Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - The Best Way to Get Rid of “Man Boobs” and Chest Fat

Episode Date: March 13, 2020

Chances are good you found this podcast because you think you may have “man boobs.” And, chances are also good you’re willing to do just about anything to get rid of them. And I’d also wager you haven’t had much luck so far. Even when you manage to lose a few pounds your “moobs” don’t seem to shrink, and maybe you’re even wondering if you’ll need surgery to get rid of them. After all, many other guys are taking that route. According to the American Society of Plastic Surgeons, male breast reduction surgeries increased 32% from 2000 to 2017, and in 2015 men accounted for 40% of all breast reduction surgeries. Is that really your only option, though? Is surgery the only way to get rid of man boobs? And even if you manage to get rid of them, are they just going to come back thanks to your genetics? The short answer is no, no, and no. The long answer is that most cases of “man boobs” are simply caused by having too high of a body fat percentage, and once you reduce your body fat percentage your man boobs will disappear along with the rest of your chest fat. So, if you want to learn how to get rid of man boobs as quickly as possible, you’re in the right place. Let’s get started. --- Mentioned on The Show: Books by Mike Matthews: https://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/

Moves, chesticles, fallupas, I don't know, internet, strange place. That's what we're going to be talking about here. The feminine looking fatty deposits that collect in the pectoral area in men. What causes this phenomenon and what can you do about it? Now, before we get to the show, if you like what I'm doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, and if you want to help me help more people get into the best shape of their lives, please consider picking up one of my best-selling health and fitness books. I have Bigger Leaner, stronger for men, thinner, leaner, stronger for women.

I have a flexible dieting cookbook called The Shredded Chef, as well as a 100% practical hands-on blueprint for personal transformation called The Little Black Book of Workout Motivation. These books have sold well over a million copies and have helped thousands of people build their best body ever. And you can find them on all major online retailers like Amazon, Audible, iTunes, Kobo, and Google Play, as well as in select Barnes & Noble stores. So again, that's Bigger Leaner Stronger for men, Thinner Leaner Stronger for women, The Shredded Chef, and The Little Black Book of Workout Motivation. Oh, and I should also mention that you can get any of my audiobooks for free when you sign up for an Audible account, which is the perfect way to make those little pockets of downtime, like commuting, meal prepping, dog walking, and and cleaning a bit more interesting entertaining and productive and if you

want to take audible up on that offer and get one of my audiobooks for free just go to legion athletics.com audible and it'll forward you over and then you can sign up for your account. And in case you think that this is an issue that only affects obese guys who don't work out, you're wrong. There are a lot of guys out there who are not lean per se, but not obese and who are working out regularly and who are doing a lot of chest training in particular and who still have man boobs. Now, many of these guys are concerned because they think that they probably have gyno, which is short for gynecomastia. And this is a medical condition that is characterized by a non-cancerous growth in male breast tissue.

And the reason why this freaks guys out is gyno is notoriously hard to treat. It sometimes yields to certain types of drugs, but often requires surgery to remove the excess tissue. Now, the good news is many guys who suffer from man boob syndrome don't have gyno. Technically, what they have would be referred to as pseudogynecomastia. So something that looks like gynecomastia, but is not. So what that means then is many of these guys do not need to turn to drugs or surgery to get rid of their man boobs, and they're not genetically cursed to look like that for the rest of their lives. Instead, to look like that for the rest of their lives. Instead, all they have to do is get leaner.

They just have to reduce their body fat percentage enough. Now, I've heard from many guys over the years who had man boobs to some degree, to one degree or another. And oftentimes, these were guys who were at least 20% body fat. I would say 20 to probably 25% is the general range that most of these guys were in. And at that body fat percentage, they had developed man boobs. But then there are many guys who were at the same body fat percentage and who did not have man boobs. They looked plenty fluffy, but their pecs still looked like pecs. Now, the reason for that is genetics do come into play here. We are all genetically programmed to store and burn fat in certain areas of our bodies more preferentially than others. And unfortunately, this applies to both men and women, most of us are genetically

programmed to store fat in areas that we least want to store fat in and to burn fat from areas that we care a lot less about. A good example of this is the stubborn fat phenomenon, something you've probably heard of, which although it sounds like bro science bullshit is perfectly true and is scientifically valid. Certain fat cells are harder to mobilize, harder to shrink than others. And if you want to learn about that, just search for Legion Athletics Stubborn Fat and you'll find an article that I wrote on it. I'm sure I recorded a podcast on stubborn fat as well. So if you hit my podcast feed or my YouTube channel and just search for stubborn fat, you can learn all about that. But what it comes down to is if you're a guy, you've probably

noticed that your belly and your obliques and your lower back gain fat a lot faster as you gain fat, as you gain weight than let's say your chest or your shoulders or your back. And then when you're cutting, you tend to lose fat faster from your chest and your shoulders and your back than you do your belly and your obliques and your lower back. And if you're a woman, you've probably noticed your hips, your thighs, your butt, the same phenomenon. You tend to store fat disproportionately in those areas versus anywhere else on your body. Let's say anything north of your waist. And then when you're losing fat, you'll lose fat from everywhere in your body, but your hips, your thighs, and your butt. Now, the solution for that, in case you're wondering, is really the same solution for

man boobs. You just got to keep losing fat. Just keep going and eventually that stubborn fat will go. Many people don't realize how much fat they actually have to lose to get to the look they want. It's often a lot more. So then with man boobs, what can happen genetically is some guys are just genetically programmed to disproportionately store fat around their pe start cutting, they often see that the fat level in their chests isn't changing, at least not for the first several weeks. They're going to see other areas of their body leaning out, but they're not going to see much of a change in their chest and they're not going to see much man boob shrinkage. And then they get discouraged and they get concerned and often derailed and they give up cutting and blah, blah, blah. Again, the solution, though, is just keep losing fat.

So to put a number to it, a guy who doesn't have gyno, who has pseudo gyno, who just has a bit too much fat in his chest, if he gets down to 10% body fat, he is not going to have man boobs anymore, period. So at 20% body fat or higher, man boobs that just get bigger as the body fat percentage rises. At 15%, mini man boobs. 10%, no more man boobs, pecs. Now what can happen though, even with guys at 10%, is sometimes they have a little bit of loose skin after losing the chest fat. And that is simply a phenomenon of skin being too stretched out for too long. And there isn't too much you can do about that in general, but there are some things you can do

that don't involve surgery. And the major one is to gain muscle. And the reason that works is it just fills the space. So the skin got stretched out because of an excess amount of fat. The fat's gone. The skin is still stretched out. Maybe it has shrunk a little bit, but it hasn't shrunk back to where the muscle is. And by growing the muscle though, you fill that gap and you may not be able to fill it all the way. And so there may still be a little bit of loose skin, but you may be able to, it depends how much loose skin there is. Continuing to work out and continuing to eat well and continuing to hydrate enough, your skin can shrink more. In some people it does, in some people it doesn't. And I did record, I believe I recorded a podcast on loose skin. I definitely wrote an article on loose skin. So if you search

for Legion Athletics loose skin, you'll find that article. I do believe I recorded a podcast as well. So if you search my podcast via YouTube channel for loose skin, you can listen to the information in that article. So if you have man boobs, then you want to reduce your body fat percentage. That's the first major action you need to take. And 10% body fat is a good target. So that's where you want to get down to. And to do that, you're going to have to restrict your calories. So you want to use a moderately aggressive, but not reckless calorie deficit. I recommend about 20%, meaning that you want to eat about 80% of the energy that you burn every day. And if you're not sure how to do that, then just search for Legion Athletics, how many calories,

and you'll find an article I wrote that will help you work out how many calories you should be eating every day based on your goal. And that article also has a calculator in it that just makes it real easy. You can put in your information and get your numbers and get to making a meal plan and get to losing fat. And then you want to make sure you get your macros right, which is protein, carbs, and fat. Because if you're wanting to improve your body composition, if you're wanting to lose fat and not muscle or gain muscle and not fat, a calorie is not a calorie anymore. Energy balance matters, but so does macronutrient balance, which is where those calories are coming from in terms of protein, carbs, and fat. And protein is the most important

one. You got to get that right. And really that just comes down to getting about 40% of your daily calories from protein, which is somewhere around one gram per pound of body weight per day for most people, unless you're very overweight, then it really should just be about 40% of your daily calories. And a gram of protein has four calories so it's pretty easy to work that out and again the article that i recommended on how to figure out how many calories to eat every day also will help you figure out your macros as well and then you want to be in the gym doing a lot of heavy resistance training you want to spend most of your time that you have to exercise training your muscles and the most effective way to train your muscles

is traditional strength training. Now you can work in some bodybuilding stuff as well, but the core of your resistance training should be heavy compound weightlifting. For most people, the best option is barbell training, squatting, deadlifting, bench pressing, overhead pressing. But if you can't do those things for any reason, that's okay okay there are plenty of alternative exercises you can do that are still compound exercises exercises involving multiple joints multiple major muscle groups allowing you to load them with heavy weight and progress and if you want to learn more about that just search for legion athletics strength training and you will find a long article that one of the people on my team wrote that breaks down, I believe it's 12 different strength training programs. So it explains the basic principles of strength training, how these

programs generally work, and then goes over 12 different programs to choose from. And lastly, you want to make sure that you're not doing too much cardio. Focus your efforts on the resistance training, not the cardio. And yes, that's true. Even when you're wanting to lose fat, resistance training is a fantastic way to lose fat. It burns a lot of energy. You're building muscle, which increases your metabolism and improves your overall health. And you can include cardio in your regimen. It's healthy and it does burn energy, but it really should be, let's say no more than 20% of your time. So whatever time you have for exercise, put 80% of that into resistance training. And if you want to do cardio as well, make that 20% of your time. Now, if you have a lot of time and that would have you doing a lot of cardio,

another way of looking at it is your cardio should not comprise more than 50% of the time that you spend training your muscles. So if you are training your muscles six hours a week, you should be doing no more than three hours of cardio per week. And I would probably say closer to two would even be better. So the point here is the best way to view cardio in the context of an exercise regimen is like supplements, like nutritional supplements. Just as a nutritional supplement or a pile of nutritional supplements every day cannot replace healthy eating. You need to eat well and then you can take supplements which are supplementary by definition to make your diet a little bit more effective in terms of health and longevity and performance. You can't

eat like shit and just take a bunch of supplements. So the same goes for cardio and fitness. And particularly if you care about your body composition, if you care about how much muscle you have and your body fat percentage. Cardio is the supplement. It's something that you add to the base, the foundation of resistance training and ideally strength training to get fitter, faster, or stay a bit fitterter or lose fat a little bit faster or be able to eat a bit more food without gaining fat or even to gain muscle faster. There is evidence that doing some cardio in addition to weightlifting, if done correctly, can speed up muscle and even strength gain over time. All right, well, that's it for today's episode. I hope you found it interesting and

helpful. And if you did, and you don't mind doing me a favor, could you please leave a quick review for the podcast on iTunes or wherever you are listening from? Because those reviews not only convince people that they should check out the show, they also increase the search visibility and help more people find their way to me and to the podcast and learn how to build their best body ever as well. And of course, if you want to be notified when the next episode goes live, then simply subscribe to the podcast and whatever app you're using to listen, and you will not miss out on any of the new stuff that I have coming. And last, if you didn't like something about the show, then definitely shoot me an email

at mike at muscleforlife.com and share your thoughts. Let me know how you think I could do this better. I read every email myself, and I'm always looking for constructive feedback. All right. Thanks again for listening to this episode and I hope to hear from you soon.