Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - The 7 Biggest Nutrition Myths for Endurance Training

Episode Date: September 13, 2021

I’m going to break down 7 nutrition myths that are especially prevalent among endurance athletes. These myths also exist in the strength training world, but they’re particularly pernicious for people who run, jog, swim, cycle, or do any sort of endurance training. These people know that nutrition is key to performance. Unfortunately, while some advice out there is good, a lot of nutrition advice is just flat-out nonsense. So in this episode of the podcast, I’m going to lay some of the worst offenders to rest. Timestamps: 4:01 - Myth: Eating lots of carbs is the most important part of nutrition. 8:39 - Myth: You have to eat within 30 minutes of finishing an endurance workout. 10:38 - Should you eat before or during an endurance training workout? 12:08 - Myth: Energy bars and gels are better than whole foods. 13:43 - The best carbs for before, during, or after a workout. 14:39 - Myth: Endurance trainees should take electrolyte supplements. 18:27 - Why you should be skeptical of electrolyte and hydration supplements. 24:33 - Myth: Getting leaner makes you faster. 27:37 - Myth: endurance athletes should never diet. 31:07 - Myth: You should train to "earn" your calories. Mentioned on the Show: Legion VIP One-on-One Coaching: https://buylegion.com/vip

Hello, and happy Labor Day. I am recording this on Labor Day, which is a form of blasphemy, I guess. But hey, here we are. Welcome to another episode of Muscle for Life. I am Mike Matthews, your host, and I want to thank you for joining me today. And if you like my podcast, if you like what I'm doing here, please do subscribe to it in whatever app you're using for two reasons. One, it'll make sure that you don't miss any new episodes, so they will be queued up for you. And two, it helps me reach more people with this show because it helps boost the show's rankings on the various charts. And many people go to those charts when they're looking for a new podcast to listen to. Okay, so what are we getting ourselves into in this episode? Well, I'm going

to break down seven myths that are particularly prevalent among endurance training folk. Some of them are also in the strength training space, but these are primarily endurance training myths. People who run, who jog, who trail run, who ride a bicycle, who swim, and so forth. And many of these people, of course, know that nutrition plays a central role in their performance, and they are constantly bombarded with tips and suggestions and warnings about how, when, and why they should eat. And a lot of the advice can be helpful. Some of it is okay, but misinterpreted or misapplied, and some of it is just nonsense. So in this episode, I am going to be slaughtering some sacred cows, one of my favorite things to do because I'm a

monster. Also, if you like what I'm doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, definitely check out my VIP one-on-one coaching service because my team and I have helped people of all ages and all circumstances lose fat, build muscle, and get into the best shape of their life faster than they ever thought possible. And we can do the same for you. We make getting fitter, leaner, and stronger paint by numbers simple by carefully managing every aspect of your training and your diet for you. Basically, we take out all of the guesswork. So all you have to do is follow the plan and watch your body change day after day, week after week and month after month. What's more, we've found that people are often missing just one or two crucial pieces of the puzzle. And I'd bet a shiny shekel it's

the same with you. You're probably doing a lot of things right, but dollars to donuts, there's something you're not doing correctly or at all that's giving you the most grief. Maybe it's your calories or your macros. Maybe it's your exercise selection. Maybe it's your food choices. Maybe you're not progressively overloading your muscles or maybe it's something else. And whatever it is, here's what's important. Once you identify those one or two things you're missing, once you figure it out, that's when everything finally clicks. That's when you start making serious progress.

And that's exactly what we do for our clients. To learn more, head over to www.buylegion.com. That's B-U-Y-L-E-G-I-O-N.com slash VIP and schedule your free consultation call, which by the way, is not a high pressure sales call. It's really just a discovery call where we get to know you better and see if you're a good fit for the service. And if you're not, for any reason, we will be able to share resources that'll point you in the right direction. So again, if you appreciate my work and if you want to see more of it, and if you also want to finally stop spinning your wheels and make more progress in the next few months than you did in the last few years, check out my VIP coaching service at www.buylegion.com slash VIP.

Okay, myth number one, eating lots of carbs is the most important aspect of nutrition. Now, there's no question that eating sufficient carbs, and that may be a lot of carbs, is important for optimizing your performance and your recovery. That applies to endurance training, that applies to strength training, any sort of vigorous physical activity. Chances are you are going to do better with a higher carb diet rather than a lower carb diet. You are going to have more productive, enjoyable workouts. You're going to recover faster. You are going to perform better in your training, and that can be particularly important if you are competing. Unfortunately, though, with endurance training, many coaches, authors, and sports scientists beat the drum so loudly for carbs that people fall prey to the idea that that

is really the only aspect of nutrition that matters, that that is the only dimension of a healthy or quote-unquote good diet for endurance training. And that can lead them to neglect other vital aspects of nutrition, like eating enough protein. Now, protein intake is generally higher among strength training peoples, among people who are trying to gain muscle and strength. But again, in the endurance training space, protein is not as popular as it is among lifestyle bodybuilders, I guess you could say. For example, studies show that people who take their endurance training seriously, who do a lot of it, should be eating about the same amount of protein as those of us who are in the gym banging weights, mostly to improve our body composition. Not to say that we're not in there also to get

healthier, but at least 50% of the reason we push and pull and squat heavy weights is to look a certain way, to have a certain amount of muscle and muscle definition and so forth. And I don't think there's anything wrong with that. And those of us who are into that know that we need to eat two to three times the recommended dietary intake, the RDI of protein to maximize muscle and strength gain, something around, let's say 0.8 to one gram of protein per pound of body weight per day. And research shows that the same thing goes for people who do a lot of endurance training and who want to be as good at endurance training as they possibly can be. Now, in pursuit of maximizing their carb intake, many endurance

trainees will eat too little protein so they can eat more carbs. And that impairs their ability to recover from their training, to retain muscle, to retain strength, to retain performance. And another issue among many endurance trainees is they will favor stuff like bread and pasta and oats, which is not bad per se, but they will eat too much of that stuff and too little fruits, vegetables, and legumes, the more nutritious plant-based carbs. Now, oats are quite nutritious. I would say those are an exception. They are my favorite source of whole grains, for example, but white bread, white pasta, nothing wrong with those foods per se, but not very nutritious. And just to give you an idea of how prevalent this problem can be, in a study conducted by scientists at Wrocław University, only 55% of marathon runners consumed the minimum recommended amount of fruits and vegetables. So the key takeaway here is don't miss the forest for the high carb trees.

Eat plenty of carbs, but make sure that a portion of those come from fruits, vegetables, and legumes, at least a couple of servings of fruit per day and three to five servings of vegetables per day. Legumes could be considered supplementary. I wouldn't say that they are as necessary as getting your two servings of fruit per day and your three to five servings of vegetables per day. If you were going to work legumes in, you could replace the fruit with legumes. I think that would be reasonable, but I would not recommend replacing the vegetables with legumes, especially dark leafy greens, at least one serving per day, ideally at least two,

but one is a bare minimum in my opinion. And in addition to that, I think it's also smart to get in at least a half of a serving of whole grains per day. Okay. The second myth is that you have to eat within 30 minutes of finishing an endurance training workout. This is the endurance training equivalent of the anabolic window myth in strength training or in resistance training, I guess you could say, where you're supposed to eat protein in particular within 30, 45 or 60 minutes, depending on who you are listening to, or you will miss out on the gains that you could have gotten from that workout

or worse. You may even start losing muscle. And so many athletes, many endurance athletes will tie themselves in knots over their nutrition timing and particularly their post-workout nutrition. And again, a common belief is you have to eat carbs within 30 minutes or so of finishing an endurance training workout, or you will dramatically impair your recovery. And some people in the endurance training space will say similar to the resistance training space, that if you don't do this, if you don't have your carbs, then you've basically wasted that workout. And this is a major source of anxiety for many endurance trainees, and it also encourages them to eat a lot of sugary, highly processed recovery drinks and bars and gels, which simply

is not necessary. Fortunately, research shows otherwise you only need to restock your body's carbohydrate stores. You only need to eat carbs within 30 to 60 minutes of working out. If you plan on doing another difficult endurance training workout, maybe something like 90 minutes or so within about eight hours of finishing the first workout. If not, if you are training the next day or even the following day, you can simply eat normally and your body will recover and fill up its glycogen levels just fine. Glycogen being a form of carbohydrate stored in the muscles and liver, and it is a primary source of fuel during various types of exercise.

And as far as eating before or during an endurance training workout, whether or not that is necessary, whether or not that is going, whether or not that is going to help will just depend on the length and the intensity of the training. So if you are going to be doing, let's say a moderate intensity, 30 or 60 minute workout, you don't have to worry about strategically timing your meals. You don't have to eat before. You don't have to eat during. You don't have to eat directly after just eat the way that you normally would do your workout. And then when it's convenient, eat again, don't overthink it. But if you are going to do a longer endurance training workout, let's say a 60 minute workout or a very high intensity endurance training workout that is shorter, it could be 30 minutes.

Or if you're going to be doing multiple workouts in the same day, it is smart to eat 20 to 30 grams of protein and 30 to 50 grams of carbs about 30 to 90 minutes before and after your workouts. And the closer your meal is to the start of your workout, the less you should eat to avoid gastrointestinal discomfort as a, an FYI. And if you are about to do a long workout, let's say a 90 plus minute workout, then it's also a good idea to eat at least 30 to 60 grams of carbs per hour of exercise. So you're eating before you train. And then at the one hour mark, you're having 30 to 60 grams of carbs. And then the two hour mark, another 30 to 60 grams and so on. Okay. The next myth is that energy bars, gels, and drinks are better than whole foods.

And this myth is great for the companies that sell bars, gels, and drinks, and so on. They are very happy that there is a widely held belief among many endurance athletes that these highly processed bars, gels, chews, drinks are superior to whole foods for fueling workouts. And while these products can be helpful if you are doing a very long workout or maybe a competition like an Ironman, but they are not necessary in most cases and are often inferior to whole foods. One salient example of this comes from a study conducted by Dr. David C. Neiman of Appalachian State University, and he found that cyclists who ate bananas during a 46-mile time trial performed just as well as cyclists who slurped down sports drinks. Other studies have

shown that plain old raisins are just as effective for boosting endurance performance as energy gels and sports jelly beans. Another interesting tidbit is research shows that eating bananas, pears, and other fruits before, during, and, or after endurance training can improve markers of immune function and recovery, something that the highly processed sports supplements don't do. And the reason for that is whole foods, especially fruit, contain large amounts of molecules known as polyphenols, which help reduce inflammation during and after exercise. inflammation during and after exercise. So if you want to carb up for a long workout or during a long workout, or if you want to have some carbs after training, some great fruit options are bananas, pears, apples, oranges, blueberries, grapes, raisins, craisins, dates, figs, papaya, and mango. And in addition to fruits, other good snacks to

eat before and after longer endurance training workouts include yogurt, like high protein yogurt, Greek yogurt, skier, cottage cheese can be great, beef jerky, oatmeal, whey protein, quinoa, sweet potatoes, kidney beans, and chickpeas. The energy bars, the drinks, the gels, the chews, they're convenient, they're tasty, and they certainly can provide some variety during those long workouts, but they are not the killer app. Okay, myth number four is that endurance trainees need to take electrolyte supplements, hydration supplements. And honestly, as somebody who sells sports supplements, I wish this were not a myth because the hydration supplement market is big and it's growing and the margins are very good.

Even if you make a good quote unquote hydration formulation, even if you're willing to spend some money on it, the margins are still good. And that's not the case with many other sports supplements. Protein, for example, my protein, Legion's Whey Protein, costs me almost $20 a bottle to produce and ship to somebody. ship to somebody. Not good margins. Anybody who is familiar with business knows that if you are getting a 100% markup, for example, or a slightly higher than that markup from manufacturing cost to end user cost, that is awful. Somebody who just is looking at the business economics of it would say, don't do that. Just don't do that. Don't, don't sell a protein. They wouldn't understand that you really do need to sell different types of protein powders as a sports nutrition company, because that's really important for getting new customers. A lot of people are going to first buy a protein powder from a sports nutrition company, but again, purely on the economics of it, that is

awful. To put it in perspective, a good margin is considered around eight times from the manufacturer's cost to the consumer's cost, about eight times. Six times, not very good. That's where you should really think about whether you can make that product work. Can you sell enough of them? Do you have other strategic reasons for selling a product that has sub par margins and anything over 10 is considered very good. So one to two, very, very bad. Anyway, anyway, tangent mode, disengaged. Let's get back to these electrolyte, these hydration supplements. My point with that tangent, by the way, is that Legion does not sell a hydration or an electrolyte supplement, not because we couldn't make a lot of money with it, but because the research does not support the use of these supplements. supplements and sports beverage companies though they've spent tens of millions of marketing dollars convincing athletes of all stripes that these supplements are essential they're one of

the keys to supporting performance and recovery if you go to gatorade's website for example one of the first sentences you'll see is that replenishing electrolytes keeps your performance at its peak and the sales pitch for these supplements goes like this. When you exercise, you sweat, and that causes you to excrete molecules like sodium and potassium that carry tiny electrical charges that help facilitate muscle contraction. And those molecules are known as electrolytes. Sodium and potassium are electrolytes. And when your body's stock of

electrolytes becomes depleted, your performance drops. And so then you need to replenish them, right? You have to consume electrolytes and then you can keep your performance at its peak, as Gatorade's copywriters say. And it's also often claimed that getting low on electrolytes can lead to muscle cramps. And that of course puts the kibosh on your training, on your games, on your competitions, and so on. And again, these are things that are widely accepted by athletes, professional athletes, coaches, professional coaches, even many sports scientists. But there are some very good evidence based reasons to be very skeptical. So the keystone of the entire argument for the use of hydration electrolyte supplements is that you lose large amounts of these electrolytes and especially sodium and potassium when you sweat

and that that loss of electrolytes leads to poor performance and muscle cramps. However, as exercise physiologist Ross Tucker explains in a series of excellent articles on his website, which I recommend you check out, even the saltiest of sweaters only lose a small amount of electrolytes when they sweat. In fact, sweat has a much lower concentration of electrolytes than other bodily fluids. So when you sweat, the concentration of electrolytes in your body actually rises because you lose much more water than sodium and potassium. When you drink enough to replenish about 30 to 50% of the water that you lose through sweat, which is about the maximum most endurance trainees can comfortably consume during hard training, your sodium concentrations return to that normal,

healthy range. And in case you're curious why many high level endurance trainees don't replenish much water that they lose during workouts or any, it's because mild dehydration doesn't seem to impair performance, but overhydration easily can. training workouts, you can dangerously dilute your blood sodium levels, even if you are consuming electrolytes. And that of course is going to mess up your training. Another issue with many electrolyte slash hydration drinks and supplements like Gatorade, Powerade, and others is that the concentration of electrolytes in these products is so low that it barely moves the needle. It barely changes anything in your body. So for instance, if somebody goes for a two-hour run and they lose two liters of sweat during that run, they'll lose about four and a half grams of sodium. If they drank a sports drink, they would still lose about four grams of sodium. So that's hardly enough to make a difference in their performance. And that was demonstrated in a study conducted by scientists

at Pennsylvania State University, which showed that people who drank water or Gatorade during runs wound up with the same blood concentrations of sodium. So while you do lose some electrolytes in your sweat, the amounts are just too small to matter and are easily replenished over the course of the day from eating normal foods. And even if drinking electrolyte-rich sports drinks and other supplements did significantly boost your body's electrolyte stores, there's very little evidence that that would improve your performance or stave off muscle cramps. And in the case of muscle cramps, there is a bit of a mystery there because scientists are not sure really what causes them. But one of the best current theories is that muscle cramps are

the result of altered neuromuscular control, not a lack of electrolytes. Basically, there's a disruption in the electrical signals that causes muscles to contract, and that makes them contract too long and at the wrong times. And now you have muscle cramps, and research shows that electrolytes does not fix that. So even if that isn't the underlying mechanism, again, studies have shown that electrolytes are not going to prevent cramps or resolve cramps. Now, a quick personal anecdote to share before we move on to the next myth is when I was younger, I used to go to the beach. I grew up in Florida. I'd go to the beach in the summer. It is 90 plus

degrees. It feels like 105 plus degrees. And I would play volleyball for hours. I would be out there probably, I don't know, from 11 to like five or six. And I quickly learned that if I did not stay hydrated, if I did not drink water when I was thirsty, if I just ignored the thirst and kept playing, and if I did not take some salt and potassium tablets before going out and sweating in the stifling hot sun for many hours, I would get really bad headaches. And I learned that both of those things were necessary. Just drinking water was not enough. I had to make sure that I drank enough water. And the key there is to drink when thirsty and take the salt and potassium tablets before going out and sweating for hours and hours and hours. And interestingly, if I forgot to take

the salt and potassium tablets and I got a really bad headache, it was too late. If I took them after the fact, it didn't do anything to resolve the headache. I had to take them before going out. So my point with sharing that is there are rather extreme circumstances where taking some electrolytes, supplementing with electrolytes can make sense. But keep in mind that was four, five, six, seven hours in the sun running around with very few breaks. We would play basically nonstop for hours and hours and hours. And we would stop here and there, grab a bite of food, drink a little bit of water and get right back to it.

I don't know how many liters of sweat I was excreting in that time, but it was a lot. If you like what I'm doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, definitely check out my VIP one-on-one coaching service because my team and I have helped people of all ages and circumstances lose fat, build muscle, and get into the best shape of their life faster than they ever thought possible. And we can do the same for you. Okay, let's move on to the next myth, which is getting leaner always makes you faster. Now, of course, this is true to a point, right? Lighter and leaner does make you a faster runner, for example, which is why many competitive

runners and other endurance athletes are always striving to be very lean, be very light. What they need to remember though, is that there is a point of diminishing returns here. Yes, you want to be lean enough that you're not carrying around too much extra body weight, especially body fat, but you don't want to be so lean that you can't stay healthy. You can't feel good. You can't train hard. You can't push yourself at best. Overly restricting your calories will simply drain you. It will drain your training. It will make you feel sluggish. It will make you feel weak and slow at worst though. It can lead to an eating disorder. And there is abundant evidence that people who pursue endurance sports seriously, competitively, have a higher incidence of eating disorders than normal folk. For instance,

a study on elite Norwegian athletes found that about 24% of the female athletes and about 9% of the male athletes had some kind of eating disorder. And the most common one among endurance athletes tends to be severely restricting calories to lose weight. And that can sometimes turn into full-blown anorexia nervosa. Even athletes who don't have diagnosed eating disorders or maybe think they don't often overly restrict their calories. And that can lead to a condition that scientists call low energy availability. And basically what's happening here is these people are eating too little to support their training and their recovery and other important bodily functions. And in time that causes chronically high cortisol levels, low sex hormone levels. It causes lethargy and irritability and loss of sex drive,

loss of menstruation in women, a higher risk of injury, decreased athletic performance, all kinds of unwanted side effects. So while it's important to get lean to stay lean, if you want to be able to run fast or move your body quickly, regardless of how you're doing it in the pool, on the bike, you don't want to become obsessed with fat loss at the expense of your overall performance and health. And one of the best ways to avoid this problem is to get close to your goal weight before your most important competition. So don't make the mistake of waiting until a month or so before your marathon, for example, to start slimming down. Try to be within about 5% of your

goal weight within a couple of months before this competition. And that way you can eat more calories while you do your most intense race specific workouts. And you can focus entirely on getting faster and staying healthy instead of just getting leaner and lighter. The next myth plays off of the previous one, and that is that endurance trainees should never diet. And there are probably two sources of this myth. One is many endurance trainees need to eat substantially more calories than other people. And that leads some people to think that they don't need to follow any kind of structured eating plan whatsoever. They think they can just out-train their overeating habits or their eating habits. And as you just learned, some endurance trainees do develop an unhealthy fixation on weight loss. And that makes many health professionals

uncomfortable with the idea of even recommending that they diet or that they try to lose weight. And both of these ideas are misguided. The first point is demonstrably false. Although endurance training does burn a lot of calories, it is very easy to eat all of them back and more. It is very easy to overeat and even gain weight on a vigorous endurance training program, especially when you're eating a lot of very calorie-dense foods that taste really good. You don't have to look very far for evidence of this. Just look at the hundreds of overweight runners who are training for and finishing marathons, for example. And scientific research

also shows that simply exercising more without controlling your calorie intake rarely results in meaningful weight loss because appetite goes up and calorie intake naturally goes up. Now as to the second point, although it is true that some endurance trainees develop eating disorders or dysfunctions and some of them get very fixated on weight loss, it's still a small minority. Most people doing a fair amount of endurance training are not highly competitive. It is just as much exercise to them as it is training, meaning it is just as much something they do because they enjoy it and they want to improve their health and maybe burn some extra calories as much as it is something that they are systematically approaching with very clear-cut goals of progression and milestones that they're working toward.

And so for many of those people who do want to lose fat and who should lose fat to get to a more healthy body composition, of course, it makes sense for them to diet, to restrict their calories intelligently in addition to their endurance training. Now, doing it intelligently, of course, is the key. I don't recommend restricting calories more than about 20% below your total daily energy expenditure. I do not recommend eating a thousand calories per day or eating half of the calories that you burn every day and eating the right number of calories is important, but also it is very important to eat enough protein to make sure that you're not just burning away large amounts of muscle. And then of course,

you just have to stay patient because if you are doing it correctly, you are probably going to lose about one pound of fat per week. If you have a lot of fat to lose, you may probably going to lose about one pound of fat per week. If you have a lot of fat to lose, you may be able to lose two pounds a week, maybe even three pounds a week if you are starting out obese. But if you are starting out, let's say, mildly overweight, it is probably going to be about one pound of fat loss per week. And if you are starting out fairly lean and you want to get more lean, it may be more like a half a pound of fat loss per week. Okay. The seventh and final myth for this podcast is that you should train to earn your calories. This is a mindset that is popular amongst endurance trainees and also amongst body

composition trainees, people who are doing a lot of resistance training or maybe a combination of resistance training and endurance training. And the idea is you have to train enough every day to offset food intake. That's the only way to maintain a lean physique. So if somebody eats 500 calories more than they normally would, then they think they need to burn 500 more calories running. And if they want to eat 3000 calories instead of 2000 calories in a day, well, they had better burn that additional thousand calories off and so on. And this one can

be insidious because once you understand energy balance, you can easily fall into this trap. You understand that if you eat more calories than you burn, you are going to gain some body fat, one calories worth of body fat, because your body has other things to do with calories, depending on where they are coming from and other factors. But we do know that if you consistently eat more calories than you burn, of course, it would have to be more than one. Let's say you're consistently eating a couple hundred more calories than you burn every day. You are going to gain fat. Even if all of those calories came from protein, for example, there just is no way to

get around the strictures of energy balance. And so many people, when they understand that they start to think with this idea of I had better micromanage my calorie intake and ensure that I am never in a calorie surplus. There are two major problems with this. The first one is it's stressful and it sets you up for exercise addiction, eating disorders, or dysfunctions, overuse injuries. It also encourages you to build your training plans around the goal of just burning as many calories as possible, not getting fitter and faster. So for example, moderate pace long runs are great for burning a lot of calories, but are not great for maximizing your performance. The other problem with managing your eating and your

exercising this way is it's too complicated. It's too inaccurate. It is completely unnecessary. You can accurately estimate how many calories you burn every day, either as an average or if you want to get specific, let's say you are very active on one day and very inactive on another day, you can split those days up. And instead of just averaging them, for example, you can accurately estimate how many calories you are burning on the active day versus the inactive day, but you are never going to be 100% correct no matter what model you use. So fretting over whether you should burn an additional hundred calories today to make up for that banana that you had in addition to your normal eating

is a fool's errand. And even if you could perfectly know how many calories you burn from exercise, fast forward 10 years, and we have some device that we have implanted in us that tells us exactly how many calories we are burning. We still would not need to eat that exact amount every day to maintain our current body weight. Well, how does that work? You just have to expand your time horizon here. Instead of looking at 24 hour energy in versus energy out, let's look at

the energy in and energy out of, let's say a week. So long as you are eating and burning roughly the same amount of calories every week, for example, you are going to maintain your weight. Even if one day you're a little bit over one day, you're a little bit under, if those all average out to about the same in and out of the course of a week, you are going to maintain your weight. And the same thing, of course, would go for a month. You could even say a year, but that becomes impractical. Most people who get really fit, who stay really fit, they look at their calorie intake either on a day-to-day basis or a week-to-week basis. And if they are working with it on a week-to-week basis, they don't bother with adjusting their food intake every single day to try to perfectly

match how many calories they're burning, assuming they're trying to maintain their body weight, how many calories they're burning, assuming they're trying to maintain their body weight, obviously. So a good rule of thumb here, if you want to see what's actually happening with your body weight is to track your weight, track your calorie intake for a couple of weeks and see on average, how much you need to eat every week to maintain your weight. So if your weight has gone up your daily weight, the average weight has gone up after a couple of weeks, you know that you are eating slightly too much. If it has gone down, you are eating not enough. If you want to maintain your weight and if it's staying the same, then you can just keep eating the same amount of calories. Now, I personally prefer to work on a day-to-day basis.

I find that easier. I don't mind eating more or less the same number of calories every day. I eat about 3,000 calories per day on average. And one of the reasons that works well for me is I am fairly active seven days per week. I lift weights five days per week, but I do cardio. I hop on an upright bike. I do 30 minutes of moderate intensity cardio, six to seven days per week. On the weekends when I'm not lifting weights, I will these days go out on the golf course. I'll go to the driving range, hit some golf balls, go play some holes. You burn more calories than you may think when you're on the driving range in particular. Driving around in a cart, hitting a ball here and there, not so much, but pounding balls on the range,

the energy expenditure can rack up pretty quickly. And so anyway, my point is while I am not lifting weights on the weekends, I am burning calories in other ways in addition to the cardio that I normally do. And unfortunately, a weightlifting workout, a strength training workout, doesn't burn as many calories as we might hope. Four to 500 per hour is going to be the number for most of us. Now, if my activity levels were to vary widely, if I were to be very active, let's say three, four, five days per week, and then quite inactive on the remaining days, I probably would change my calorie intake to be higher on those high activity days and lower on those low activity days. But I wouldn't do that unless I had to,

because again, it's just easier for me to eat in the range of 2,800 to 3,000 calories per day and not think any more about it. Well, I hope you liked this episode. I hope you found it helpful. And if you did subscribe to the show, because it makes sure that you don't miss new episodes. And it also helps me because it increases the rankings of the show a little bit, which of course then makes it a little bit more easily found by other people who may like it just as much as you. And if you didn't like something about this episode or about the show in general, or if you have ideas or suggestions or just feedback to share, shoot me an email, mike at muscleforlife.com, muscleforlife.com,

and let me know what I could do better or just what your thoughts are about maybe what you'd like to see me do in the future. I read everything myself. I'm always looking for new ideas and constructive feedback. So thanks again for listening to this episode, and I hope to hear from you soon.