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  3

  Why Bigger Leaner Stronger Is Different

  A small daily task, if it be really daily, will beat the labours of a spasmodic Hercules.

  —ANTHONY TROLLOPE

  I’m going to tell you something that the kings and queens of the multibillion-dollar health and fitness industry don’t want you to know:

  Getting lean, strong, and muscular isn’t nearly as complicated or difficult as they want you to believe.

  You don’t need to starve yourself with very-low-calorie diets to lose stubborn belly and lower-back fat and keep it off. In fact, this is how you slow your metabolism down and almost guarantee that you’ll regain everything you lose.

  You don’t need to obsess over “clean eating” to get and stay lean, defined, and energized, and you don’t have to completely abstain from carbs or the “cheat” foods you love most.

  You don’t need to constantly change up your workout routine to get jacked. All you’ll really accomplish with “muscle confusion” is, well, mental confusion.

  You don’t need to toil away in the gym for a couple of hours per day doing tons of exercises and sets. As a matter of fact, this is a great way to stunt your gains and get nowhere.

  You don’t need to grind out hours and hours of boring cardio every week to get a tight, defined core. (How many flabby treadmillers have you seen over the years?)

  You don’t need to spend hundreds of dollars per month on worthless supplements, “cleanses,” or fat loss pills. Supplements don’t build great biceps and bodies, and most don’t do anything but drain your bank account.

  Those are just a few examples of the harmful lies and myths that keep men from ever achieving the powerful, cut, and healthy bodies they truly desire. And this failure often undermines their self-confidence and self-esteem, sours their social lives and relationships, and discourages any future attempts at self-improvement.

  Where did all this misinformation come from, and why are long-debunked lies still propped up by mainstream celebrities, social media “influencers,” authors, and gurus?

  Well, the long story short is this:

  When millions of people are strongly motivated to solve a problem and willing to spend large amounts of money to do it, there will always be an abundance of things to buy and brilliant marketers to sell them.

  It’s pretty simple, really. Where do most people go for diet and exercise advice? TV, online and offline articles, friends, and personal trainers, right?

  Most of what people learn from these sources is virtually useless.

  How can I make such a bold claim?

  Well, let’s start with the mainstream fitness publications like magazines, websites, and books, which reach many millions of people every year. Their editors and publishers aren’t diabolical scum, but they do have to grapple with a couple of dilemmas.

  The first is this: publications of all kinds are in the business of selling information, and they need to keep people buying and subscribing. What’s the best marketing button to push to accomplish this?

  New.

  The easiest way to keep people hooked is to continually give new advice—new training methodologies, diet “tricks,” research “breakthroughs,” and the like.

  New information isn’t bad per se. Health and fitness are vast subjects with myriad trails, tunnels, and caverns to explore. Most of it won’t sell books, magazines, and website subscriptions though. Your average guy or gal isn’t nearly as interested in the nuances of training periodization as how to finally lose that belly fat.

  Which do you think will make a better magazine cover splash: how to understand your body weight set point, or how to build bigger biceps?

  This is why Men’s Health stopped writing new cover lines years ago.1 They know their target market wants, more than anything else, abs, bigger arms and a bigger chest, and more sex, money, confidence, intelligence, and health. Hence, the endless repetition of cover lines like “Six-Pack Abs!” “Dress for More Sex!” and “Build Wealth Fast!” and the endless supply of rehashed . . . er, reimagined . . . articles to go with them.

  The truth, however, is that it doesn’t take 13 different articles to teach someone how to get six-pack abs or bigger arms or better pecs. If magazines told the simple truth, they would have maybe 25 articles that they could reprint, verbatim, over and over. The articles wouldn’t sound terribly exciting, either. They might have titles like:

  Fellas! How to Build 20 Pounds of Lean Muscle in Your First Year

  Move More, Eat Less—The “Secret” to Faster Weight Loss

  Why the Most Popular Muscle-Building Supplements Do Absolutely Nothing

  That is, these articles would teach you “inconvenient truths” like you can’t get muscle definition as fast as you’d like, you can’t target just belly fat for elimination, and you’ll need more than 12 50-word tips to build the body of your dreams.

  And that’s a horrible business plan for a publishing company.

  As you’ll learn in this book, most of what you want to achieve with your body boils down to diligent and consistent application of the fundamentals. It also takes time. Not an interminable amount of time, but more than “they” want you to believe. The sooner you accept these realities, the sooner you can start making real progress.

  The second problem most publications face is the nature of their revenue: advertising.

  For example, many of the fitness magazines you see on the shelves of your local bookstore are little more than mouthpieces for supplement companies, which either own the magazines outright or buy the lion’s share of their very pricey advertising space.

  If these magazines are to stay in business, they must provide their advertisers with a strong return on investment, and they’ve gotten really good at it. They feature flashy ads that promise far more than any pill or powder can deliver, cleverly written “advertorials” that suck you in with education and conclude with product recommendations, and long-form pieces on various aspects of diet, nutrition, and exercise that contain convincing supplement tie-ins.

  Therefore, much of what you’re “learning” in these magazines (and their online counterparts) is geared toward selling you products, not helping you achieve your goals as efficiently and effectively as possible. And as long as these magazines and websites keep attracting eyeballs, supplement companies will keep paying, and all will be right in the world (of convincing people to pay to be lied to).

  Let’s move on and talk trainers. As a coach and trainer myself, I hate to say this, but most of my kind are a waste of money. Their hearts are often in the right place, but very few personal trainers have the know-how required to get their clients into great shape. Even worse, many who do have the know-how intentionally drag the process out to make life easier for them (new client acquisition is the toughest part of the gig).

  This is why you see so many people paying anywhere from $50 to hundreds of dollars per hour to do the same types of silly, ineffective workout routines, and why so many of these poor people have so little to show for their efforts.

  You’ve probably also noticed that many trainers aren’t even in good shape themselves. How can you honestly sell yourself as a fitness expert when you’re a skinny-fat weakling? Why should anyone believe you? For some reason, these people get business all the time, and their clients almost always stay flabby and out of shape too.

  Compounding the disservice is the fact that most trainers don’t give their clients proper diet and nutrition plans, which almost guarantees failure. How you look and feel is just as much a reflection of how you eat as it is of how you exercise, so no matter how many hours you put in at the gym, you won’t see major improvements if you’re not also managing yo
ur diet properly.

  Eat incorrectly, and you’ll be overweight no matter how much cardio you do. Eat incorrectly, and you’ll be weak and “shapeless” no matter how much you struggle with resistance training. Eat correctly, however, and you can unlock everything that exercise has to offer, including rapid muscle gain and fat loss, and effortless weight maintenance.

  You probably know that though. In fact, you might be dreading the inevitable “diet” talk, and for good reason. Nobody wants to be told to starve themselves, give up all the foods they like, or follow strange, complicated, or downright annoying eating regimens.

  Well, I have good news: you can rest easy because when I say “eating correctly,” I mean something very different from what you probably expect. As you’ll soon learn, you can actually enjoy “being on a diet.”

  Yes, you read that right. You can lose fat and gain lean muscle while eating plenty of foods you like, including delicious carbs (and even, gasp, sugar), and without ever feeling denied or deprived.

  But we’ll get into all of that later. Let’s get back to trainers.

  You might be wondering why so many trainers know so little about the art and science of building lean, muscular, healthy bodies. These are certified professionals, right?

  Yes, they are.

  Unfortunately, you don’t have to be a true expert who can get results to pass a PT certification test. You just have to memorize and regurgitate some basic information about nutrition, anatomy, and exercise. You can even do it all online, where test answers are just a Google search away. To make matters worse, a shocking amount of the information you learn when you’re getting certified is outdated and even plain wrong. So in many ways, trainers are being set up to fail.

  Another problem personal trainers have to live with is baked into the business. If you want to keep clients coming back, you need to keep them convinced that you’re needed, and that they couldn’t do just as well on their own.

  While some people are happy to pay for the accountability alone, most want to feel like they’re getting more for their money. An easy way to give them this feeling is to tell them what to do and how, but not why, and then regularly change up their routine according to various “sophisticated” training principles.

  Personal training isn’t all gloom and doom, though. There absolutely are great trainers out there who are in awesome shape themselves, who do know how to quickly and effectively get results in others, and who do care about their clients and deliver what they promise. If you’re one of them, I applaud you because you’re carrying the weight of the entire profession on your shoulders.

  Aside from trainers, we should also discuss another popular but hit-or-miss (and mostly miss) resource people turn to for help: friends.

  I’ve worked with thousands of people, and here’s how it usually goes: someone reads an article online or offline, or chats with a trainer or jacked guy or gal in the gym, and passes along what they learned to their fitness-minded friends.

  Such word of mouth is great in principle—my work thrives on it—but the results it produces depends entirely on the accuracy and validity of the information being accepted and relayed. And unfortunately, as you now know, much of that information is flawed or even misleading.

  This book and everything you’re going to learn in it is different because I have very different incentives and payoffs. I’m a self-published author, so my work and livelihood is not beholden to mainstream publishers, advertisers, or trends. Instead, my lifeblood comes directly from you, based entirely on how well I serve you and your interests.

  Because of this, Bigger Leaner Stronger can go against the grain and recommend science-based diet, exercise, and wellness methods that make editors and marketers yawn. This is why a lot of what you’re going to learn in this book is quite different from most of the diet and exercise advice peddled to unsuspecting men every day.

  For example, I’m going to let you eat plenty of carbs while stripping fat and adding lean muscle to your frame, I’m going to have you lift heavy weights to make you bigger and stronger, and I’m going to have you do as little cardio as possible while building your best body ever.

  Sound too good to be true? It’s not. It’s unconventional, but it works, and as far as “truth” goes, what else really matters?

  I can understand if you’re skeptical. I was when I first came across the scientific research and practical strategies I’m going to share with you in this book. Take heart though because I’m not going to ask you to make a big leap of faith. Most of what you’re going to learn has been around for decades, but nobody has put it all together in the way I’m going to for you.

  Furthermore, Bigger Leaner Stronger is all about getting results, and fast. That means you’re going to see real, tangible improvements in your body within the first 30 days of starting this program.

  Your weight is going to start moving in the right direction, your muscles are going to start poking through your clothes, and you’re going to start seeing cuts where there were none before. I promise.

  And if, for whatever reason, you’re not seeing these types of results within your first 30 days, I still have good news for you. It’s not because Bigger Leaner Stronger is just another overhyped sell that can’t deliver. It just means you need some help with the implementation, and I’d be happy to give it. Simply email me at mike@muscleforlife.com.

  Remember too that over 500,000 guys have read this book, and tens of thousands (that I know of) have applied its teachings and now have ripped new bodies to show for it. So you’re in good company.

  If you’re ready to begin, here’s the first step: forget what you think you know about getting fit.

  That might sound a little harsh, but it’s for your own good. Just let it all go, suspend your disbelief for the next few days, and approach Bigger Leaner Stronger with an open mind.

  Along the way, you’ll discover that some of the things you’ve been doing are right and others are wrong, and that’s okay. I’ve made just about every mistake you can possibly make, so don’t be discouraged.

  Just follow this program exactly as I lay it out, and the results will speak for themselves.

  Good luck. Have fun. And enjoy the body- and life-changing transformation that awaits you.

  Cook J. Update: Men’s Health Stopped Writing New Cover Lines Years Ago. Gawker Website. https://gawker.com/5424291/update-mens-health-stopped-writing-new-cover-lines-years-ago. December 11, 2009. Accessed August 15, 2018

  Part 2

  Key Things “They” Aren’t Telling You

  4

  The Hidden Barrier

  The beginning of wisdom is the definition of terms.

  —SOCRATES

  Have you ever wondered why so many people find diet and exercise so confusing?

  Why it’s so rife with unworkable, conflicting, and illogical advice and opinions?

  You know, nonsense like:

  “Counting calories doesn’t work.”

  “Exercise doesn’t help you lose weight.”

  “Broccoli has more protein than chicken.”

  “Foods that spike insulin levels make you fat.”

  “Eating a lot of ‘healthy’ dietary fat helps you stay lean.”

  These examples are but a few of the many false diet and exercise mantras that have maintained currency despite decades of scientific and anecdotal evidence to the contrary.

  Why are people so susceptible to inaccuracies, lies, and oddball theories like these?

  While that question might sound like it has a deep, complex answer, the reality is a lot of it can be chalked up to the simplest of things: misunderstood words.

  You can experience this firsthand. The next time you hear someone declare that “calories in versus calories out is obsolete,” ask them this simple question: What is a calorie?

  Dollar
s to doughnuts your challenge will be met with an empty stare or foolish burbling, because they don’t have a clue what the word means, let alone what “calories in versus calories out” really means or how that metabolic process could possibly work.

  Chances are your experience with such a misinformed individual will be something like when Jimmy Kimmel asked random people in Los Angeles to define gluten. The best response any of them could muster was, “It’s like a grain, right?” and my personal favorite response was, “It’s a flour derivative of wheat . . .”

  (And in case you’re wondering, gluten is a mixture of two proteins present in many grains, which is responsible for the elastic texture of dough.)

  Calorie and gluten are only the very top of the tip of the proverbial iceberg. What is protein? What is carbohydrate? What is sugar? What is body fat? What is muscle? What is metabolism? What is insulin? What is a hormone?

  Very few people can answer these questions simply and accurately, so of course they spin around in circles, believing nearly anything they’re told. How can you possibly gain a full and proper understanding of a subject when you don’t understand the most basic words used to discuss its most important concepts?

  That’s why learning the precise meanings of key words is the first major hurdle you have to clear when you’re trying to learn something new if you’re going to have any hope of gaining a deep and practical understanding of it.

  If you don’t really understand many of the words you read or hear, how are you supposed to fully understand the ideas being communicated? You can’t, of course. And instead, you’ll reach your own distorted conclusions.

  For example, if I were to tell you, “The children have to leave in the gloaming,” you might wonder what I’m talking about because you don’t understand the meaning of the word gloaming. The sentence doesn’t give you any hints, as it could mean early, midday, late, or something else altogether.

  In school, most of us were taught to guess at the meanings of words by looking at the surrounding context or by comparing them to other words in our vocabularies. The context in my example only reveals that gloaming might be a time of the day. You can then analyze the word itself, but that doesn’t offer any clues, either. “Well, gloaming sounds like glowing,” you might think, “and the sun glows, so I guess it could mean ‘in the morning’?”