with thousands of men and women of all ages and circumstances and helped them get into the best shape of their lives. That doesn’t mean you should blindly swallow everything I say, though, because let’s face it—nobody is always right about everything. And especially in fields like diet and exercise, which are constantly evolving thanks to the efforts of honest and hardworking researchers and thought leaders. This is why I’m always happy to hear from people who disagree with me, especially when they have good arguments and evidence to back up their assertions. Sometimes I can’t get on board with their positions, but sometimes I end up learning something, and either way, I always appreciate the discussion. That gave me the idea for this series of podcast episodes: publicly addressing things people disagree with me on and sharing my perspective. Think of it like a spicier version of a Q&A. So, here’s what I’m doing: Every couple of weeks, I’m asking my Instagram followers what they disagree with me on, and then picking a few of the more common or interesting contentions to address here on the podcast. And in this episode, I’ll be tackling the following . . . 4:34 - “Low bar squats shouldn’t be preferred in Bigger Leaner Stronger because they’re difficult for most people to do.” 20:05 - “Cannabis isn’t inherently bad. It can be used recreational without negative consequences and it’s also safer than alcohol.” 26:11 - “Time restricted and fasting should be more widely applied as a health improvement strategy rising almost entirely to the standard of care for a host of conditions and the failure to do this is resulting in the loss of life, limb, eyesight, quality of life, autonomy, time, and of course, the big needle mover, money.” --- Mentioned on The Show: Books by Mike Matthews: https://legionathletics.com/products/books/ Want free workout and meal plans? Download my science-based diet and training templates for men and women: https://legionathletics.com/text-sign-up/

Hello, and welcome to Muscle for Life. I'm your host, Mike Matthews. Thank you for joining me today. Now, I've written and recorded a lot of evidence-based stuff over the years on just about everything you can imagine relating to building muscle, losing fat, and getting healthy. I've also worked with thousands and thousands of men and women of all ages and circumstances and helped them get into the best shape of their life. But that does not mean you should just blindly swallow everything I say, because let's face it, nobody is always right about everything. And especially in fields like diet and exercise, which are always evolving thanks to the efforts of honest and hardworking researchers and thought leaders. And that's why I'm always happy to hear

from people who disagree with me, especially when they have good arguments and evidence to back up their assertions. Sometimes I can't quite get on board with their positions, but sometimes I end up learning something. And either way, I always appreciate the discussion. And that gave me the idea for this series of podcast episodes, which I call Says You, where I publicly address things that people disagree with me on, and I share my perspective. It's kind of like a spicier Q&A. So what I do is every couple of weeks, I ask people who follow me on Instagram, at Muscle for Life Fitness, please follow me, what they disagree with me on. And then I pick a few of the more common or interesting contentions to address here on the podcast. So if there's something that you disagree

with me on, and it could be related to diet, exercise, supplementation, business, lifestyle, I don't care, anything, go follow me on Instagram at MuscleForLifeFitness and look for my says you story that I put up every couple of weeks where I solicit content for these episodes, or just shoot me an email, mike at muscleforlife.com. All right, so here is what I'll be tackling in today's episode. Low bar squats shouldn't be preferred in Bigger Leaner Stronger because they're difficult for most people to do. This comes from Steven X Perkins over on Instagram. And then cannabis isn't inherently bad. It can be used recreationally without negative consequences, and it's also safer than alcohol. This comes from Brock Lee over on Instagram. And finally,

time-restricted feeding and fasting should be more widely applied as a health improvement strategy rising almost entirely to the standard of care for a host of conditions. And the failure to do this is resulting in the loss of life, limb, eyesight, quality of life, autonomy, time, and of course, the big needle mover, money. And this comes from Ross Harnivius. 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 best-selling 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. 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 audio books 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. Okay, so let's start with this low bar squat point. And in case you have not read Bigger, Leaner, Stronger or Thinner, Leaner, Stronger, I do recommend that people start with the low bar squat. And Steven X Perkins from Instagram disagrees with me. So first, let's just quickly talk about what a low bar squat is and what the alternative is, which is a high bar squat. So the low bar squat is a squat where you have the bar an inch or two below your upper traps,

between your upper traps and your rear deltoids. And you create a little shelf, a muscular shelf by squeezing your back muscles together. And the bar sits on that. Now the high bar spot has the bar right on top of the upper traps. So that's the high bar position. And when you're standing under the weight of a heavy loaded barbell, it is usually uncomfortable, particularly when you're new to barbell squatting. Regardless of which position you use, you're going to find the low bar position uncomfortable in certain ways and the high bar position uncomfortable in certain ways and the high bar position uncomfortable in other ways. Now, one downside to the low bar position is if you don't have good shoulder and

wrist mobility and flexibility, you're going to have a hard time getting your hands as close together as they should be in that position. That doesn't mean you can't squat in the low bar position. It's just when you look at illustrations or exercise demos, or you read about the ideal position for your hands and for your grip, you're probably going to struggle to get your grip narrow enough. Now, of course, you can easily improve that by just doing some mobility exercises and some stretches every day for maybe, if that was your only problem, let's say it was your shoulders or it was your wrists, or even if it were both, you're not going to have to do more than probably 10 minutes of mobility work or stretching every

day. And slowly but surely, you will free up your range of motion in your shoulders and or wrists, and then you will be able to get into the ideal more narrow grip position, which isn't tremendously important. It just helps you keep your back muscles squeezed together. And that again creates the shelf that the bar sits on. And when you are squatting heavy and when you are an experienced weightlifter, you want to make sure that you're maintaining upper body tightness throughout the entire squat. That's important. That helps you keep your spine in a neutral position. It helps you maintain your balance. And it also will affect your ability to forcefully stand up, to forcefully press off of the ground and complete a rep. Just as your grip, the stability of your grip affects your ability to deadlift. If your

grip starts to fail, you are not going to be able to complete a rep. And if you have experienced that before, you know it is a bit of an odd feeling because you have plenty of juice left in your posterior chain. And then all of a sudden, as your grip is failing, your body just shuts down. It just refuses to keep moving upward. And something similar happens when you're squatting. If you lose tension in your back muscles and then your spine starts to bend, if you lose tension in your core, then completing the rep suddenly gets a lot harder, inexplicably harder.

So regardless of whether you are going to be high bar or low bar squatting, you're going to want to make sure that your back muscles are tensed throughout the entire set, every rep, as well as your core muscles. And how I like to do both of those things is one, having a narrow grip on the bar, which forces me to press my shoulder blades in toward each other. And I also keep my chest up. I present my chest to the front of my body. And then at the top of each rep, when I'm standing, I take a deep breath into my stomach, not my chest. And then I hold it there and I tense my core as if I were about to be punched in the gut. That's a good way of thinking about it. It's a good cue. And I also like to wear a belt, a weightlifting

belt when I'm doing my heavy hard sets for squatting. And so I also push my stomach out against the belt just to produce even more intra-abdominal pressure, which is the purpose of the belt. And that can help you get a little bit more performance out of your body. It can help you get another rep or two with a given weight, or maybe even add a little bit of weight on the bar. But keep in mind, the belt does not reduce your risk of injury. That is a common misconception. It is only a performance enhancer. So coming back to the contrast between the high and low bar, something else to keep in mind with the low bar position is if you are squatting several times per week, people can get shoulder or elbow or

wrist pain if they do it all in the low bar position. So this means if you're doing, let's say probably at least nine hard sets of barbell squatting every week, maybe up to 12 or more, if you are a wild man or a wild woman. So if you're doing that many sets of barbell squatting, of back squatting, you may want to switch between low bar and high bar, even if you prefer the low bar. That said, if you prefer the low bar and you are doing all of your sets every week in the low bar position and you are not feeling any discomfort in your upper body joints, then carry on. There's no other downside to it. Now, in the case of Bigger Leaner Stronger, you are squatting once a week, so that's just not an issue. And you are

also deadlifting once a week, just so you know. So there are two lower body workouts each week, and you have one primary lower body workout, which has squatting and other just primary lower body exercises. And then you have this secondary lower body workout, which includes deadlifting. And deadlifting is certainly effective volume for the hamstrings and it is indirect volume for the quads, but certainly is not as effective for developing quads as the barbell squat. So let's say you are trying the low bar squat for the first time, or maybe you have abandoned it in the past because it's just uncomfortable. I would say that's not a reason to not do it. Again, you can adjust your grip to make that comfortable, the width of your grip, the style of your grip. You can do some mobility work to address whatever is in the way, but I would recommend that you try

to make it work because the low bar squat does have some advantages over the high bar squat. the low bar squat does have some advantages over the high bar squat. One of them is because of the position you have to adopt with your upper back and your shoulders and your chest and the position with your arms, right? The narrower grip that the low bar squat forces you in. It's an inherently tighter position in your torso than the high bar squat. That's not to say that you can't recreate that tightness, but it requires a little bit of practice and it requires some attention until you have developed the muscle memory to just make it automatic. And again, as I mentioned earlier, when you have your upper body locked into that position, it not only helps you maintain bar speed, which improves your

performance, it also just makes you feel more secure and it helps you stay balanced. Particularly, it helps you avoid tipping too far forward, which can make the exercise not only more difficult to do, but it also can make it dangerous. I mean, we've all seen people and I mean, I've made this mistake before, so I can say we probably all have made this mistake, but I try really hard not to make this mistake. It's something I've had to work on because this was one of my common mistakes I would make with heavy squats, particularly on my third or fourth sets, like my final set or the set right before my final set. And then on the last rep or two, my hips would start to rise faster than my shoulders. And if it gets bad, you can turn the barbell squat into almost like a very heavy good morning where the hips shoot up and the shoulders have not moved much. So now the torso is not parallel to the ground, but is as close to parallel to the ground really as it gets in the movement.

And the angle has not expanded really much at all yet. And then after the hips are basically almost at the top of the rep, now the torso is being brought up to the upright position. And that puts a lot of stress on the spinal erectors and on the lower back. And that movement, that lever kind of movement is fine if you're doing a good morning. But if you're doing a good morning, you're using a lot less weight than you are with a back squat, regardless of the bar position. So you really want to make sure that you don't make that mistake often. I mean, we're all going to make it a little bit here and there, but it is something that is worth working on. If you know you tend to do that, then really

pay attention to your upper body and making sure that your hips and your shoulders are rising at the same rate. And if you need to take video or if you have somebody take video of your squatting, just to make sure that you're doing what you think you're doing, because although these movements aren't all that complicated, the squat is not a golf swing. Sometimes we have the idea that we're doing something correctly. And as a newbie, you can remember how much work it took just to consistently hit depth when you get later into your sets, right? When it starts getting hard. I know I struggled with that when I was first learning how to squat properly. I would tend to be good on my depth for probably the first half of a set. And then my butt would reach maybe an inch less and then another inch less and then another inch

less and then end the set, right? So we want to make sure that we can consistently use proper form. And this point of raising your hips and raising your shoulders at the same rate is something that can take some work. And it can be frustrating to think that you did it well and you really paid attention to it. And then you look on camera and nope, those hips are still rising faster than the shoulders. But don't be discouraged by that. You just have to work through it and make sure that you get a kinetic awareness, get a perception of what it feels like to do it right. That's the key thing. So you do that with less weight and you start grooving that in. And then you try to do it with heavier weight and you

just kind of move back and forth. So you want to make sure that your warmup sets, for example, are spot on and you can video yourself when you're doing your warm up sets and just make sure that when you have lighter weights, you are doing it exactly the way that you want to be doing it. And then just try to replicate that feel when the weight get heavier. And again, you can do all of these things correctly with the high bar squat. So this is not me shitting on the high bar squat at all, but with the high bar squat, the load is not me shitting on the high bar squat at all, but with the high bar squat, the load is further up on the back. So it's at the very end of the lever between the hips and the neck, right? And so if you lose balance or if you lose tightness during a high bar rep, which is

more likely given where the bar is positioned and how it is set up, there's a higher chance that you are going to lose the safe and neutral spine position that you want to maintain. And that's easier to avoid if you have a strong upper back and if you are keeping your upper back tense and tight. But in many people who are new to proper weightlifting, it takes some time to build enough back strength to be able to do that. The high bar squat also requires more lower body mobility than the low bar squat, which can be an issue for some people who are new to lifting or who are not new and who have always had mobility issues, but just haven't addressed them. And the reason for this is the torso angle is more upright in the high

bar squat. And so the knees then have to travel further forward on the way down. And that requires more mobility in your knees and your ankles to get deep enough. And that's particularly true if you are trying to do anything more than a parallel squat, if you're trying to go ass to grass, for example, or something in between the full squat and the parallel squat. One other point of note here is the low bar squat engages the glutes and hamstrings slightly more than the high bar squat. And that means that you'll be able to handle heavier loads. You'll probably be able to squat more weight in the low bar position than the high bar position. And even if that's not the case, even if you're

lifting more or less the same weights in both positions, the fact that you could use a little bit more in the low bar position should mean that the weight you areting, if it just feels more comfortable to you, if it feels more stable to you and you just like it more, that's totally fine. Stick with it. You do not have to do any low bar squatting if you don't want to. If though you don't like high bar squatting and you prefer low bar squatting and that feels better to you, I'm one of those people, by the way, the low bar position just feels more stable to me and it just feels more natural to you. I'm one of those people, by the way. The low bar position just feels more stable to me and it just feels more natural to me. That said, I could make the high bar squat work if I stuck with it. If I just did it for long enough, I would eventually find some level of comfort with it and I could make progress with it. But as it has no major advantages over the low bar squat,

I'll just stick with the one, again, that I just like the best and that feels the best for my body. Now, if you're not sure which bar position is best suited to you, then try both of them. Make sure you try them for a long enough period though. I would say at least four weeks of squatting at least once per week. Like make sure that you are putting in a little bit of time and pay attention again to how the bar feels on your back and how stable you feel throughout the reps and how your performance is and which one you just naturally gravitate to. And then you'll probably find that you prefer one over the other and you could just stick with the one you prefer, but you can also switch between

them. You can use them as exercise variations, which is a good idea in your workout programming, particularly if you're an intermediate or advanced weightlifter, as well as doing both back squats and front squats. For example, you can switch between a training block of back squatting and front squatting, and that can help you gain muscle and strength faster over time. If nothing else, just because you might find it fun to do something different for a little bit, and then you are going to be more focused in your squatting and you might apply yourself a little bit more to it. And that might help you get an extra rep or two here and there that you wouldn't have got otherwise. And

that then might turn into a little bit more weight on the bar or weight on the bar a little bit sooner. And that of course means a little bit more progress over that training cycle. And then if you apply that over the course of many training cycles, all of those little advantages might add up to something a little bit significant. 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. Okay, let's move on to the next point of discussion for this episode. And this is the cannabis point, that it's not inherently bad and that it can be used recreationally without negative consequences and that it is safer than alcohol. It is a safer alternative to alcohol. And this comes from Brock Lee over on

Instagram. So cannabis, I have to laugh when people call it cannabis instead of marijuana or weed because it makes it sound so distinguished and so legitimate and so valid. Cannabis, this is not a drug. Crack and heroin are drugs. Cannabis is natural medicine. Yeah, well, okay. Currently, cannabis is the most widely used illicit drug out there. In 2017, it was estimated to be used by 188 million adults worldwide. That's just under 4% of the global adult population. And the claim that adverse health effects of cannabis are much less serious than those of alcohol has been central to the case for cannabis legalization. And it might be reasonable to say that marijuana is safer than heavy alcohol use on the grounds that alcohol contributes substantially more to the global burden of

disease than cannabis. Also, unlike cannabis, alcohol can cause fatal overdoses from respiratory depression and alcohol intoxication. Alcohol is a major cause of road accidents, and it contributes more to assaults and suicides than cannabis. And if we look at research on alcohol use and disease, we find that it increases the risk of liver disease, pancreas disease, cancers of the oral cavity, breast and colon, some types of heart disease and stroke and neurological diseases as well, including dementia. However, even if cannabis were safer than alcohol, it's not the same as safe. So safer than alcohol does not mean it is safe to use. There is plenty of evidence to suggest that regular use of cannabis is associated with many unwanted side effects and conditions, including

changes in the amygdala in the brain, the hippocampus, and the white and gray matter volume, as well as blood flow in the brain. Studies also show that regular cannabis use can harm our ability to learn, our ability to control our attention and maintain attention. It can impair our memory. It can reduce overall brain activity. Research shows that it can disrupt the balance of important brain chemicals like glutamate, dopamine, choline, and others. It can cause mental health-related issues like earlier onset of psychosis, depression, and anxiety. And studies show that regular cannabis use can increase the chance of stroke, bronchodilation, respiratory complications, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and testicular cancer. And so given the state of the evidence, again, these are all claims that you can go look up for yourself in PubMed.

You have to just be ignorant to think that you can just regularly use the drug with no real side effects or worse to think that it's healthy for you. And by ignorant, I don't mean stupid. Those are not synonyms. I just mean that you must not have really looked. You must just not know because the evidence is clear that while alcohol may be more dangerous, especially when abused, heavy alcohol use wrecks your body and can kill you. That cannot be said of cannabis. So I understand that. And I understand the arguments against the legalization of alcohol.

I understand people who are wondering, okay, if alcohol is as destructive as it is, why is that legal? But weed is not. I do understand that. However, that is not a good argument to legalize weed. That alone is not a good argument to make something that is very harmful if used regularly, if abused, legal, simply because something else is legal that people also abuse and destroy themselves with. That is the proverbial slippery slope that can lead to the legalization of all kinds of things. And just fuck it. Just let people kill themselves in whatever way they want to kill themselves. See, the problem is the alcoholics and the drug addicts and the degenerates, they don't just destroy themselves. They don't just impose costs on themselves. They impose

costs on many other people in their immediate vicinity, obviously, but then they also can impose great costs on society. Think of the healthcare ramifications alone and how much money it costs to address these problems. And where is that money coming from? Oh, if you have health insurance, it's coming from you. You're paying a little piece. You're not just paying for your healthy lifestyle. And there are many other costs too. I don't want to go off on too much of a tangent here, but just think about the cultural costs that are associated with the normalization of drug use, particularly among young people. And that's an important point because research shows that cannabis use is especially harmful in younger people whose brains are still developing. If you're going to use it, wait until you're in your early to mid twenties. You do not want to be using it when you are a teenager. And let's remember those young people are literally our future. They are our future generations. From those people, we are counting to find our future leaders in the public and private sectors. And the more dysfunctional young people our society produces through poor education and

media indoctrination and encouraging drug use and many other factors, the more dysfunctional our future is going to be, the more dysfunctional our society is going to be, the more dysfunctional our society is going to become. This is not complicated. This is black and white, cause and effect. So anyway, that's all I have to say about cannabis for now. Let's move on to the final point here, which is regarding time-restricted feeding and fasting. And Ross Harnivius says that it should be a more widely applied health improvement strategy rising almost entirely to the standard of care for a host of conditions. And I have written and spoken about intermittent fasting a fair amount over the years, but it is more popular now than ever. So I figured I would take

this one and kind of reiterate some of my positions. So in case you're not familiar with intermittent fasting or time-restricted feeding, it's simply, well, intermittent fasting in particular is a blanket term for any sort of eating regimen that alternates between usually shorter periods of eating and then longer periods of not eating, fasting, right? And the reason why it's called fasting is once your body is done processing the food that you ate in a meal, your insulin levels drop to a low baseline level. And then your body has to rely on its energy stores, primarily its body fat stores to stay alive. And it waits for your next meal. And then you eat food and then insulin levels rise.

And now your body has food to burn for energy. So it doesn't have to burn its fat. And you go in and out of these fasted and fed states. to burn its fat and you go in and out of these fasted and fed states. Now, when people refer to time-restricted feeding, especially if they're referring to it as a proper noun, they are probably talking about a specific intermittent fasting protocol that allows you to eat your food or has you eat your food in an eight-hour feeding window and then no food for the remaining 16 hours of every 24 hours. So it's simple. It's really just skip breakfast, right? How most people do it is they start eating around 12 or 1 and

they stop eating around 8 or 9. And during their 16-hour fast, no calories. That's the rule. You can have zero-calorie beverages. So you can have water, you can have coffee, so long as there are no calories in it. You can have zero calorie soda, diet soda, for example, but no calories. Now, some versions allow for a little bit of wiggle room there. Some versions of that will say, well, you can have some calories in your coffee, for example, but it can't be any more than 30 calories. You can put a little bit of sugar in there, no more than 30 calories. And then some intermittent fasting protocols allow you to eat fruit and other small meals while you are quote unquote fasting, which is not fasting. So I don't really get that. But

the very strict kind of fundamentalist time-restricted feeding protocols are no calories for 16 hours per day. That said, do keep in mind when people talk about time-restricted feeding, they're not always talking about that 8-16 or 16-8 approach. They just often are. Now, in terms of all of these types of diets, all of these intermittent fasting diets, studies do show that they can have a positive effect on weight loss and they do not accelerate muscle loss as was once believed. They probably don't accelerate muscle gain as some people have claimed. Research is showing that they are likely no better for gaining muscle and strength inherently than just traditional dieting. But some people do prefer intermittent fasting diets. They do better

with them because they just like to eat fewer larger meals. That's usually what it is. In working with a lot of people over the years, it usually comes down to these are people who usually are not hungry in the morning. They are not really a breakfast person. They don't wake up with any noticeable hunger, for example. So they don't really mind skipping breakfast. And then they also like eating fewer, larger meals. And many people find that particularly nice when they're cutting, when calories are restricted. So they just have a better time of it if they can eat two or three bigger meals with, let's say, a 16-8 protocol versus five or six smaller meals with traditional

dieting. Now, there are people like me who prefer the opposite. I do meals with traditional dieting. Now, there are people like me who prefer the opposite. I do better with traditional dieting. I like it more. I just don't really like going for, that's the last couple of hours of the fast. Now, I can do it. It's not grueling, but it is a little bit obnoxious. If I'm working and it's 11 a.m. or maybe it's 11.30 and I'm feeling a little bit hungry now and a little bit lower energy and I'm starting to just think about food. My mind is starting to wander to food and what I want to eat. Nothing major, of course, but not optimal. Now, why do it then? That's the question. Well, some people would say there are many reasons to do it, to just tough it out and get used to it

because intermittent fasting is profoundly beneficial for the body. It's transformative. It increases fat burning. It improves appetite control. It lowers blood insulin and blood sugar levels, and it improves insulin sensitivity. It can even reverse type 2 diabetes, and it makes your mind clearer, and it improves your ability to concentrate, and you're going to reverse type 2 diabetes and it makes your mind clearer and improves your ability to concentrate and you're going to have more energy and you're going to have more growth hormone levels and you're going to have a better cholesterol profile. You may even live longer. It may increase longevity and it's going to reduce systemic inflammation and it's going to reduce oxidative damage and anti-aging. Long list. I think I got them all though. And there are studies to suggest that

many of these things are possible. These are not claims that are just made up out of whole cloth, but if you are willing to dig into the details, you find that the reality is far less impressive. Many of the benefits I just shared with you are weakly supported by research at best, often unproven in humans. And in many cases, there's equally compelling evidence to the contrary. Another issue is a lot of the research with intermittent fasting has been done with obese and sedentary people, people who are not very healthy. And the question then is, are those benefits that are seen with those people applicable to someone like me and probably you, who has a very healthy body composition, a very healthy lifestyle, exercises for to maybe, I don't know

about you, but I do about seven hours a week of exercise and we probably eat a lot of nutritious foods. We probably get enough sleep. It is completely incorrect to assume that what goes on in the sedentary obese person's body is going to be the same in our body. And I would argue based on my understanding of the research that for people like us, adding intermittent fasting to all of the other things that we are doing will have little to no meaningful effect. There may be some effects, they may be statistically significant, but the effect size will be meaningless, meaning it just won't do anything. It won't matter in terms of our bottom line health and our quality of life. What's more, as I mentioned earlier, you may not do well with fewer

meals per day. Research shows that some people experience more hunger, they experience more irritability, they experience brain fog during their periods of food restriction, their fasting periods. And it is worth noting that studies show that symptoms like those do tend to go away in time. A month or so for most people is enough to get over them. But that's a month of discomfort for what? Again, what are you doing it for? Why are you forcing yourself to put on this dietary straitjacket? There's also research to suggest that fasting may increase the reinforcement of the

value of food, meaning that the more you abstain from eating, the more value you tend to place on being able to eat. And this can encourage some people to overeat in periods when they aren't fasting, which then of course can mitigate the benefit of IF at least for weight loss and for weight maintenance. Studies also show that when people fast, hormones associated with elevated mood decrease. And since the body requires carbs to optimally produce these happy hormones, so to speak, it's common to crave high carb foods when you finally get to break your fast. And I don't know if you've noticed this, but many people I've seen over the years who publicly promote intermittent fasting tend to really go in for highly refined and high calorie,

high fat foods like cakes and breakfast cereals, candy and candy bars and potato chips, ice cream, and other not very nutritious filling stuff instead of the types of carbs that we want to be eating mostly, which would be vegetables and fruits and whole grains and legumes and potatoes and sweet potatoes and so forth. So given what I've seen working with thousands of people over the years, as well as the current weight of the evidence, my position is that intermittent fasting is a perfectly workable style of eating. And many people do well with it. Many people do better with it than traditional dieting, and they just prefer it. And that is totally fine. But many people do not. Many people do better with a traditional diet. Their compliance is better and the overall experience managing stress, and so on, they are not missing out on

anything meaningful by not following an intermittent fasting diet. Now, if new research comes out in the next year, three years, five, 10 years, whatever, that shows otherwise, if it shows that we actually can get even more health and vitality and wellness and longevity out of our life and out of our body if we do all of the things that I just mentioned and follow an intermittent fasting diet of some kind, then I will be happy to say that is my position. If that becomes the weight of the evidence, And I probably would consider doing it myself. It may be kind of like trying to fit the square peg into the round hole, but I'll make it fit. As one of the guys who works with me likes to say, that's our motto around here. We always make it fit. All right, my lovelies, that's it for this episode. I hope you liked it and thank you again

for joining me. And next up, I have a Q&A coming. So that's tomorrow where I'm going to talk about prehab, ideal cutting protocols, specifically lifting and cardio and HIIT cardio, as well as doing a single cycle of steroids. Is that a good idea? Just do one cycle and then be natty from there on out. It's a good question. And then the following week, I'm going to be talking about low back pain. I have an interview coming that I did with Eric Helms on the science of auto-regulation and another best of, another Q&A and more. 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

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That is the best way to get ahold of me, mikeatmulstervilleife.com. And that's it. Thanks again for listening to this episode, and I hope to hear from you soon.