Meet the coaches: Mike Samuels

This is a post that I'm extremely excited to share with you. You've probably seen me write a lot about Mike Samuels, or Healthy Living, Heavy Lifting. I've been an avid follower of his for a while now, and much of the content that I produce is based on experiences that I've had after following his articles and acting on many of the suggestions that he makes. In my opinion, he's nothing short of a genius with an awesome writing style, and to top it all off - he's a great guy. So without further ado, let's learn a little more about the man himself!

Q: Sum up yourself and what you do.

A: I'm Mike - an online coach, writer and personal trainer from England. I like eating, lifting heavy stuff, and helping others to feel better about themselves.

Q: Tell us a little about your background. Have you always been health and fitness oriented? Have you always been a coach? If not, tell us about what you did before and why you wanted to become a coach.

A: I was always the chubby kid at school and got pissed off with that, so I started running.

I ran myself down from a podgy 15-stone to about 9-stone, while following a low-fat diet. Essentially I got skinny! Then I discovered weights and decided I wanted to be a personal trainer. The only non-fitness jobs I've had were a paper round at age 14, and I did 6 months in a DIY store part-time while I was at college. I started as a full-time PT in 2009, got involved in online coaching in 2014, and have been mostly online since then.

Q: As a coach, what are the key things that you try to instil in your clients?

A: Life comes before diet and training ... ALWAYS.

Q: Have you ever competed in any bodybuilding/powerlifting/sport related competitions?

A: Yup. Last year I competed in both men's physique and bodybuilding, so had to strut my stuff on stage in skimpy pants! I also competed in 5 powerlifting competitions between 2012 and 2014, and am looking at getting back into it later this year

Q: Describe your own training style/approach

A: That's a tough one. I actually prefer not to have to think about my own training, hence I hire someone to program for me. But I suppose I like a mix of heavy stuff and pump work, along with basic powerlifting and "bro stuff." (because who doesn't love curls and pushdowns?)

Q: Who is your biggest inspiration? (Fitness or otherwise) and why?

Okay, these questions just get tougher.

I guess two guys - Nate Green and Jon Goodman - got me passionate about wanting to help loads of people, and live a cool life with purpose.

Q: What would be your words of advice to anyone just starting out?

A: Just do the basics really, really well. Pick a few people to follow, and whatever you choose to do, stick with it. An average program and diet done consistently and with intensity will always get better results than chopping and changing between the latest fads.

Q: Team HLHL is picking up speed and growing rapidly, are there any new projects on the horizon off the back of this success?

A: Plenty more ebooks, potentially a membership site and world domination.

(Two of those are true by the way.)

*Author's note - I have it on good authority that Mike has already invested in a death ray to hold the world to ransom.

Q: Are you currently affiliated with any brands?

A: Nope - I prefer to advise people on different products from a completely unbiased standpoint.

Q: Any favourite/recommended supplements?

I'm a big fan of the Protein Works - they're a UK-based company, and have grown rapidly in recent years but still have a nice personal touch.

Q: As an IIFYM'er, you're always experimenting with foods, what are your staple foods/what's your favourite meal to make at the moment?

Tuna, rice and broccoli.

Or protein sludge mixed with plain vanilla ice cream, digestive biscuits and sea salt.

So, there you have it - you're hopefully a little more familiar with Mike now. Why not head over to his website (link at the bottom of this article) and check his social media channels out to learn some more and get access to the amazing content that he's currently sharing with the world?

I'd also like to thank Mike for taking the time to answer a few questions for Muscle and Macros. You, sir, are a gentleman and a scholar. 

Web: www.healthylivingheavylifting.com

Twitter: https://twitter.com/mikesamuelspt

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HealthyLivingHeavyLifting?fref=ts

How to structure a workout

Workouts are a great tool in terms of weight loss, muscle gain and generally living a healthier lifestyle. That being said, there is a difference between strolling into a gym and randomly jumping on any piece of equipment that takes your fancy, leisurely throwing out a few reps then leaving, and structuring a training session to ensure that you get the most out of each and every minute that you spend in the gym. This article is just going to run through a basic structure that could go a long way in helping you to achieve more from your sessions. It boils down to this:

Warm Up

• 5-10 minutes slow jogging, rowing, cycling etc 
• Mobility work (focus on any problem areas)
• Activation work

Main Event

• Warm up sets
• Working sets (Strict rest times)

Cool Down

• Stretching
• Foam rolling

Image credit - relentlessgains.com

Firstly, let's start with the warm up. As I've said in previous pieces, warming up is an incredibly important factor in a training session. It gets blood flowing through your muscles, mobilises your joints and muscles and prepares your body for the exercises in the session ahead. There are various sources out there that can provide you with great warmup routines and videos explaining various stretches etc. Again, there's a lot of information and links that can be found here.

Image credit - gameplan.com

Then there's the main event - the actual workout. Even though you've already warmed up, it's always good to get some warm up sets in before you hit your working sets. Before each workout, think about the weight that you want to lift for each exercise. Perform your warm up sets as percentages of that weight. For example -

• 10 reps at 40% of target weight
• 8 reps at 60% of target weight
• 6 reps at 70% of target weight
• 4 reps at 80% of target weight
• 2 reps at 90% of target weight

It might seem like overkill, but these reps will ensure that your muscles are sufficiently warmed up, will minimise the risk of injury and will contribute to the overall volume of your workout. Bottom line - they're important. 

Then there's your working sets, these need little to no explanation. Just perform each exercise for the set amount of weight, reps and sets that you've defined before your workout. The only thing that I'd ensure you keep track of is the time that you've taken to rest between sets. Here are some rough guidelines for rest in terms of the type of sets you're doing. 

• Strength sets - 90-120 seconds between sets
• Hypertrophy (higher rep) sets - 60-90 seconds between sets
• Power (low weight, low rep) sets - 45-60 seconds between sets

Image credit - stopwatch.onlineclock.net

After that, you've got your cool down. This can take a very similar form to your warm up - just make sure that you're stretching your muscles out and working out any knots or kinks that may have formed during your session. 

So that's an extremely basic, but efficient way of structuring your workout. Dubious? Try it out and let me know how you get on by getting in touch with me on social media using the buttons below, or dropping a comment in the comments section! 

 

Using MyFitnessPal to Track Calorie Intake

In my last post I explained the basics behind calories and macronutrients, and provided you with a link to a calculator which would help you to calculate your own intake. Those numbers are great to have, but there's also got to be a way of tracking the foods that you eat in order to actually make use of those numbers. Enter MyFitnessPal:

Image credit - www.kent.edu

MyFitnessPal is an app that can be installed on any smartphone or tablet, or even just used as a web app as a means of tracking calories and macronutrients. It has an absolutely massive database of foods which can be searched for. If you're using a smartphone, you'll usually be able to scan the barcode of your food and the app will pull up the nutritional data for it.

The only issue with the app is that it tries to dictate what your calorie and macronutrient intake should be. This is just something that you have to ignore when using the app. Use the Macro calculator that I linked to in my last article to get your numbers for calories and macros, and then input those numbers into your app through the 'Calorie and Macronutrient goals' field, which can be found under the 'Goals' tab of MyFitnessPal.

Unless you purchase the full version of the app, you'll be forced to set your macronutrients as percentages of your calorie intake. Try and manipulate your percentages to be as close to the numbers that you were given by the calculator and set them up. My advice after this would be to purely use the app as a tracking tool through the use of the 'Nutrition' tab. Basically, make a note of the numbers that the calculator gave you, use the numbers on the left hand side of the nutrition tab as a guideline, and check those two sets of figures against each other instead of using the numbers on the app. 

The last thing that I will say about using MyFitnessPal, is that its up to you to keep yourself accountable. Track with honesty and accountability and stick to your numbers, and you'll find that you're on a sustainable path to your goals.

If you'd like to chat to me about this article, or you've got any feedback then you can get in touch with me on social media through the buttons below. If you don't have Twitter or Instagram then just drop a comment on this post and I'll get back to you!

 

Calories and Macronutrients - The Basics

In a lot of my posts I talk about nutrition and regularly reference things like 'macros', calories, IIFYM, flexible dieting etc. It has only just dawned on me that I'm excluding a lot of people and assuming that everyone is already clued in on the details of nutrition. So for that, I should apologise. However, instead of apologising, I'm going to dedicate this post to explaining the real basics of calories and macronutrients. I'll start with calories.

Image credit - www.mhpersonaltraining.co.uk

Calories are the fuel on which your body runs. Overall, they're the one set of numbers that you should always be looking at if you're serious about your nutrition. Whether its weight loss, weight gain, or maintaining weight; calories are important. There are too many 'experts' and nutritional zealots in the industry today proclaiming that calories aren't important. This is complete and utter rubbish. Yes there are schemes that help people to lose weight and they don't mention calories at all. People even lose weight on these schemes, but I guarantee that when they do, they're in a calorie deficit due to restricting some high calorie foods. Yes I'm looking at you guys on Slimming World - all of those 'Syns' that you're told to stay strict on are high in fat. You'll realise why its important to cut those down when I talk about macros later on.

Everyone will have their own specific number of calories that is needed for them to gain, lose or maintain weight. Usually these numbers will depend primarily on your height, weight, activity level and age (there are many other factors that can be used to really hone in on those numbers but the ones listed are the basics and good enough to get you a reliable result). I've explained this in another articles, but the basics behind weight loss, gain or maintenance in terms of calories boils down to the following:

Calories consumed > Calories burned = Weight Gain

Calories burned > Calories consumed = Weight loss

Calories Burned = Calories Consumed = Maintain weight

Don't let anyone tell you different, your caloric intake for each day is extremely important, and you can't trick the science of it with any wonder supplements or by pretending that they don't exist. 

Macronutrients

So now you have a basic idea of calories, let's talk about the building blocks behind those numbers. Those building blocks are known as macronutrients, or macros for short. They consist of Protein, Fats, and Carbohydrates. Any food with a calorie content will contain a mix of those macronutrients. As calories are calculated through the use of numbers, so are macronutrients. Here's how those numbers look - 

Protein - 4 calories per gram

Carbohydrate - 4 calories per gram

Fat - 9 calories per gram

By that logic, 25 grams of carbohydrates would be 100 calories, 25 grams of protein would be 100 calories, and 11 grams of fat would equal 99 calories.

Image credit - www.joshwalliecoaching.com

For any Slimming World followers - that's why your syns are all fat heavy foods. By reducing foods that are high in fat, you're reducing the foods that are most calorie dense and therefore increasing your chance of being in a caloric deficit. 

In terms of calculating your own personal calories and macronutrients, I could give you a way of calculating those numbers but I'd just be taking credit for someone else's work. Instead, I'm just going to give you a link to my man Mike Samuels' Macro calculator on his Healthy Living Heavy Lifting website. 

Healthy Living, Heavy Lifting - How to Calculate Macros for Cutting

That article will give you everything that you need in terms of calculating calories and macronutrients. The Healthy Living Heavy Lifting blog is also a great source of information, so if you head over there then spend a little bit of time browsing through the other articles. 

If you'd like to get in touch with me regarding these articles then you can find me on social media through the buttons below, or drop a comment on this article and I'll get back to you!

 

Diet Schemes Series #1 - Juice Plus

Hey everyone, I posted on social media not so long ago to inform you all that I'd be doing a series of pieces to take a closer look at the diet schemes that are present in the health and fitness industry today. Tonight's post is going to get up close and personal with Juice Plus.

What is Juice Plus?

On the official Juice Plus website, it describes itself as

"whole food based nutrition, including juice powder concentrates from 30 different fruits, vegetables and grains. Juice Plus+ helps bridge the gap between what you should eat and what you do eat every day. Not a multivitamin, medicine, treatment or cure for any disease, Juice Plus+ is made from quality ingredients carefully monitored from farm to capsule to provide natural nutrients your body needs to be at its best.

So what does that tell us? 

In all honesty, not a lot. It tells us that essentially all that the products contain are naturally occurring ingredients. Luckily, they have an 'Ingredients' page, which tells us that the ingredients are:

NUTRIENTS FROM FRUITS AND VEGETABLES - Under this title they explain that the products aren't a medicine, or a substitute for fruit and veg, and that they offer a wider variety of naturally occurring vitamins along with antioxidants and phytonutrients than 'traditional' vitamin supplements.

So let's break this paragraph down a little. They explain that all of the vitamins contained inside are naturally occurring and that you can't get them in a 'traditional' vitamin supplements. Firstly, if the ingredients are naturally occurring then what are the benefits of getting them from Juice plus products? The only benefit that I can see is that they're available in 'instant' form, rather than having to go out and buy/cook/eat the foods that contain them. Personally, if I'm offered the chance to get my nutrients from real, satiating food - you can be damn sure that I will. Some people may find that they feel 'healthier' or that they're a step ahead of everyone else because they're getting it in pill or powder form. Sorry guys, I don't think that's the case. Let's also take a look at the final point - they mention 'traditional' vitamin supplements. What does this mean? Does it mean older, less varied multivits? Or just the cheap, basic multivitamins on the market? Unfortunately I couldn't seem to find a full list of the vitamins that Juice Plus provides, but I'd argue that such products as Centrum and Opti-Men probably contain the same vitamins and minerals as Juice Plus products. The difference being that you don't have to cut out a meal to get these vitamins.

POWERFUL ANTIOXIDANTS RIGHT FROM THE SOURCE - Juice Plus actually calls on an academic article to provide the definition for 'antioxidants' (because everyone loves an officially cited study to back up their products). Here's what they say - "According to the National Cancer Institute, antioxidants are “substances that may protect cells from the damage caused by unstable molecules known as free radicals. Examples of antioxidants include beta-carotene, lycopene, vitamins C and E and other substances. Many of these antioxidant substances come from fruits and vegetables". Now, I'm pretty cynical when it comes to writing, so this sentence actually hit a nerve. Firstly they explain that their products contain powerful antioxidants. Then they back this up with a sentence saying that antioxidants MAY protect from free radicals. Free radicals have been indicated as possible contributors to cancerous cells. So by saying that Juice Plus uses antioxidants - are they indirectly stating that their products protect against cancer? That's for you to decide, like I said, I'm just cynical. FYI - Their sentence taken from the National cancer institute is also paraphrased - to read the actual statement, you can find it here - http://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/causes-prevention/risk/diet/antioxidants-fact-sheet.

 Again, antioxidants are naturally occurring - so why not get them through food rather than buying various supplements to do so? The only place that its going to make a difference is your bank balance.

After I'd finished looking through the Juice Plus website, I decided that I needed to find some real customer reviews. Impartial and honest reviews. I managed to find a post on Facebook which detailed an actual conversation with a Juice Plus rep. The rep promises to provide Juice Plus shakes which can not only help with weight loss, but muscle building too. Now I'm no expert, but if that was possible, wouldn't the Mr Olympia contest be a hell of a lot easier to win? Anyway I digress, they state that the shakes should be taken for 16 weeks - two a day for 8 weeks, and then one a day for the last 8. This 16 week plan would be accompanied by a workout and diet plan (I'm guessing this would just be your standard cookie cutter plan) and would cost £130 in total. They then explicitly state that the products contain nutrients from fruit and veg to 'boost weight loss' and that coupling an exercise plan with their shakes will help them to build muscle. The potential client then enquires about the possibility of using the products with type-2 diabetes (for his father). To which the answer is "Definitely, the plan is perfect for type 2". The potential client then comes up with a bit of research of his own.

1. The products contain 23g of sugar from 4/5 different sources - 2 shakes would equal 46g of sugar daily. Sounds like a recipe for loss of life for a type-2 sufferer, not weight.

2. The protein inside contains a poor amino acid profile

3. It contains a variety of oils

He follows with this quote - "Fact is, people will lose weight due to a massive calorie deficit, the weight they lose will be largely water at first due to the lack of carbohydrates in the diet (carbs hold water) then a rapid catabolic state where the body will break down lean muscle tissue as it cannot produce protein. This will result in a slowing of the metabolism, a knock on effect of which will be the body releasing stress hormones to help promote fat storage (body reacts as if going into a famine). Females will reduce estrogen to promote fat stores around reproductive organs. When people go back to eating normally they will gain more weight due to metabolic damage."

Now that's someone else's words, not mine. He produces no scientific evidence to support this, although he does raise an interesting point. The Juice plus range promotes a very low calorie diet and diets with too much of a caloric deficit have been shown to have a detrimental effect on the human body. Here's an interesting article on that - http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/ars.2010.3253

After seeing this frankly brutal destruction of a clearly clueless Juice Plus rep, I decided to look closer to home and had an enlightening conversation with a friend of mine who currently uses the products. We talked about which ones she uses (powders) and her thoughts on the range, plus how its working for her. She was under no illusions, she immediately stated that they're not wonder products and essentially they're meal replacement multivitamins. She had tried a variety of other ways of dieting and hadn't found them to be suited to her. She also told me that Juice Plus wasn't her idea of a long term solution, but it was working as a springboard into a healthier lifestyle. She's made some good progress, slimming down and dropping some weight, and feels great for it. However she's not really put this down to the products, its more attributed to the structure that the products bring and she's finding it easy to stick to. That's pretty hard to dispute.

The Conclusion

Juice plus ambiguously markets its products and could be seen to allude to them as a prevention tool for cancer. It markets products full of ingredients that could easily be incorporated into a well rounded diet and promotes an extremely low calorie diet (whether directly or indirectly) which has scientifically been proven to have adverse affects on human physiology and psychology (see article above). It also contains some questionable ingredients such as a high sugar content (due to fructose) and a poor source of protein (making for some protein heavy feces). There is also some concern to be raised around the credibility of some of the reps, who are clearly uneducated and freely make decisions that only a qualified professional should be able to make. However, the scheme has been shown to provide a structure to one's lifestyle - and anyone that has dieted successfully will know that the real key to achieving your goals is consistency. For this point, I can't really knock them.

My honest opinion?

Juice Plus is an extremely expensive way of getting basic nutrients (which could easily be provided by a good multivitamin). It promotes extreme calorie deficits which, when increased, will cause the user to gain weight quickly as their body tries to hang on to all of the calories that it has been missing. It could lead to yo-yo dieting and harm a person physically and psychologically in the long term. It clearly provides support for all of its users but why pay hundreds of pounds for a support structure that you could build yourself? There are hundreds of groups out there who support each other freely because that's what good natured human beings do. I'm lucky enough to be a part of Healthy Living, Heavy Lifting's free weight loss group on Facebook, and its home to some of the most supportive, well rounded and intelligent people that I've ever met. The best part about it? I receive great support, get to give great support and its all done for free. Don't waste your money on a company that gives you naturally occurring ingredients, employs reps without a clue and gives you support that you could get for free.

Awfully sorry if this post has offended everyone, but its my honest opinion. I'm not trying to offend everyone, and if Juice Plus works for you then that's great - personally I'm a much bigger fan of being able to make sustainable progress whilst eating Ben & Jerrys, but that's just me. If you want to hear more about that, then feel free to hit me up on social media: