Gaining Muscle and Losing Fat (2015)
- Thread starter Baron
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If you must indulge for a day, can you make it a 1 day a week thing? Or similar to Baron, maybe do something much smaller instead on a daily basis vs chowing down on the weekend.
Also, how many hours before you go to bed do you stop eating? If you aren't already, drink a minimum of a gallon of water a day. That can help satisfy some cravings also or keep you a bit fuller. I second the HIIT statement, that will be the best bang for the buck.
Not sure how old you are, but get your testosterone levels checked if you would ever consider TRT.
What works for one works for all?
Baron
ET Founder
Absolute horse shit. The most extensive review of studies on various meal frequencies was published in 1997. It examined a bunch of different studies that compared daily meal frequencies ranging from 1-17 meals per day and concluded:
"Studies using whole-body calorimetry and doubly-labelled water to assess total 24 h energy expenditure find no difference between nibbling and gorging".
Baron...
I'd like to hear your thoughts on the, I guess I'd say genetic differences between people.
For example, brother Surf (to his credit) says that he would like to lose weight.
So, if he does almost exactly what you do, he may or may not see the exact results, no?
Kinda what I'm getting at is that different people need different plans and different expectations, dependent upon genes, body structure, age, etc.
I think that some people have a much more difficult time with it than others; while all can, at least, improve.
Your thoughts...
I'd like to hear your thoughts on the, I guess I'd say genetic differences between people.
For example, brother Surf (to his credit) says that he would like to lose weight.
So, if he does almost exactly what you do, he may or may not see the exact results, no?
Kinda what I'm getting at is that different people need different plans and different expectations, dependent upon genes, body structure, age, etc.
I think that some people have a much more difficult time with it than others; while all can, at least, improve.
Your thoughts...
Baron
ET Founder
Not too long ago, researchers found a gene located on the 16th chromosome called the FTO gene. When the FTO gene malfunctions (mutates), researchers noticed a link to diabetes and the likelihood of having more fat.
A later study looked at 704 adults with an average age of about 44 years old who wore an accelerometer for 7 days straight to track their movements. When researchers compared the results of the people with a normal functioning FTO gene against those with the mutated FTO gene, guess what they noticed? As you would expect, some people with the mutated FTO gene were fatter and generally more obese than the rest of the group, but some were not. So what happened with the people who had the screwed up gene but weren't any more obese than the people with the normal gene? What the researchers discovered is that the gene mutation was correlated to obesity..... but only at low activity levels.
So if you have the “fat” version of the FTO gene, but are on the higher end of physical activity then guess what – chances are you’re not obese. While the FTP gene mutation increases your chance of becoming fat if you are relatively sedentary it doesn’t mean you will get fat. All you have to do is be physically active.
So do genetics affect who you are? Yeah, of course they do. Does your environment and activity levels affect who you are? Of course. But both affect each other and who you are. Although nature may increase your likelihood of having some extra fat, changing your environment by being physically active trumps nature every time.
The core problem with most people though is that they don't have anything wrong with the genes that are correlated to being overweight. They are obese simply because they consistently eat too much and move way too little.
)This whole fasting idea seems to run counter to almost every single diet book ive ever read, dont they all say to eat 6 small meals a day so your body is constantly eating and digesting food? I trust your judgement more than mine, as your results are indisputable, but if this works, it would be totally counter to everything ive ever read about losing weight.
This thread is a follow-up to the original thread I started a few years ago. I will contribute some ideas that I've found to be helpful in my constant quest to build muscle and lose fat in hopes that others can use these ideas, or even contribute ideas of their own. I certainly don't claim to have all the answers when it comes to health and fitness, but I will do my best to answer any questions you may have along the way.
The first thing I'd like to talk about in this thread is a way to lose fat while eating somewhat normally and not appearing to your friends like you're on some weird restrictive fad diet, and it's called intermittent fasting.
Earlier this year I felt like I had hit a brick wall in regards to fat loss under my old way of doing things, so I knew I needed to switch things up. I investigated a lot of different diet plans but ultimately decided I would try out intermittent fasting. Basically what that means is that I only eat between the hours of noon and 8pm, so my window of eating is 8 hours and I'm fasting for the remaining 16 hours. At around 11:30am, I do my 30 minute weight training workout, and since I haven't eaten since 8pm from the previous night, the training is done completely on an empty stomach. The logic is that when your stomach is completely empty, your body has no other energy stores to pull from to fuel your workout except for stored body fat.
The main problem with intermittent fasting is that the workouts pretty much suck. When you're working out on an empty tank, you feel weak and lack motivation. So to combat that, I take a stimulant loaded pre-workout drink about an hour before the workout. Then I sip on a BCAA drink the whole time during the workout, as that prevents muscle loss while training on an empty stomach. After the workout is done, you can eat your first meal of the day, which is your post workout meal. This can be a massive meal if you want. In fact, you can consume almost 80% of your daily calories in that single meal! I don't do it that way, but prefer instead to eat 3 times per day, which translates to noon, 3:30pm and 7pm.
Sometimes I may only eat two large meals, depending on what I have going on that night, which brings me to the following conclusion. Of all the diets I've tried, I like intermittent fasting the best and the reason why is simple: You never feel like you're dieting when you go out at night and hang with friends or family because you can eat somewhat normally, instead of the typical bird picking on micro-meals like you'd be forced to do if you were on a traditional diet. So if I know I'm going to go to dinner one night with a group of people, I may skip my 3:30 meal so I can have pretty much whatever I want when I go out: Steak, baked potato, bread, you name it. And the reason why you can do this, and this is very important to understand, is that the fasting portion of your day is the diet. So instead of watching every little thing you eat, you are narrowing the time frame that you eat in, letting the following extended period of fasting burn through whatever you consumed in the 8-hour feeding period. But beware, this doesn't give you a license to eat like crap, but it does give you way more wiggle room than you would normally have trying to eat perfect in 5 - 6 small meals spread throughout the day and fighting the constant temptation not to cheat when you're out and about with "non-dieters".
The hardest part by far is acclimating yourself to this new eating schedule. The first two weeks are very difficult to be honest with you, especially if you're a breakfast person and wake up every day hungry. So what you have to do is come up with a strategy to keep your mind off food and moving forward until noon. And what I recommend is drinking lots of zero-calorie fluids non-stop throughout the entire morning. So here's how my morning usually goes:
Once you've got yourself past the first two weeks, your daily routine won't feel weird or challenging any more. You'll wake up, make your coffee and subsequent drinks throughout the morning and not even think about eating. And like I said before, the best part is that you'll be able to go out with friends and family and not seem like to them that you're restricting your diet at all, when in fact you are controlling yourself and losing fat on a weekly basis because of your daily fasting.
- 8AM - Large black iced coffee with one tablespoon of unsweetened cocoa powder (gives it that mocha flavor without the sugar).
- 9:30AM - Large iced green tea (unsweetened). This really helps curb any hunger you're feeling. You can brew your own with two tea bags or just buy bottled green tea.
- 11AM - Stimulant based pre-workout drink.
- 11:30AM - Work out while sipping a BCAA drink.
- 12 Noon - Eat your first meal of the day.
Your 8-hour window of eating doesn't have to match mine. It can be whatever you want, but no matter what, you need to set your day up so that you have 8 hours of eating time followed by 16 hours of no eating. So if you're more of a night person for example, your window of eating might be 4PM to Midnight.
If anybody has any questions, fire away.
Baron
ET Founder
Yes, the general wisdom is to eat 6 small meals per day to "keep your metabolism going". Although technically true, it implies that your metabolism somehow stops or slows down otherwise, which is bullshit. Here's all you need to know: Your metabolism ramps up in direct proportion to the size of meal you eat. So if you eat 3000 calories split up into six 500-calorie meals, your metabolism graph will have six small spikes with each spike correlating to the metabolism increase from each meal. But when you take that same amount of daily calories and split it into two meals of 1500 calories each, then your metabolism graph would have two massive spikes, with each spike followed by a long trail of decline. And those two spikes will be much higher than the little baby spikes caused by eating each of the six small meals. You've likely felt that increased body temperature in real life after eating a high calorie meal like bbq or a lot of pizza. You literally start sweating like you just ran around the block wide open even though you haven't moved from the dinner table. That's your metabolism in high gear trying to burn the crazy amount of calories you've ingested.
No matter what, the net thermogenic effect of the food you eat is proportional to your overall calorie intake, not how those calories are split up throughout the day. That doesn't mean you can't eat 6 small meals per day. You certainly can, but most people will tell you it's a total pain in the ass to do consistently. Intermittent fasting allows you to eat real meals at normal times and still lose weight because you're going without food for an extended period of time afterwards.
I would also like to mention that intermittent fasting is also in line with our evolutionary process as humans. I can assure you that our ancestors from thousands of years ago weren't carrying coolers containing 6 small meals every day. They ate, eventually got hungry again, and then hunted for food and basically ate huge when they had food available to eat. And last I checked, I haven't seen too many obese cave men.
Interesting thread, Baron. I may try this diet as I've had trouble sticking with others. This sounds like it might be an easier approach than my current approach of counting every calorie of every protein, carb, and fat daily...which is the only way I successfully lose fat and maintain muscle (I'm 56, and still train 4-5 days a week, often quite heavy.) Do you count calories in this routine, and still watch what types of foods you eat regarding how you get your protein, types of carbs, and fat?
Also, can you break your window into two windows of 4 hours each? The reason I ask is my current workout time is mornings during which time I consume large amounts of protein in a 3-4 hour period (mostly whey) and carbs in pure juice form surrounding my workout, and then later in the day, eat solid carbs, fats, and proteins.
Regarding the 100 rep routine: I read a variation of this in muscle mag a few years ago...the pro would do his absolute 10 rep max followed by his absolute 25 rep max. Then, he would do 100 reps at 25-40 percent of his 25 rep max. Incredibly brutal burn on that 100 rep low weight! Great results, even at my age. Really gets all your muscle fibers into the game. I only do this routine myself 2 or 3 times a year, each for a full muscle cycle (about a week each).
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