Apex Predator Diet If You're Lean As Shit

If you're following the Apex Predator Diet, it's highly likely that you didn't start out ridiculously lean.  As such, it'll have take you some time to get to this point- this diet's not a quick-fix or crash diet, but rather a way to lean out while getting bigger and stronger all at the same time.  By the time you hit 8% bodyfat, your metabolism should be wearing a pvc outfit and holding a cat o' nine tails tipped with metal rings, because it's dominant as hell and has made your bodyfat into its snivelling sissy bitch. You should now be at or under 8% bodyfat, so your abs are standing out in stark relief, your body looks like a Rand McNalley map due to your incredible vascularity, and you should be feeling like you can eat lightning and shit thunder at this point.  You are, officially, awesome, provided you're not bereft of muscle mass.

I'm not satisfied until every vein is forced up against my skin. Look how vascular I am Brian. If there's one thing women love it's a vascular man. I've got veins, they carry blood all over my bahday. That's how John Mayer would say it. Bahday. 

Assuming you had to work to get here, you'll know exactly how your body responds to both diet and exercise, which affords you a tremendous amount of leeway with your diet.  Before you head for the all-you-can-eat pizza buffet, however, bear this in mind- you'll never be so awesome that you can out-train a shitty diet.  As such, sticking to the Apex Predator Diet is a good idea, though you can have the occasional dalliance.  As always, I encourage you to explore your inner Nikola Tesla and get as mad scientist as you can with both diet and training, but just remember that until you stay lean for a considerable period of time, your body is going to attempt to return to whatever your previous fat setpoint is.  Thus, if you spent the last 10 years eating butter sandwiches and appeared to be one box of Milk Duds away from purchasing a rascal to get you hither and thither, take the following with a grain of salt.  Additionally, if you like Milk Duds, you have no working taste buds, so dieting shouldn't be all that difficult for you anyway.

Got the coke and the smile covered.

Candied gastronomic atrocities aside, the Apex Predator Diet will become for most of you a delicate balancing act, wherein you're going to try to maximize your caloric intake while remaining super lean.  Though it's not as simple as most would like, nothing fucking is, so have a coke and smile and shut the fuck up about it.  You'll find that you'll naturally cycle your calories, as your ghrelin and leptin production will be optimized at this point, and your body is going to loudly let you know what it needs when it needs it.  Your stomach will growl its fucking ass off all day if you try a PSMF, and you will be miserable in the gym, so you'll likely drop those days. They'll be replaced by the regular Apex Predator days from earlier phases of the diet, wherein you drink shakes until your final evening meal.  When your metabolism resembles nothing more than Slayer's War Zone in speed, ferocity and overall sentment, it's tough to live on protein shakes and nothing more.  As such, your weekly diet will start to look much more like this:

Monday - Thursday, Saturday and Sunday

• 5-6 protein shakes evenly spaced throughout the day consisting of 40-60 grams of protein and less than 10 grams of carbs.
• 1 medium sized meal midday (I shoot for 600-800 calories in the form of wings, generally, although I'll substitute other meats as well.
• 1 large evening meal of 2000-4000 calories in the form of (preferably bone-in) meat.  Let your hunger levels dictate the size.

Friday
Rampage Day- Go here for details.

Alternate Saturday
At times, you're going to find both your enthusiasm and your energy waning for continued ketogenesis.  On those weeks, push hard to make it to Fridaywith the knowledge taht you're going to carry your carbup over onto Saturday.  As to when you'll want to do this, it's entirely up to you- I would use a combination of the mirror and your general level of enthusiasm for the gym as a guage.  If you find yourself incredibly burned out, a second carbup might be the boost you need.  Make Saturday more of a medium carb, low to moderate fat, high protein day than a Rampage.  It's important to remember that these carbohydrate refeeds are not supercompensations.  Supercompensations should only be used sparingly, as frequent use reduces their efficacy.(Zatsiorsky 13)  Additionally, I would not make a habit of utilizing the moderate carb Saturdays on a frequent basis, as there's only a small amount of glycogen resynthesis that occurs in the second 24 hours of carb loading, and there's the potential to regain some of the fat you lost during the week. As such, you should keep carbohydrate levels at or below 2 grams per pound of bodyweight on Saturdays.(McDonald 132-3)

It's Time To Take A Vacation
Another massive and awesome benefit of breaking your ass to get this lean is the fact that short dietary vacations don't do much harm, and in some cases will break you out of a plateau.  According to Torbjorn Akerfeldt, our "genes have not evolved much during the last 100,000 years; thus, they are still developed for our hunter/gatherer and, more recently, pastoral ancestors, who, whenever they succeeded in killing an animal, lived on meat for a week or two. At other times, when they had bad luck hunting and a crop failed, they lived on a low-calorie diet. This selective pressure gave man adipose tissue with almost unlimited storage capacity and a very adaptive metabolism to cope with periods of different diets."(Phillips)  Basically, once you'e lean, if you diet hard and undereat a bit, you'll get a consistent carryover of the rebound you get from your Rampage Day into multiple days.  I will generally not take this past 5 days or so, but one study showed that a three week period of overeating resulted in mass gain that was nearly evenly split between fat and muscle, and an increase in nitrogen retention that persisted even after the diet returned to normal.(Forbes, Oddoye)  Thus, protein retention after the overfeeding was increased, and the body was more anabolic.

Eat up, motherfucker.

Personally, I don't plan these.  They just sort of happen, and are generally the result of a long-weekend vacation or something similar.  You could try planning them if you wanted, and if you chose to do so, I would suggest they be limited to 4 or 5 days and occur on non-consecutive months.  Additionally, I'd suggest you undereat a bit in the week prior to the overfeed to accelerate fatloss.  Provided you jump right back into the Apex Predator diet, keep your training up, don't abuse the vacation and aren't completely ridiculous about it, you can get away with quite a few dietary shenanigans.

Up next, the Apex Predator Diet for Whiny Bitches and the innumerable rugby players who email me about this diet.

Sources:
Forbes GB, Brown MR, Welle SL, and Underwood LE.  Hormonal response to overfeeding.  Am J Clin Nutr 1989 49: 4 608-611.
McDonald, Lyle.  Ketogenic Diet.

Oddoye EA, Margen S.  Nitrogen Balance Studies in Humans: Long-Term Effect of High Nitrogen Intake on Nitrogen Accretion.  J. Nutr. 1979 109: 3 363-377.
Phillips, Bill.  “Torbjorn Akerfeldt interviewed by Bill Phillips – Part I"  http://myoblast.wordpress.com/2010/02/02/abcde-anabolic-burst-cycling-of-diet-and-exercise-torbjorn-akerfeldt/
Zatsiorsky, Vladimir.  Science and Practice of Strength Training.