The Feast, Famine, And Ferocity Diet, Part 1

Hunger Burns the Fat Off Man’s Soul

Food has never been more readily available, consistently healthy, or instantly accessible than the era in which we now live. Even in the mythical Judeo-Christian utopia called “The Garden of Eden”, a land of such bounty that early humans had to do nothing more than reach over their heads and pick low hanging fruit to sate their hunger, man lacked the 24/7/365 access to Chimichurri-drenched T-Bone steaks and pizza slices the size of a grown man’s torso that modern humans enjoy in the Western World.

(Tara Edit - Yes, the pizza’s really are that big at Lorenzo and Son’s on South Street, Philadelphia. Jamie has NEVER had the joy that is their pizza, I on the other hand most assuredly have, and nearly dumped him when I found out all the times he had gone to South St. he’d never eaten there. Lame!)

In time’s past, Man’s food supply alternated between surplus and deficit, surfeit and dearth, and Golden Corral ALL-YOU-CAN-EAT-BUFFET feasts and “We Are the World” famines from season to season and this is the cycle to which the human body is more accustomed than Midwestern Hobos were to being raped by Carl Panzram on long train rides.

Likes: Raping hobos and milk steak

Dislikes: People’s knees

These periods of insufficiency or famine are a metabolic necessity for some, such as the Native American tribes of the American Southwest, for whom modern food convenience is more of a death sentence than blessing. Type II Diabetes plagues them like thanatomorphose does Ukrainian junkies, and the reason behind it is that their bodies are genetically programmed to store body fat in times of plenty. All humans, in fact, are designed to do so, which is noteworthy because we’re the only primates who bear this trait to ensure survival during Ice Ages, famine or lengthy travel into unknown lands.

Neither chimps nor gorillas could have survived the Irish Potato Famine or a Soviet Five Year Plan, and the latter will never attempt Global Domination because they will never stray that far from their food source - - To do so would mean almost certain death.

Would have gotten mangled by Unit 731 in a match-up on Deadliest Warrior

Certain pundits have pontificated upon the wasted potential of lifting luminaries like Hermann Goerner and Manohar Aich due to the fact that they spent years in WWI and WWII POW camps and British Colonial Detention Centers, respectively, arguing that had they not done so, they’d have gone on to far greater physical heights. Given the fact that NO ONE has yet bested some of Goener’s lifts, and Manohar Aich’s squat was so fucking massive at such a low body weight that even my superlative vocabulary lacks the hyperbolic verbiage to describe it; I would tend to disagree, especially when I consider recent years that have found me alternating between crazy personal records and insufficient calories, due to either drunkenness or incarceration. In fact the evidence seems to point to the conclusion that periods of relative famine are actually highly beneficial to lifters.

Have your doubts?

Anyone who’s ever been to an NA meeting just needs to look around the room to see that perpetually starving junkies get fucking HUGE when they ditch the drugs for steroids, weights and metal. Shit you don’t need to look any farther than guys like former junkie Trent Reznor and former crackhead Tom Hardy.

It’s understandable, at least until you consider the possibility that periods of severe undereating condition your body to utilize the maximum amount of nutrition from the food you consume. Clearly, Hermann Goerner easily regained his mass and strength, even in an utterly decimated post-war Germany… not once, but FUCKING TWICE, and anyone who has ever seen a dope fiend ditch their works for weights, steak, and steroids know they blow up faster than an inflatable donkey fuck-toy at a 4-H competition after-party. Likewise, bodybuilders in the 1980’s who would diet for months onn 800-1000 calories a day during contest prep, would balloon up cartoonishly in the off season, because their bodies had been conditioned over time to wring every last bit of sustenance possible out the of the astonishing tiny amount of food they were consuming.

Dude should have gone Pro

I, too, have some experience with this phenomenon ranging from cutting 20 lbs for meets in a couple of days to dropping 25 lbs in a long weekend of drinking and then gaining 35 in the subsequent month, to my current situation; slowly starving to death in a for profit jail that feeds its inmates what amounts to starvation rations. This shit-pile county (which was recently the subject of an expose in the Philadelphia Inquirer for the abuse of people on probation for minor crimes, this article about the RIDICULOUSLY high incarceration rates in non-urban counties , this article dating back to 2014 about the for profit probation system, and the Columbia University judicial study mentioned above referencing Pennsylvania’s abnormally high incarceration rates, oh and this Human Rights Watch 76 page report on the abuse of the for profit probation industry) has a protracted “Quarantine” period, in which we are allowed roughly 1500 calories and no recreation of any kind for 14-30 days. Most inmates claim some malady that nets them enough Klonopin to sleep through that period and marvel at my staunch refusal to allow my diet to dictate my activity level, but I obviously choose to exercise compulsively and write extensively for the following reasons:

The mind controls the body.

You are not a slave

1. FUCK HUNGER!
2. If people like Manohar Aich, Hermann Goerner, and that Olympic marathoner from Unbroken (Tara Edit: Louis Zamperini for those who were wondering who he meant) can do it SO CAN WE FUCKING ALL (But fuck that “I forgive you for torturing me for years” bullshit the Unbroken dude was busy with).
3. I know that the second I have access to a surplus of food I can overeat like a fat kid on Easter morning and I’ll blow up like George in Rampage inside of a week without adding much, if any, fat at all.

Is it fun? FUCK NO. Well, maybe a little. The BDSM-Style masochist in me secretly loves the misery of dieting and training in a ridiculously hypocaloric state. I suppose it’s not much of a secret given the fact I just admitted it, but it gives me the same kind of wolf-eyed hard-on that having a Domme put me in a ball press and violently fuck my urethra with a thick ribbed sound would. Knowing you can suffer through a period of asceticism that is generally the purview of religious zealots and genuine psychopaths makes you feel hard, cruel, and unstoppable as a zombified fascist supersoldier tasked with single handedly reducing the effete modern world to rubble.

(Tara Edit - LOOK! PORN! Finally! I know. You guys were dying without it)

In short, this diet is going to mimic periods of feast and famine in an effort to transform your organs and musculature into what amounts to a pack of angry, armed Muslim zealots in a community that doesn’t adhere to the same religion - That little bit of food will have to convert or die. During that time, you’ll train differently, focusing on more volume and less weight, just like Celtic or Germanic warriors on campaign in the summer. Rather than manning an oar or going on extended marches, and then fighting pitched battles, the submaximal and repetitive movements you will be doing will give you a physical and mental break from brutally heavy weights and increase your work capacity while improving your shape, correcting the types of muscular imbalances common in modern “I don’t DO machines, bro”, and depleting every last drop of muscle glycogen and draining your fat stores as much as possible. Yeah, stepping on the scale is a motherfucker, but seeing all of your abs without flexing for the first time in a while makes it worth it… Especially knowing you are about to blow the fuck up.

“YOU DON’T FUCKING GO AROUND WEEPING ABOUT IT AND YOU DON’T BEHAVE LIKE A KID WITH A SORE THUMB… YOU GOTTA BEHAVE LIKE A GROWN FUCKING MAN. YOU GOTTA SHUT THE FUCK UP.

DON'T BE SORRY.

DON’T LOOK FUCKING BACK, BECAUSE BELIEVE ME, NO ONE GIVES A FUCK!” 
-Al Swearengen, Deadwood

Up next, the details of the Feast, Famine, and Ferocity Diet. Don’t act like you’re not at least a little curious as to what this is gonna look like.