Episode 416: Ebenezer Samuel Shares No-Nonsense Advice on Building Muscle, Burning Fat, and Healthy Eating for Life

16m
Want to build muscle and lose fat effectively?

In my Fitness Friday episode, Ebenezer Samuel, the Fitness Director of Men’s Health and Head of Training Innovation at FlexIt Fitness, discusses the myth of toning and getting shredded. We also discuss the concept of "calories in; calories out" and what it gets right and wrong. Tune in for actionable diet and muscle-building tips!

Ebenezer Samuel, C.S.C.S., is the fitness director of Men's Health and a certified trainer with more than 10 years of training experience. He's logged training time with NFL athletes and track athletes and his current training regimen includes weight training, HIIT conditioning, and yoga. Before joining Men's Health in 2017, he served as a sports columnist and tech columnist for the New York Daily News.

What we discuss:

Intermittent fasting

Calories in vs calories out

Society needs more fiber

Brown rice vs white rice

How to build muscle as we age

Toning isn’t a real thing

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To learn more about Ebenezer Samuel:
Instagram -  https://www.instagram.com/ebenezersamuel23/
Articles -https://www.menshealth.com/author/217286/ebenezer-samuel/

Find more from Jen:
Website: https://www.jennifercohen.com/
Instagram: @therealjencohen
Books: https://www.jennifercohen.com/books
Speaking: https://www.jennifercohen.com/speaking-engagements

Press play and read along

Runtime: 16m

Transcript

Speaker 1 Hi guys, it's Tony Robbins. You're listening to Habits and Hustle, Fresh It.

Speaker 1 Hey, friends, you're listening to Fitness Friday on the Habits and Hustle podcast, where myself and my friends share quick and very actionable advice for you becoming your healthiest self.

Speaker 1 So stay tuned and let me know how you leveled up.

Speaker 1 Before Before we dive into today's episode, I first want to thank our sponsor, Therisage. Their tri-light panel has become my favorite biohacking thing for healing my body.

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Speaker 1 It's not about what quote-unquote diet you're following.

Speaker 1 It's about, again, what I said, and that's why if I were sitting where you were and you were interviewing me, I would say that it does make a difference about the amount you eat. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Not so much and what you eat is what I would say. Not exactly, not necessarily the time you're eating it and all that other stuff that goes with it.
Yeah, like all of the

Speaker 1 time you're eating it has like

Speaker 1 bodybuilders do bodybuilders do multiple meals. Right.
What I'm saying, the time like if you don't eat until noon

Speaker 1 or whatever I'm saying. I think the more that those are also based on your body can't break down food.
Like

Speaker 1 we overeat and therefore we're stuck with all this food in us because we're not digesting it because we're eating so much of it.

Speaker 1 So like having enough time to digest your food is really good for your system. Yeah, it's interesting because to bring the conversation

Speaker 1 full circle, that's like intermittent fasting is part of where you get the whole calories and calories that idea. Cause it's like, oh, I'm going to take my calorie.

Speaker 1 I'm going to take all my calories in like two to, in like two meals spaced in whatever it is, four hours, right? Yeah, four. I think eight's a beginning.
I think eight for beginners. Yeah.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Or most people. Yeah,

Speaker 1 I think.

Speaker 1 I believe it. I believe it's eight.

Speaker 1 And so that gets reduced to calories in.

Speaker 1 I think calories in, calories out was a very me, it's like a well-meaning idea. And it was basically the way people are telling you to eat is so complicated.

Speaker 1 So it's like, let's just reduce it to this.

Speaker 1 But then we get so reductive with it that it kind of becomes counterproductive in the song.

Speaker 1 How about like, what's the best? How about this? What's the best way to eat

Speaker 1 if we want to build muscle and lose fat and just, you know,

Speaker 1 feel better and look better? What would be, in your opinion?

Speaker 1 How I would say, I would say you want to have like four meals a day, right?

Speaker 1 And each meal, you want to aim for 20 grams of protein, okay, which is, and try to get this from a natural source. Make sure to get something green on your plate, right?

Speaker 1 And then get, you know,

Speaker 1 three to four ounces of a carb. And if you do that, right, you, and, and then you want to have, you want to ideally have some kind of water on the side.

Speaker 1 um and if you do that um not some kind of water i had this one

Speaker 1 the lk water dlk water but blk and blk water is actually perfect right um so i think you want to i think if you do that it checks a lot of boxes um and then and then and again there's variety in there right because you're told guys the protein can be eggs or chicken or fish right

Speaker 1 um and your your green vegetable can be something different every time you're checking a lot of boxes in terms of getting fiber in your system which is really good

Speaker 1 you're checking a lot of boxes with um with the protein which your body needs we're not eating enough fiber though as a society.

Speaker 1 So, and how do we, I mean, we should up that for sure. Yeah, I think it's interesting because

Speaker 1 I think we've come a long way in the fiber conversation.

Speaker 1 And it's funny because I love white rice,

Speaker 1 which is, I can't. I know, I've seen you've had it.
You've had it like five times since we've been here. I mean, to be fair, I don't know if they have brown rice.
They probably have brown rice.

Speaker 1 I probably could ask for it. I've kind of enjoyed just getting away from brown rice.
But I think. By the way, white rice is supposed to be better than brown rice.
Did you you know that?

Speaker 1 I haven't heard this. Oh, this is a new thing.

Speaker 1 You should Google it.

Speaker 1 You should do a story on it. I heard that

Speaker 1 there's a whole myth about brown rice versus white rice.

Speaker 1 I don't remember what the myth exactly is.

Speaker 1 I can Google it right now and tell you. But I had someone on here recently who told me about this.
And it's pretty amazing, actually.

Speaker 1 I'm going to Google it. White rice

Speaker 1 versus

Speaker 1 uh brown rice i've i was a brown rice person too i've heard i've heard i have heard the thing that brown rice is overrated compared to coke to white rice like it's not markedly better

Speaker 1 it's not marketably better it's not yeah white rice tastes so much better too i'm also asian so i'm kind of like i know well i was gonna say i mean you're you're naturally gonna probably live to 177 because of just all the rice you're eating but hold on brown rice versus uh white rice.

Speaker 1 Okay, if you look at the,

Speaker 1 if you look at the breakdown, it's actually

Speaker 1 the fiber content of brown rice is like minuscule higher.

Speaker 1 But

Speaker 1 yeah, it's basically a little bit higher,

Speaker 1 like between one gram and two grams more fiber.

Speaker 1 And then

Speaker 1 I'm not finding it properly right now.

Speaker 1 I'm going to look it up and then get back to you on that. But from what I heard, it's not that much different.

Speaker 1 White rice is, see, again, there's another, I think what happens is something gets traction and then everyone just follows the,

Speaker 1 you know, follows that. And that's me happening right now with the broad.
I heard something about white rice and now I'm following that whole thing. So don't take my word for it.

Speaker 1 I think I could have sworn I heard someone mention that to me. And I, and they were like a dog, they were a leading nutritionist.
So

Speaker 1 I'll try to find that information.

Speaker 1 So, so that, but that's, that's again why I'm big into like, it's like, if, it's like, if you, if you kind of loosely follow, if everybody loosely followed what I'm saying, right? They're covered.

Speaker 1 But choose your own carb. Don't let, don't let, um, don't let the internet choose it for you, right? Yeah.
Choose your own, choose your own mixed vegetable. Like a sweet potato versus a white potato.

Speaker 1 It's like, it's like a russet potato. Yeah.
It's like at a high level, if you're like

Speaker 1 planning to try out for like, you know, or like a competition or something. Exactly.
But it's in that matters. Right.

Speaker 1 So, for the average person who wants to look a little bit more lean and healthy and fit, have white rice or brown rice. It's not going to make, it's so nominally different.

Speaker 1 It's not, it doesn't make a difference. Okay, let's talk about aging and muscle, like keeping, how do we do this and do it well? Because we do break down more muscle as we age.
So, how do we

Speaker 1 so, so then that's interesting because the older we get, the more precise we have to get with all,

Speaker 1 with all this stuff, like the healthier we have to eat. And yeah, I mean, so isn't building muscle when we're older.
Like, I believe after 40, especially for men,

Speaker 1 sarcopennia becomes like a major issue. I think the two things, the two things we want to do, um, are, or there are three things we want to do.

Speaker 1 First off, um, and this is this is kind of one of those things we're told it we're told by kind of modern fitness, right? Is you've got to do the

Speaker 1 kind of big exercises right you have to lift heavy okay and older people should definitely try to lift heavy i think every human on the planet should work up to being able to deadlift like their body weight plus at least 50 pounds um and it's not unattainable right and you have to take your time to work up there so i think older older people shouldn't be afraid to lift heavy they should do that um

Speaker 1 at least twice a week, right? Well, you say heavy though, right? Like the other, the fear is that

Speaker 1 especially as you get older, like you're going to pull your back out or you're going to hurt, you're going to injure yourself or like injure injury prevention. Yeah.

Speaker 1 So you're saying that shouldn't be something that we focus on? Yeah,

Speaker 1 I think

Speaker 1 two things. One, I think for a lot of or do challenging stuff, but go ahead.
Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's mainly like challenge yourself.
Like again, working up to that heavy part,

Speaker 1 working up to, say, your body weight plus 50 pounds on a deadlift, you might want a trainer for that right um you want somebody around who can kind of help you um master your form or you want to like watch like a clinic i'll give on the deadlift online you'll do in like three weeks right um but um

Speaker 1 i just i just think don't be afraid of of heavier weights right and you and the key is like is the rep scheme right is um like it's it's like you learn you learn with legger weights how to how to kind of get your form down but then you you've got like at some point you want to um challenge yourself right um and you're going to keep the reps low you're going to do like one or two reps and that's fine i think a lot of people get caught up in again more work right so it's like oh i'm going to do sets of like 12 and 15 reps i'm going to tone you know except toning really doesn't is kind of toning doesn't really exist right and it's like again don't talk about that i think people don't realize you and i may think that but most people don't realize that so why don't you talk about that

Speaker 1 it's called toning myth is that that's a myth yeah i honestly don't even i barely even know what the word means right it's not it's not and it's it's funny because when you read um

Speaker 1 um women's magazines do women's magazines say it i don't read that's all they say is like you know tone your you know upper body toning your arms the word tone or toning is like synonymous with uh you know abs You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 Like, it's a very common word. It's interesting because we, because we literally, I'm actually trying to think back to the last time I used it in men's health.

Speaker 1 I've been in men's health for four and a half years now. And the answer is never.

Speaker 1 Because women use the word toning. I don't think men ever use the word toning.
Yeah. I think

Speaker 1 it's almost like I feel like it got caught up in

Speaker 1 societal kind of

Speaker 1 because

Speaker 1 of that whole, oh, well, well.

Speaker 1 We can't say build muscle to women, right? And we can't, and bulking freaks them out, right?

Speaker 1 So here we're going to get get them lifting weights because it's gonna tone like whatever i don't i i i honestly don't know what the word means um it means like yeah not it kind of like

Speaker 1 it's like again the opposite of flabby would be toned i guess i don't know i guess these are all like this is exactly my point and that's why i wanted to talk to you and have you on is because i think so much of of

Speaker 1 everything is all marketing and

Speaker 1 uh branding and it not it's not necessarily accurate or true It's just what we've like been conditioned to think because we see it and hear about it all the time, especially with social media and every ding dong now on social media is a fitness expert, which is a problem.

Speaker 1 Yeah. Because most people are getting paid for everything that they're doing or

Speaker 1 they have no clue what they're doing. So either option is terrible.

Speaker 1 So having someone who's a trusted resource like you, who actually takes it super seriously and like learns about this constantly is, I think, a really important, important thing to talk about because

Speaker 1 you get like analysis, paralysis and overwhelmed at all the different information that's out there. Yeah, and

Speaker 1 I think that is what it is. Yeah, you're right.
It is so much kind of like. marketing and spin and it gets it gets confusing for people.
That's why I'm confused.

Speaker 1 That's what I do for a living practically. You know what I mean? I don't even know anymore.
I'm like, I'm like, I don't know. Maybe that.
Maybe I'm like the brown rice, white rice thing.

Speaker 1 I'm even confused because I'm like, okay, well, I mean, this trusted resource told me. And then I look and now I can't find it.
But then I'm sure if I, I don't have the time right this second.

Speaker 1 But you, if you dig around long enough for anything, you can back up that

Speaker 1 resource, right? Yeah, exactly. Yeah, because the internet, the internet is a treasure trove of confirmation bias, which is really exactly.
Exactly. Yeah.

Speaker 1 But I think is like, toning is like the woman way. And don't take that the wrong way.
But it's kind of rude. Get off my podcast.
I'm just joking.

Speaker 1 I mean, it sounds like it's in all the women's magazines. So it's basically like, because I feel like we, I feel like guys try to like cut, rip, shred.
It's basically the equivalent to that.

Speaker 1 It is cut, ripped. Okay, so for guys, it's cut, rip, shred, built.
Yeah. Women, it's tone.

Speaker 1 What else?

Speaker 1 Um,

Speaker 1 chisel, maybe

Speaker 1 it's mostly just tone, isn't it? Tone. Yeah.

Speaker 1 Tone or burn, yeah, burn, burn's a big one, yeah, yeah. We had like burn fat, tone your midsection, yeah.

Speaker 1 So, so they're like, it's like, yeah, and our, yeah, the guy terms, if you will, are just edgier versions, yes, yeah, but it's in, yeah, but the men's magazines do have way better workouts that are more effective.

Speaker 1 I will say that. That's why, you know, I have you here today, because

Speaker 1 the truth of the matter is, I do know enough to know that

Speaker 1 women are kind of like kind of shown and taught to be lifting lightweight, very lightweight, and they actually, or no weight, and they believe that's actually going to get them to their goal.

Speaker 1 When the truth of the matter is, you do need to lift heavy and heavier and challenge yourself because that's how you get results.