22 August 2010

You Can Gain Weight Without Looking Like a Fat Fuck, the Third

Before I really get into the exact methodology and science behind my approach to bulking, I'd like to address conventional bulking diets.  I've dabbled in them, cutting them off when I thought I was gaining too much fat, and as a result never really saw a whole lot of steady muscular bodyweight gain.  Sure, I gained a bit of muscle over the course of about 8 years, but it wasn't until I really started dabbling in nutrition, experimenting with different macronutrient profiles, and tinkering with everything from my calories to my eating frequency, before I started to really see an increase in my lean mass gains.  Thus, here's a short appraisal of conventional wisdom regarding bulking diets.

From suck to suck and man-tits.  Out-fucking-standing.

GOMAD- The great-grandpappy of all modern bulking diets.  This seems to have grown out of the turn of the century strongman's penchant for drinking milk- all of them seem to have drunk a great deal of the shit, and Saxon took it a step further and drank heavy cream.  Historically, milk has been considered to be a near-perfect food for humans, given its high calcium and protein content, and the fact that raw milk is tremendously easy for a healthy person to digest.  Hippocrates advocated a raw milk diet to cure tuberculosis, and both the Masai and Swiss based their diets on milk (the Masai consuming primarily cow milk and blood, supplemented with meat and maize). (Bieler, 212)  



Building on the belief that raw milk is the stuff of greatness, a writer for Strength and Health, John McCallum, penned articles touting raw milk as the way to grow (later compiled into the book The Complete Keys to Progress.  Randall J. Strossen, editor of that book, took that idea a step further, and suggested that everyone drink a gallon of milk a day and do his 20 rep squat program.  It's my understanding that Strossen merely repackaged McCallum's ideas about milk and squats, which would make sense, as it was still legal to produce and transport raw milk in the US in 1965 (when McCallum penned the book).  In retrospect, I'd imagine the fact that Pat Casey (the first guy to bench 600 lbs raw) and Doug Hepburn (the first guy to bench 500 raw) drank 6 quarts of milk a day factored into the belief that a gallon of milk a day is the way to super-strength as well, as it really drove home McCallum's suppositions.



No matter who invented it or why it became so popular, the adoption of that diet in this century is fucking ridiculous for a variety of reasons, starting with the fact that it's impossible to purchase raw milk easily in the US, and pasteurized and homogenized milk borders on indigestible for most people.   Whereas raw milk merely ferments in your intestines (which actually makes it better for you), pasteurized milk putrefies. (Bieler, 211)  Additionally, pasteurized milk is shown to be among the top three food allergies, and has symptoms ranging from ear infection and bad breath to asthma, admonial cramping, diarrhea, croup, and asthma, even in people who are lactose tolerant.(Audette, 58)  Throw into the mix the fact that even skim milk contains 205g of sugar per gallon (and has a higher GI than fatty milks), and you've got a fucking recipe for disaster.  Thus, in straining the shit out of your digestive system, you're getting a paltry 145g of protein for your efforts, not all of which will be digested, due to the fact that the fat molecules in homogenized milk are broken down into smaller parts and become a stealth delivery system for the proteins that puts them directly into your bloodstream, causing allergies.  Pasteurization takes care of the rest, killing all of the enzymes that would aid in the digestion of this chemical monstrosity, putting the final cards in place to facilitate the transformation of milk from a benevolent Dr. Jekyll into a slavering, soul-rending, baby-raping, eviscerating horrorshow of a Mr. Hyde.  At best, it's a quick way to get fat as shit, in my opinion, unless you swing a sledge all day long at work, or you've got the most freakish metabolism of all time, and at worst, you can pretty much wreck every one of your body's internal systems with GOMAD.

Uh... hanging gut and abs?

The traditional bodybuilding bulking diet- this generally consists of the diet that was popular in 1990 amongst everyone, for some reason, but in massive quantities.  Low fat, high carbs, moderate protein (though they'll assert it's high).  Thus, you're eating brown or white rice, veggies, and chicken breasts, in amounts that will afford you 1-1.5g protein per lb of bodyweight, 2-3g of carbs per pound, and .5-1g of fat.  All day.  Every day.  Does it work?  For those amongst us with stout metabolisms, and who do an inordinate amount of daily cardio, apparently.  Perhaps those who flourish on this sort of a diet are carb- or mixed-type metabolisms.  I know that I never really gained much weight on this diet, nor was I particularly lean.

The see-food diet- the favorite of guys like Lee Priest, who appear to be circus fat men with some muscle beneath their blubber in the off-season.  It will put muscle on you, but eating garbage all day long is neither conducive to good health, nor does it make for a particularly attractive physique.  As the goal of the enterprise on which we've embarked is to lean bulk, this diet's useless to anyone who isn't running massive amounts of clenbuterol, test, and GH... and looking at Lee Priest, it doesn't work all that well for those guys, either.  While it might work for putting on sheer mass, it's not useful for lean gains, and the fat you put on is a pain in the ass to take off later.  
Franco stayed lean year-round.

My bulking and cutting approaches are remarkably similar, and are the outgrowth of the works of a number of people, including Ray Audette, Dan Duchaine, Warren Willey, Mauro Di Pasquale, and even a bit of Torbjorn Akerfeldt, all under the umbrella of Wolcott's Metabolic Typing.  My carb and calorie cycling approach is essentially an amalgamation, then, of Warren Willey's Zig Zag and MCD (modified carb drop) diets, Audette's Neanderthin recommendations, and Duchaine's Body Opus, with a bit of steering from Wolcott when picking my macronutrient profiles.  


As I'm a protein type, I trend my protein extremely high(2g+/lb of bodyweight), followed by fat and carbs.  If you're a carb or mixed type, you might want to tinker with my recommendations to better suit your metabolism.  Through hard training and the gradual introduction of more protein in your diet, Wolcott asserts that anyone can become a protein type, but the change is apparently extremely gradual.  In any event, kicking off the basics is Willey's Zig Zag diet, which is based on a three day rotation of low-even-high calorie days, using the BMR to determine total caloric intake and working backwards from there.  I've already stated that I have massive problems with BMR calculations, but for the sake of exposition, he uses the BMR as a baseline, and then multiplies that by .8 on low cal days and 1.2 on high cal days.  He then uses an isocaloric macronutrient ratio to determine protein/carb/fat intake.  Personally, I think Zone dieting is the single fastest way to mediocrity, but I liked the underlying theory behind his plan.  
In defiance of the gods and any clinical evidence I've seen, these broads look sick on a Zone diet.

In re my protein recommendation, there would appear to be a great deal of "evidence" to show that no one needs the massive amount of protein I recommend.  As I've got mountains of anecdotal evidence backing me, I'm inclined to tell those parties just to go and get fucked, question their manhood, fuck their girlfriend, and possibly leave them in a gutter broken and bleeding, but I've also got science on my side.  Like my contention regarding BMR, a 2004 meta-analysis of protein studies called "Protein and amino acids for athletes" concluded that there are too many factors that enter into setting protein requirements, "including the timing of ingestion in relation to exercise and/or other nutrients, the composition of ingested amino acids and the type of protein."(Tipton)  As such, they suggest that athletes go with the "more is better" philosophy, as there's no evidence whatsoever that high levels of dietary protein will have a deleterious effect on a healthy individual's performance or overall health.  This is why I'm going to 2g/lb of bodyweight, and then working my other macros around that.  

What protein could be more bioavailable than human flesh?

Though Willey would likely disagree with my take on protein, Lyle Macdonald would not.  Despite our protein dispute, I still like the guy's ideas, and like the modified carb drop Willey recommends, which consists of 2 and 3 day keto runs followed by high carb days.  As I'd used this to great effect, and have blogged about it in the past, I felt that combining these two diets might be efficacious.  To further increase this, however, it seemed that the inclusion of a paleo day in the place of the occasional fast might provide a simple method by which one could create a caloric deficit while still remaining anabolic, flush any toxins one might have accumulated, have a day easy on the digestive tract, and balance blood glucose levels that might have been out of whack with the high-carb days and/or cheat windows.(Paleolithic)  Finally, I threw in the two cheat windows, which I've found make the entire fucking diet awesome- they speed my metabolism, (Matsumoto) allow me to eat my fucking face off, replenish my glycogen stores, (Bowden) and increase my thyroid, adrenal, and sex hormones, (Poehlman) in addition to providing and awesome forced break from clean eating.(Westrate)  Though he provides no citations of any kind, Lyle Macdonald is also a fan of the cheat meal, though to a far more limited degree than I am.  I will suggest, however, that the effects I described above are really only seen in people who are already fairly lean- if you're fat (15%+), I would limit your gorging during cheat meals, as they're not going to have quite the same effect.  In fact, there's a very real possibility that they'll have a fat-deposition effect rather than a fat-reduction effect, in addition to the fact that it will renew your love of food.
Side note:  I've stated on a couple of occasions that I disliked working with the obese or women on diet.  This is due in large part to the fact that their dieting issues are far more psychological than physical.  They've a love of food, and emotional response to food, that I fail to understand or for which am I willing or able to account.  If you call yourself a "foodie", you probably can't be trusted around cheat foods, and a cheat meal is likely to become a week-long binge that ends in type 2 diabetes.  Thus, you should stick to eating clean foods, and seek psychiatric help.  Clearly, as I have only two emotions, happy and super-ripshit pissed, I'm not the guy to help you through your repressed emotions, fear of abandonment, and sitophilia.
Alright... maybe there's something to food fetishes.

There's nothing like big titties covered in pudding.  Either that, or she just got bukkaked by the 100 guys who work at a plant that makes nothing but Yellow #5.  Either way, that pic is awesome.  In order for a guy to have enough nutrition in order to drop a gallon of nut on some broad, he'd need to eat fairly regularly.  I know a number of you out there are enamored of Martin over at LeanGains, as his philosophy lends itself to a somewhat less structured approach to dieting.  I'm unconvinced, however, in the efficacy of the theory backing intermittent fasting, though they seem to work wonders for him and for the progenitor of that theory, Ori Hofmekler.  The human body is designed to store bodyfat for use during periods wherein one cannot find food, so his methodology seems apt to fail, given that you're training your body to expect daily famines for which it must store fat.   According to the science I've seen, regular feedings, as opposed to infrequent feedings, improve one's insulin profiles, thermogenesis, lipolysis.  (Farshchi, et al., Yunsheng, et al.) This is important, as these frequent feedings should speed your metabolism enough to aid in keeping your bulking phase lean.  Old-school strongmen will contend that this will retard your gains, but I'd suggest that the utilization of my method allows for far great lean mass gains without concurrent fat gains, which makes it far more efficacious for our original goal.

Physique you get from three meals of a half gallon of milk,18 eggs, and a bunch of bananas every day.

As we'd probably like to guard against too much encroachment into muscular gains by the thermogensis created by frequent feedings, it would behoove us to ensure that this is not going to negatively impact anabolism.  Science to the rescue again, as studies appear to show that protein utilization and anabolism is decreased when one force-feeds rather than spreads their nutrient intake throughout the day (Cohn et al).  The delivery can either come in the form of slow-digesting protein a couple of times a day, or faster digesting protein at regular, frequent intervals, but studies do seem to show that protein utilization is improved if it's spread throughout the day, rather restricted to infrequent, large feedings.  (Mosoni and Patreau) 


So, with what are we left?  Flexibility.  I'm not talking about stretching your muscles- I'm referring to stretching your mind.  Obviously, dogmatism really never enters into my dietary or weightlifting regimes, as I pull from a wide variety of clinical studies and esoteric sources.  I'm constantly evaluating both my performance and appearance (I don't test my bodyfat levels), and tweaking my diet therefrom.  I'll tinker with a macronutrient ratios, timing and frequency of cheat meals, the number of my meals, and any number of variables in my workout routine.  To fail to do so would be beyond insane, but I've heard umpteen stories about people following bullshit diets for months on end, seeing no results, and bitching about the failure of their diet, their genetics, and virtually everything on Earth other than their own failure to evaluate and adjust their diets to suit their needs.  It's akin to putting your car on cruise control and then going to sleep, thinking that the fact that the road is straight means you'll arrive at your destination safe and sound.  

Progress in diet and in lifting is far from a steady progression- it's more like a sine wave, though you're hoping to end up more above than below the x-axis.  The key is to recognize downward trends and adjust your diet and training accordingly, to thwart your body's continual efforts to return you to homeostasis and mediocrity.  If you can do that, while keeping your goal in sight and refraining from the urge to spend all of your time online dithering about what to do, rather than simply doing it, clean bulking should be a goal entirely within anyone's reach.

Thus endeth my longest blog.  It was a bitch to write, but I hope you fuckers enjoyed it.

Just because that's about the pinnacle of awesome.

Sources
Audette, Ray.  Neanderthin.  New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999.

Bieler, Henry.  Food Is Your Best Medicine.  New York:  Ballantine Books, 1965.


Bowden VL and McMurray RG. Effects of training status on the metabolic responses to high carbohydrate and high fat meals. Int J Sport Nutr Exerc Metab. 2000 Mar;10(1):16-27.


Cohn C, Joseph D, Bell L, Oler A.  Feeding frequency and protein metabolism.  Am J Physiol 205: 71-78, 1963.


Farschi, HR, Taylor M, MacDonald I.  "Beneficial metabolic effects of regular meal frequency on dietary thermogenesis, insulin sensitivity, and fasting lipid profiles in healthy obese women."  Am J Clin Nut 2005 Jan;81(1):16-24.


Lindeberg S, Jönsson T, Granfeldt Y, Borgstrand E, Soffman J, Sjöström K, Ahrén B.  "A Palaeolithic diet improves glucose tolerance more than a Mediterranean-like diet in individuals with ischaemic heart disease."  Diabetologia. 2007 Sep;50(9):1795-807. Epub 2007 Jun 22.


Matsumoto T, et al. Comparison of thermogenic sympathetic response to food intake between obese and non-obese young women. Obes Res 2001 Feb;9(2):78-85


Mosoni L, Mirand PP.  Type and Timing of protein feeding to optimize anabolism.  Curr Opin Clin Nut Metab Care. 2003 May; 6(3): 301-306.


Poehlman ET, et al. Genotype dependency of the thermic effect of a meal and associated hormonal changes following short-term overfeeding. Metabolism 1986 Jan;35(1):30-6.


Tipton KD, Wolfe RR. Protein and amino acids for athletes. J Sports Sci. 2004 Jan;22(1):65-79.


Westrate JA, Hautvast JG.  The effects of short-term carbohydrate overfeeding and prior exercise on resting metabolic rate and diet-induced thermogenesis.  Metabolism. 1990. Dec;39(12):1232-9.


Yunsheng M, Bertone E, Stanek E, Reed G, Hebert J, Cohen N, Merriam P, Ockene I.  Association between eating patterns and obesity in a free-living US adult population.  Am J Epidemiol 2003; 158:85-92.

71 comments:

  1. Milk tastes good. I drink shitloads of it and always have for as long as I can remember. I've never been fat a day in my life. I'm better than all of you though so it makes sense that my body doesn't even produce fat. Estrogen either.
    I cum Muscle Milk. Two litres at a time, minimum.

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  2. Good read. If we can get access to raw milk, are you a fan of that?

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  3. I train heavy, walk around 2 hours a day because I am without a car, and am on my feet all day at work. I can afford a fucking gallon of milk in my system, NEED it to maintain my weight right now.

    But still, I am impressed with the breadth of these 3 blog posts, and await what else you decide to delve into at these lengths.
    Kudos, fuckface.

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  4. Oh god, I think I'm even more confused than before.

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  5. 5 day keto runs are the shit, hit the gym hard on thurs and fri start eating some carbs pre workout fri till sat and boom explode after workout sat. sat night time to hit the bar to pick up some whores. Plus the alcohol makes those viens pop like a mofo. Sunday your hungover, going to get an sti test and alil puffy but time to cut out carbs again and start all over.

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  6. Glen, you have 4% bodyfat on a diet of pastrami and bologna- you're a freak of nature. You could probably get decent gains off of mayonnaise. Oh wait, you eat that, too, haha.

    Mike, any suggestions are welcome.

    Rejuvanile- Agreed on all counts.

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  7. All three of these 'diet' posts were awesome. I cannot wait to move into my apartment and start setting up a clean bulk diet.

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  8. After a few weeks of doing keto I decided to eat a frozen pizza during a cheat window and it tasted like fucking shit, and I used to be able to pound those fuckers down. Anything that isn't meat tastes like shit to me now, its like my body has built a gag reflex to processed shit food.

    Really confused guy, Jamie has laid it out pretty simple across many posts to where if you even half ass follow what he says you'll get somewhere especially if you're a normal piece of fucking subhuman crap which I can assure everyone the majority of folks reading this blog are.

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  9. LOL at the gomad kids. did that guy not notice that only his tits were growing. Maybe he thought they were pecs. That is fucking sad.

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  10. I'm curious what you eat during your cheat/gorge windows.

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  11. I read this entire blog over the course of a few days.
    I'm on week 4 of 5 day keto runs and I'm liking what's happening so far.
    Thanks for the information and ornate writing style, you scurvy shyster bastard.

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  12. LOL. This is fucking awesome. I googled gomad, found the dude's pic and his forum. ha ha ha.

    http://www.pbnation.com/showthread.php?t=3402050

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  13. It's been a while since I read The Complete Keys to Progress, but I don't really remember him heavily advocating milk. His preferred method of weight gain was to drink heavy amounts of the "get big" drink; A combination of milk, peanut butter, banana, ice cream,and Hoffman's Gain Weight. He obviously wasn't concerned about maintaining abs when bulking and advocated "softening up" for maximum bulk.
    Kudos on a great trio of articles though.

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  14. It's a shame the leather jacket and speedo look fell out of favor.

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  15. Thanks to whoever went on that forum and directed the kid whose picture that is here, outstanding commitment.

    Great series of posts, keep it up.

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  16. I recall that "leather jacket" is actually a wet suit. McCallum was advocating lifting to help his SCUBA stuff.

    Lee Priest: What is with him? Goes from huge and ripped to just plain fat? and not a little bit fat, but incredibly fat. Now he has his face tattooed, from what I have seen. Strange guy. Incredible physique, but you can't tell from that picture.

    Jamie, great posts, as usual.

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  17. I don't drink anything close to a GOMAD, but I do drink a lot of milk. I have a pretty efficient metabolism though, and I've been staying pretty damn lean so far. I just make sure to keep my carbs on the lower side because of the fat intake, and keep my protein high.

    I also like the fact that it's high in calcium, which makes for tougher bones. A good deal if you're lifting heavy all the time.

    Had a question Jaime: how do you determine your metabolic type? I did a search, but all I could find was the old system by the Chinese/Greeks, etc. Is there a book I should be reading?

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  18. Hooray, bulking advice from a sub 200 pound power midget.

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  19. Hasn't Jaime put on 60lbs of muscle since stopping wrestling or something? And have a triple bodyweight deadlift?

    ...but he doesn't need me defending him.

    Once again, great stuff Jaime. You seem to appreciate hot CrossFit chicks as much as I do, has this hottie crossed your radar yet?

    http://games2010.crossfit.com/blog/2010/01/competitor_profile_-_miranda_oldroyd,60/

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  20. MKW, nice find. She's pretty strong too, 2x BW DL and 1.5x BW squat.

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  21. I agree with most everything in these posts, though I have to mention, I'm a HUGE fan of intermittent fasting. My insulin sensitivity has improved, my workouts are better, my energy is better...it's pretty much awesome.

    But different things work for different people, right? It's all trial and error. I felt like shit on keto, so I don't think I'll ever try that again. But my body likes carbs, so I provide it with an ample supply.

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  22. Well, you're also a self-described foodie, which means you're not a real person, haha.

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  23. I don't know what other people have done, but GOMAD worked great for me when I staggered it and lifted heavy (Well, heavy by my standards).

    I'd do GOMAD for ~3 weeks, gain weight, and then stop and lose the fat. It was like short little boosts every few months.

    Who knows how that kid was lifting. If he was just starting a program with super light weights, or trying some stupid body part split, then he probably did just put on fat. Personally, it was thanks to milk and squats/deads that I can now some see some semblance of abs.

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  24. I think most would agree that milk will you make you gain weight if you drink a lot of it but is it particularly good for the majority of people? Fuck no. There are some that seem to be ok on it but if i drink a couple of pints i get completely backed up with mucus and stomach cramps. Never understood the reasoning behind drinking another animals milk when our anatomy is completely different to a calves. I believe we are the only animal that does this, strange to be sure.

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  25. Anonymous above the one above me- that's sort of what Torbjorn Akerfeldt recommends- two weeks of hard dieting followed by two weeks off. MM2K was pushing that regime for a while in the 90s. There might be something to taking a break from your diet, but I don't think equal time on and off is necessarily the way to go, as it seems to me it's far harder to lean out than it is to get fat.
    http://myoblast.wordpress.com/2010/02/02/abcde-anabolic-burst-cycling-of-diet-and-exercise-torbjorn-akerfeldt/

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  26. Jamie, I believe my small post was swallowed somewhere above. To restate:

    I'm curious what you eat during your cheat/gorge windows.

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  27. My post was also swallowed...haha

    (how to determine metabolic type?)

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  28. Metabolic type- I linked the online test in one of the Metabolic Type Blogs from earlier this year. Alternatively, you can use the test in Paul Chek's book How to Eat, Move, and Be Healthy, or in Wolcott's book on Metabolic typing.

    JD- I'll address that in a blog later this week or early next week. I've a sense that I've addressed it broadly before, but I'll go into it in depth soon. Basically, I eat whatever the fuck I feel like eating, haha. Then, I eat more.

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  29. My genetics are so awesome that I shit Loonies and Toonies no matter what my diet is. And everything I piss on turns to gold.

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  30. My basic bulking diet is 2 Litres of milk with protein powder, and a kilogram of meat. Lets me recover well from workouts, but the milk is fattening for sure. Thanks for the advice RE training frequency Jamie. And thanks for the training ideas on forearms, Glen.

    Did hundreds of wrist curls, reverse curls, and hammer curls last night. Some with and some without fat gripz, great training tool imo. I'm now of the opinion that it's impossible to overtrain forearms. The old bodybuilders if I'm not mistaken used to train forearms, abs and calves every day, so I'll give that a shot.

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  31. I vaguely remember you covering it before; I want to say cheeseburgers and breaded chicken were mentioned. I'm curious if it's changed or just how "bad" the cheat food gets.

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  32. Since when can foodies not be real people?!?!

    At least I squat, deadlift, bench, and cook up a mean steak. ;)

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  33. Cue the marriage proposals, hahaha.

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  34. I have insane hunger cravings most of the time, red meat makes me feel amazing, sugar knocks me out, makes me nausiated... the best cheat foods in the world are salty fatty stuff. Pizza is high on my list. I do amazingly well on SKD, CKD and the anabolic diet. Nothing puts muscle on me quicker than high calorie keto diets. I am a foodie but tend to crave meat or meat products mainly. Sweets and such are less than satisfying and I don't have a sweet tooth at all, but steak, sausage, cheese (bree mmmm) I would eat those over a piece of cake any day. These days I am living mostly on eggs, beef and coconut oil. The only carbs I get are from tomatoes, garlic and brocolli and my progress is coming along nicely. I do have some carbs from time to time, anywhere from 4 days to 2 weeks a part, depending on how I feel.

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  35. re: torbjorn article.

    I only stopped doing GOMAD because it sucked when my pants and hockey equipment didn't fit right. Who would have thought there was actual science behind it. Thanks for the heads up.

    Re: the guy saying we shouldn't drink milk. Whatever. Nothing was "designed" in natures for humans to eat. It's all kind of a coincidence we exploit. It's a coincidence a cows muscles are tasty, and its milk helpful for me, the mucus, gas and acne be damned.

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  36. What the fuck is a fucking "foodie?"
    Is it some hipster word for someone who likes food?
    The only people I know of who don't like food are vegans.
    So I'm just gonna go ahead and refer to people who call themselves "foodies" as hipsters form now on.

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  37. Foodies are fat fucks that have a passion for and emotional attachment to food. They try to pass as connoisseurs. "Oh I can't help eating bag after bag of corn chips, I'm a foodie lulz!"

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  38. Jamie could you give us a weekly example of your diet? I am a little confused about how often you rotate your high, medium, and low carb days.

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  39. Any of you seen this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tXN4Ogf3eHg ??

    The man is beastly, and the no hand squat is crazy.

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  40. Holy shit, that's a fucking BTN press.

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  41. His first rep on that deadlift is seriously quick too, makes it look almost easy.

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  42. I was under the impression that a foodie is a person with an interest in food that borders on a sexual fetish. Christine's a self-described foodie, so maybe she can set us straight on this. Additionally, she could be the exception to prove the rule, but that broad is far from a fat fuck. Her blog's linked on the right.

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  43. All this talk about macros, carb cycling blah blah blah. Nothing to say specifically about calorie guidelines? Yeah yeah you've got a problem with how calories are calculated or counted or whatever, but you won't gain any muscle unless you're in a caloric surplus, right? So, how much? 100 extra calories a day? 500? 2000? Do you recommend trial and error or have any guidelines?

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  44. Hey Chaos. Great blog, great post. Good to see another person that lifts and isn't a stupid fucking meathead. Guys at my gym don't know the names of muscle groups and they wonder why they look constructed from play-do and wet napkins.

    After reading the IF guy's blog a few months ago, I decided to combine it with some of Lyle's UD 2.0 as well, a specialization lifting plan. (had great results on this, but it makes you feel like poo always).

    I agree with your thoughts about the body being made to store fat. But I think a fast can be used to ensure better nutrient timing / partitioning (This is something I've been trying to read about, please direct me to anything more on this matter if you know of it. Lyle talks about it a bit in UD 2.0)
    Basically, I have two types of days throughout the week. A low-carb (under 45g) days, and a moderate-high carb day. The low-carb days are on the days I either don't lift (which is usually only once a week) or the days I do either conditioning or bw only training. I do the high carb days on days where I want the bodyparts trained to grow. (right now, shoulders, lats, arms. low-mid rep complex exercises, high intensity and volume, etc.)

    But on these high carb days, I do a morning fast. I am an attorney and subsequently sit on my ass most of the day. So I get up at 8, and just drink coffee, then I have my first meal around 1pm (usually low carb), then moderate carb meal around 5:30, train, then high carb for 2 meals after. I've seen great results from this as long as you keep the calories in check on these days. Managed to lose fat overall, and gain muscle on key bodyparts. I'm at about 8%, so I'm not some noob fatass where anything would work. That's the key to IFing imo. You can't let yourself splurge just cause you fasted. And in this way, there may be some partitioning going on by keeping the calories near in time to your training. And not when you're about to sit on your ass all day pushing papers. Furthemore, if i want to have cheat meals, I just make sure to have them after these workouts.

    I think you are correct in saying that if you calorie restricted too much, and did IF, you would store fat.

    Anyways, that comment was retardedly long. Sorry for that. But I appreciate your blog and think you made some great points.

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  45. In re nutrient timing, there are a couple of good books on the topic- Nutrient Timing, Natural Hormone Enhancement, and Better Than Steroids.

    In re the belligerent question above that- it's fairly simple: consume at least double your bodyweight in protein. If you double your bodyweight in protein, you'll necessarily be in a caloric surplus, unless you're consuming nothing but protein powder. I'm roughly 200 lbs. Doubling that is 400 lbs, which = 1600 calories. If on a keto diet, that's half of my daily calories, which puts me at a minimum of 3200 calories. According to some dumbass BMR calculator, my BMR is 1925. Since I'm very active, that's multiplied by 1.7, making my daily calorie requirement 3272.5. Thus, I'd be breaking even if I paid any attention to my calories. I don't. I'll eat a lb of wings in a sitting, for instance- 1374 calories. That's just one meal. Thus, if you pay attention to your macros, it's my opinion you don't need to worry about your calories, unless you're paleo dieting.

    Finally, given the fact that I eat until I want to die twice a week, I will have to be in a total caloric surplus every week- my cheat meals average around 2100 calories, before I calculate Jager calories. I do shit like that twice a week.

    This is why I don't bullshit about with dumbass calorie nonsense. As I stated rather plainly at the end of the series, though, it's all about trial and error. There's no magic bullet, and no one's going to drop the answer girt-wrapped into your lap. If someone tells you they can, they're lying through their teeth.

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  46. Meeks- I thought IF was all about splurging- that guy talks about cheesecake incessantly. I'll look more into it and address it in a future blog. I'm still in the research stage on that though.

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  47. Jamie also a good point regarding calories and nutrient ratios. I've met plenty of people ranging from endocrinologists to genetics professors who said we KNOW in mainstream science that calories controlling body fat is bullshit, as I was in college as a duel major in nutritional science and psychology while competing as an amateur bodybuilder and was finding massive discrepancies in what we being taunt in my nutrition textbooks verses what I was learning with my own body and in bio-chem classes 10 years ago.

    At my largest, in 2003-2004 I was on 8000-9000 calories a day, 80-85% fat, 15-20% protein and brought my bodyweight up from 215 to 260 over the course of 18 months using a modified anabolic diet/CKD, yet I only added 2" to my waist and gained maybe 2-3% body fat, doing zero cardio, training 6 days a week. During some months I actually lost a little body fat while others I gained some. I allowed myself one carbup day per week and did go hog wild, some days eating only a few thousand calories, others going over 10,000+ the interesting thing is in months where my body fat, and skin folds, decreased my calories had more or less stayed the same.

    Scientists know calories matter a lot less than we think they do, a lot of people have proven with their own physiques that excessive calories do not always cause body fat gain, heavily reduced calories can cause body fat gain in people who eat the wrong foods depending on their own body (I can gain fat if I eat tons of processed carbs on 1800 calories WHILE training… I've seen it multiple times)… yet everyone insists caloric intake is the key to controlling body fat.

    I am very much of the opinion that micronutrient ratios, and food types are more important to weight and body composition fluxuation than total caloric intake. The human body is not a blast furnace that treats a calorie like a calorie like a calorie, nor is metabolism something static in a dynamic machine such as the human body.

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  48. holy fucking shit jason. How did you manage with those macros, eating wise? I may try that out in January when I get some time off. They don't teach you that kind of cool stuff in orthopedics.

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  49. Well yesterday I drank about two liters of beer in less than an hour as my pre-workout drink, and I felt wonderful in the weightroom, with the ugly chics in the treadmill looking hotter than usual as an added benefit! The combination of two amazing things (like weightlifting and moderate alcoholism) is a win-win situation for me.

    How about an entry about this???

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  50. I think my post on Saxon and Goerner pretty much covered that. the best time to drink beer, in their opinion, was all the time.

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  51. Drinking proper beer and ale and performing random drunken feats of strength with like minded individuals is probably one of the most enjoyable things in this life. Especially if surrounded by drunken wenches.

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  52. Ground beef, steak, ground turkey, sausage, bree cheese, macadamia nuts (they had them cheap at the natural food section at the HEB by my house and my mom, RIP, used to buy them for me all the time as I would visit her every Saturday afternoon), cashews, and I would drown everything in EVOO, drink flax oil and heavy cream by the truck load. I used to drink 6 eggs mixed with heavy cream and flax oil first thing in the morning right out of bed. I cook my eggs these days but cracking six eggs and whipping them into heavy cream was very easy while waking up back then.

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  53. Maybe not the place for such a question but in regards to raw eggs is it true that the bioavailability is greatly reduced? I think eggs are a good cheap way to get in some protein and fat but eating a dozen cooked eggs a day can get pretty tired. Also keeping with eggs, Jamie is there a reason you never seem to mention them other than just personal dietary preference?

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  54. Cooking denatures proteins, so raw eggs would have the most bioavailable protein. If you're asking which would be better for absorption, the answer is raw, but that carries the risk of e coli and salmonella. The syntax of your question was garbled, so I'm not sure if I answered it or not.

    I never mention eggs because I hate them, and they've been discussed ad nauseum in every bodybuilding rag ever.

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  55. I can safely say I FUCKING DESPISE EGGS. It's so bland and not meaty whatsoever. I have to eat a shit ton of them but fuck if i'm not holding a grudge against the stuff.

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  56. Apparently, there was a study on store-bought eggs concluding that only 1 in 30,000 eggs had salmonella. Doing the math, if you ate 1 dozen raw eggs per day, you could go almost 7 years before reaching 30,000. Your chances are much lower if you buy eggs from healthier hens, like from local, free-range hens.

    Additionally, salmonella is only a threat to very young children, the elderly, or the sickly. If you catch salmonella, chances are it will simply amount to a day or two of the runs or something.

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  57. ^ or worst comes to worst, a short course of cipro.

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  58. I eat raw eggs every day. Back in high school I sometimes used to drink a dozen at a time as a parlour trick. It used to make me feel queasy when I'd get home later but never actually made me sick.

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  59. The actual dictionary definition of a "foodie" is someone who is a gourmet. Someone with an ardent and refined interest for food preparation, presentation, and consumption. It's not just about liking food. Every chef and baker is a foodie.

    Michael, I'm far from being a fat fuck. I think of myself as a connoisseur of sorts, and if you have a problem with that you can go fuck yourself.


    Yes I'm attached to food. It's like porn to me. And I'm pretty addicted to preparing it, and maybe just the tiniest bit proud that I actually know how. :)

    Oh, and there are plenty of in-shape foodies out there.

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  60. HEY CHRISTINE I'M A FOODIE TOO
    CAN I EAT YOUR PUSSY ON A PLATE
    ?

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  61. "Cooking denatures proteins, so raw eggs would have the most bioavailable protein."

    I might be missing something but why should this make any difference. Denaturation doesn't damage the amino acid chain of the protein, just the three dimensional structure. I found this article - http://jn.nutrition.org/cgi/content/full/128/10/1716 - which seems to suggest that the digestibility of cooked protein is about 90% vs. <60% for uncooked protein.

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  62. Denaturing protein does not mean it gets destroyed. It's just broken down, which is essentially the same thing that happens when your food is digested anyway.

    Protein is protein. Heating it isn't going to change that.


    P.S. Eggs are fucking awesome.

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  63. Although I don't feel like searching for studies, I have at some point read at least one study showing that a denatured protein is less bioavailable than a non-denatured protein. Frankly, I couldn't care less, as raw meat is far harder to chew and swallow, which sort of obviates any bioavailability gained by eating it raw.

    If I eat eggs, I literally become a weapon of mass destruction. I ruined a bus ride to the steppes of Mongolia for 30 people after eating salted hardboiled duck eggs for breakfast in Hohhot... the windows wouldn't open.

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  64. i used to buy flats of eggs (60) and somehow my mom ended up giving like 100 cans of beans assorted from a friend that moved. So i ate beans and eggs for the winter the lunch shack always stayed heated lol but no but me was inside haha.

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  65. @Christine: yeah, I thought about it a bit more after my previous post and I am fairly certain that the acid in the stomach would denature egg protein straight away. But as Jamie says, there are other reasons to cook food even if protein is less bioavailable when denatured, and personally I quite like scrambled eggs in the morning.

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  66. ^^^ Cooked meat tastes better anyway.

    Unless of course, it's steak tartare. That stuff is just so fuckin epic.

    And some blue steaks can be good. But they have to be a very good cut of meat.

    Raw eggs are just absolutely disgusting.

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  67. Milk and steak are fucking great man. The fucking best shit to eat though for strength, is cum. I not fucking joking! And it has to be another mans cum, not your own! I drink fucking GALLONS of it, straight from the cock! I like rimming too. Just men.

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