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How To Not F*** Up Your Diet On Weekends

March 10, 2016 by Andrew Ferreira Leave a Comment

Diets can be made or broken on weekends

It’s really pretty easy.

Follow this three-step process and you’re gold.

Never go out.
Don’t drink.
And don’t even think about ordering pizza while you Netflix and chill.

There, done.

By now, if you were sane, you’d be thinking, “Yeah, screw Andrew. What’s the point of being ripped if you’re a hermit.”

And you’d be right.

Screwing up your weekend is the biggest problem in dieting

That’s a horrible solution to a big problem and yet it’s one I see people making every single day.

In my time in financial services – you know, the real world where people have no idea what the heck carb cycling or IIFYM is – here’s typically how it plays out.

People go cold turkey and totally eliminate drinking or they get creative with “Irish Lent,” where you don’t drink from New Years until St. Patrick’s Day. It goes well because people are generally pretty good at committing to a psychotic plan for awhile. Think fad diets.

Then shit hits the fan. Eventually, they say “fuck it,” get drunk with their buddies on a mini-bender and realize that the fun they had was way more enjoyable than any stupid restrictive diet.

End of diet.

There’s a better way

Weekends don’t have to destroy your diet anymore. And the best part is you don’t even need to “science the shit out of it” like Matt Damon in the Martian.

You need a system that works.

One that’ll let you work hard and play harder all while getting lean and keeping you from falling victim to become a boring, Type A recluse.

My clients, many of whom work high-stress 80-90 hour work weeks while still managing to get lean and enjoy themselves on the weekend, are a testament to this notion.

What follows is what I typically prescribe to clients and utilize myself:

Note: these results are typical.

This Isn’t Tim Ferris 4 Hour Body Fantasy Land

Full disclosure: I can’t help you if you drink and/or eat like an asshole 4-5 nights a week and plan to continue doing so.

Tim Ferris has greater magical powers than I and I simply can’t hack your life through a computer screen. Sure, if you worked with me 1 on 1, there’s a chance I could “science the shit out of it” and make it happen but for the purposes of this article, ya just can’t do it.

This system is all about optimization with THE assumption that you have yourself together during the rest of the week.

That means putting in the work regardless of whether or not it’s perfect or optimal. As I’ve mentioned before, bad science has gotten thousands of people ripped. A poor work ethic has not.

With that being said, let’s get to the goods.

Priority #1: Create A Deficit

It’s Saturday night and this week’s been an absolute ball-buster. A string of 12-hour days, 4-5 hard workouts, and a diet that’s been immaculate.

You’ve put in the work and now it’s time to get loose and enjoy yourself.

Game on.

We both know that Newton’s 4^th Law is that you need to create a deficit to lose fat.

Where many people go wrong is in thinking that you can go ham on the weekend, drink like a fish and eat like a cow and come Monday morning, everything will be all fine and dandy and the scale will give you the goods.

Unfortunately, math doesn’t cease to exist on the weekends and calories are still calories.

To create an enjoyable, diet friendly Saturday night, it’s imperative to impose a deficit for some wiggle room.

To create a deficit, we want to drain some muscle glycogen so all that pizza later will be stored in our muscles and not our love handles.

Our best bet is interval training.

Lifting, contrary to popular opinion, doesn’t deplete glycogen a whole heck of a lot.

From Bayesian Bodybuilding:

A full-body workout consisting of 9 exercises for 3 sets each at 80% 1RM (something only a beginner can do) only depletes about a third of the body’s glycogen and 9 sets for a specific muscle result in 36% depletion in that muscle (Roy & Tarnopolsky, 1998). After performing sets of 6 leg extensions at 70% 1RM until absolute failure occurred (weird protocol I know) and not consuming anything afterwards, 75% of glycogen was restored after 6h (Pascoe et al. 1993).

So much for the notion that you “need” carbs to strength train but that’s a topic for another time.

Compare that to 2 30s sprints on an ergometer and you get 44% glycogen depletion.

Here’s a sample interval session that I like to implement with clients on such days:

10 minutes
10 seconds as hard as possible
50 seconds at an easy pace

If after trying that, you still have more in the tank, you didn’t try hard enough.

As much as people probably hate when their boss tells them to earn their weekend, earn your drinks.

Training Days and Drinking Don’t Mix

Any movement is better than no movement BUT if results matter to you, I’d highly recommend you schedule lifting days away from when you drink.

Why?

Intelligent, purposeful training is performance-centric. It isn’t an exercise in fuckarounditis.

This doesn’t happen from fuckarounditis

To progress forward, you must recover from an imposed stress.

That means adequate sleep along with ample calories to provide enough substrate to fuel recovery.

Let’s call a spade a spade and acknowledge that your night out on the town will likely include too much alcohol and too little sleep to ensure proper recovery.

Thus, it makes no logical sense to train on a day you plan on going out and drinking. While not optimal, it’s better advised you chug some caffeine the morning after and train hungover than eviscerating your chest the day of a drinking session.

Nutrition Priority #1: Limit Fat Intake with Alcohol

Don’t worry, this article isn’t going to evolve into some if it fits your macro pedantic diatribe extolling the benefits and necessities of counting calories on days you hit the bottle.

With that being said, for general health purposes, you should be aware of what fat is, what foods are predominately fat, that fat is NOT the devil, and it WON’T make you fat by looking at it.

General thesis: keep fat low on days you drink.

Here’s why:

After a meal, insulin levels rise, fat burning (oxidation) stops, and you use said energy for fuel.

Because energy from your meal is being utilized for fuel, fat oxidation is blunted meaning that any fat intake is stored for future use.

That DOES NOT mean any fat you consume ever is confine to the shallows of your love handles never to be seen again. As hours pass and insulin and blood sugar levels return to baseline, fat oxidation begins again.

This process happens all day, every day. Little stored, little burned. Whether or not you store fat is ultimately based on your level of calorie intake.

Except when you drink.

Alcohol is fanfuckingtastic but it’s by-product in your body, acetate, is not. Acetate is toxic to your body so it takes numero uno priority in the energy hierarchy.

Alcohol and consequently acetate must be burned off before your body will touch another source of fuel.

If you’re still following, that means the yin and yang cycle of fat burning stops. You’re in full grizzly hibernation mode storing all the fat you eat.

Hence the problem.

That nice, fatty, delicious, deep-dish pizza you throw back after having a dozen or so beers will cause you to gain (store) significantly more fat than if you had it stone cold sober.

Does that mean you can eat 1000 g of carbs that day and not gain fat if you limit the fat?

In the short-term probably, but the bro-science school of thought where you can crush carbs and limit the fat and not gain fat is exactly that: a myth.

What To Do On Days You Drink:

Limit fat intake. If you’re looking for hard macros, I always tell my clients .3 g/kg/bw.

This is per Martin Berkhan’s recommendations that I’ve implemented with my clients ever since and it’s worked fantastically. If you’re looking for a more in-depth science to alcohol and fat loss, check here. No need to reinvent the wheel on my end.

Protein and veggies are your best friend.

Until you go out, your meals should be predominately protein and veggies. This will keep you calories low and keep you satiated. The more satiated you are, the better the chances you won’t eat like an asshole after drinking.

Avoid the post-drinking nuclear bomb of a pizza or something equally as fatty.

But shit happens, food tastes better drunk, so I would err on the side of try and keep it more carby than fatty. It’d be beneficial to keep the dinner before the drinks lean as well to preserve calories.

Own Your Sundays – Protein Sparing Modified Fasts

I’m going to assume you weren’t the best padawan and failed to follow the above protocol to a T.

Not ideal but understandable and expected. I wouldn’t be writing the guide to not fucking up your diet on the weekend if we were all innocent angels without any food or alcohol vices.

One night doesn’t ruin a diet. Mini-benders from Friday to Sunday absolutely can though so it’s imperative you right the ship on Sunday.

Enter the protein sparing modified fast.

I’ve been fortunate enough to partake in the Bayesian Bodybuilding Online PT course and it’s been nothing but phenomenal. In it, I learned about the PSMF and have had great success implementing it with my clients on rest days and in particular on weekends.

Incredible Resource

Essentially, a PSMF is exactly as it sounds.

A day of low calories, high protein, alongside minimal residual fat and carbohydrate intake.

The rationale for inclusion is as follows:

You likely gained fat on Friday or Saturday night. It happens. We’re not robots and dieting would suck even worse if we were forced to be recluses to be successful.

A PSMF is designed to all but eliminate any and all fat gain from the previous day’s shenanigans.

Protein is kept high to preserve lean body mass.

A good general target is 1.82 g/kg/bw as your minimum. Going above this number is perfectly acceptable.

Fiber intake is imperative for health, satiety, and because it makes you a better human.

Fiber One bars don’t count either. Eat some greens and make your mom proud. Better yet, add resistant starch to your diet.

Aside from that, keep fat and carbohydrates low (less than 10 g per meal) to keep hunger at bay.

Further, it is important to keep the mealtime and frequency as close to what is habitual as possible for optimal nutrient partitioning and insulin sensitivity. For the “why” I urge you to invest in the course and get your nerd on.

In terms of training, I generally recommend clients stay away from a hardcore training session. I typically recommend a nice easy 20-25 minute restorative aerobic session to get some blood flow and prep for a big day of training the following day.

With that being said, some of my most memorable and enjoyable training sessions have come post-hangover with some caffeine jet fuel. It’s ok to grind through sometimes. If not, all the time.

Note: A PSMF is not recommended if you plan on lifting. Nutrients are needed during the anabolic window. Regular training day nutrition or macros are advised.

An Alternative to Alcohol: Phenibut

Note: I’m not a doctor. This isn’t medical advice and it’d be smart to consult with a physician before embarking on any supplement regimen.

What if I told you there was something that you give you the same euphora, mood, and relaxant as alcohol without the rubber necking, the hangover, the texts sent to ex-girlfriends, and the unwanted fat gain?

You’d probably ask me if I believed in unicorns too.

Touche, but your aggression would be misplaced, as such things do exist.

Enter phenibut, the best legal supplement/drug you’ve never heard of.

Alcohol and phenibut both act via GABA receptors in your brain.

GABA is the chief inhibitory neurotransmitter in the central nervous system. Alcohol’s action as a GABA agonist are what causes you to relax, “quiet” the inner voice in your head, and in all likelihood feel like Superman because of your lack of inhibition.

It’s important to note that alcohol primarily acts via the GABA A receptor while phenibut targets the B receptor, which may explain phenibut’s effects without the motor function loss as seen in alcohol.

In many ways, phenibut gives you all the advantages of alcohol without everything that is deleterious for body composition: namely blunting of fat oxidation and impaired sleep quality resulting in reduced androgen levels and protein synthesis.

But I’m not going to go into too many specifics. Here’s a good guide on phenibut and the contraindications involved. Here’s another.

It’s a tool that you can use. Nothing more, nothing less.

But the lack of hangovers doesn’t suck.

Eliminate (Uncontrolled) Cheat Days

If you have cheat days, stop.

There is and shouldn’t be any reason for planned all day glutinous binges like Dwight Goodman at the end of dodgeball.

If you feel you “need” it, I’d highly suggest you look into why you feel that way.

Important questions to consider are:

What does your diet look like during the week?
Is it too restrictive? Think bodybuilder diet of chicken and broccoli.
Are you eating enough calories? There’s a difference between a deficit and starvation. The latter will set you up for a nice gigantic rebound.

An ideal diet and a concept that I implement with my clients is that there should be no guilt or shame in going out with friends on a Friday or Saturday night and getting some good, delicious, less than nutritious food to eat with some drinks.

Heck, I’d even advise it for quality of life and maintaining sanity on a diet.

The idea of a cheat day is destructive and offers little physiological or psychological utility.

Refeeds are overrated and seem to be heavily popularized by bro-science. Elevations in metabolic rate, leptin, and any other physiological reason touted in support are typically transient and their inclusion doesn’t appear to be supported in the literature.

What cheat days can do is destroy your diet. You may want to be the Rock but you’re not.

It’s helpful to think in terms of weekly caloric energy balance.

While nutrient timing and calorie cycling can get fancy to maximize the anabolic window to further body recomposition (lose fat, build muscle), thinking simplistically it’s important to maintain a weekly deficit.

A 4-5000 calorie uncontrolled binge is all but guaranteed to abolish the weekly deficit you had created through 5 or 6 days of hard work and meticulous preparation.

Though I’m against the idea because of it’s connotation with regards to dieting, if you want to “cheat,” it’s important to control it through calorie control.

For example, if you’re running a moderate 500 calorie per day deficit and you want to go buckwild on Saturday, increase your deficit per day throughout the week to increase your error margin on Saturday.

A better strategy is to give yourself one cheat meal as recommended by Jason Helmes at Anyman fitness, a man who is consistently putting out diesel work.

Enjoy yourself, get the demons out, and move on.

Wrap-Up

I’m all for a good time and that may seem hard to believe given all the fancy science I just gave you so you don’t f*** up your weekend.

It’s not rocket science, I promise. I don’t even consciously think about this stuff anymore and neither do my clients. It’s become intuitive and a skill that you can easily learn if you take the time to implement.

Start small. Get an interval session in the day you plan on going out. Fast the next day if you’re up for it.

But start.

Don’t sacrifice all your hard work during the week because you turn into Van Wilder on the weekends.

Fat loss and fun can go hand in hand. Sometimes you do have to embrace the suck but if your diet keeps you in on Friday night because you think you “have” to, you’re doing it wrong.

P.S. Want to get shredded for summer? Email me at showmestrength@gmail.com and we can get the ball rolling.

Two Weeks To Shredded: The Results

September 2, 2014 by Andrew Ferreira Leave a Comment

You never want to be “that guy.” Now, funny thing is that you don’t need to be an expert at social dynamics to quickly identify the asshole at the party who is unanimously dubbed “that guy.” It’s sort of like how we know really good grandma apple pie from shitty store bought processed fake version. I don’t have the verbiage to eloquently explain why that pie sucks like a professional food taster could – I just know that I wouldn’t feed it to my dog that doesn’t exist. Identifying “that guy” is similar in that you don’t need a sociology degree to identity said asshole.

Since I’m all about full disclosure here at Show Me Strength, I figured it was time to make a confession and admit that throughout my brief adult life (forget the fact that I’m pushing 25 real soon), there have been occasions when I’ve been “that guy.” Well, maybe I’m being hard on myself with that label. I mean, I’m sure 63% of my readership has taken their shirt off from time to time (ok, maybe frequently) at college parties. No? Alright well, maybe I am the asshole.

Whether you’d quickly identify and hate me or not, I could think of no better way to celebrate the revival of my college career and celebrate my last first day of school ever then taking my shirt off – but this time via the interwebz. In all seriousness, I want to show you what the result of my two week (technically 11 days) shredding experiment was.

I’m not going to outline my methods because I’ve already done that in a previous article (click me). In total, I had 11 training sessions in 11 days. I went double sessions twice with intervals in the morning with a metabolic training session in the afternoon. Two days were complete rest.

What Happened

The most important part of my experiment was to see if my methods actually worked. I didn’t have access to body fat calipers (sue me) so all I have to judge my results off of is a mirror and a cell-phone selfie and some photo-shoot esque lighting. Just kidding, I kept the lighting and the background the same so I couldn’t scam you into thinking I got shredded sitting on my ass and eating twinkies for two weeks. Without further ado, you can be the judge…

For 11 days, I thought what transpired ended up being pretty damn good. If we’re going to call a spade a spade, I’m sure there was some water manipulation involved in the before/after pictures. I didn’t intentionally cut water but lower carb dieting will have that effect. At the start of my experiment I checked in at 225 and ended my cut at 221.5 and I lost a total of three inches off my stomach in various places. My quads unfortunately didn’t get any smaller so I’ll be anxiously awaiting the launch of Barbell Denim so I can fit in a regular pair of pants.

Suffering + Good Science = Shredded

The science was damn good, too good in fact to fail. A simple understanding of fat loss physiology goes a long way in constructing programs that allow for rapid fat loss in a short amount of time. Physiologically, my protocol was going to work. Except, fat loss doesn’t happen in a vacuum and physiology isn’t the only factor at play here. Psychology matters and to be completely honest, this protocol was really fucking hard.

I suffered. A lot.

Professional baseball is my background. I’ve accustomed to strength and power training sessions where the intensity may be high but rest periods are long and there’s no real metabolic training effect.

Training during this protocol was some of the most grueling uncomfortable training sessions of my life. There were a couple sessions where I front squatted 185 a total of 40 times followed by 80 forward lunges with little to no rest. This happened after a full interval session with 20 minutes of cardio mixed in between.

There were times when I wanted to stop. My legs were quivering, breath was all but nonexistent, and that little voice in my head was bellowing. And that was only the training aspect. Everyone worth their salt knows that God could have written my training program but if my nutrition wasn’t on point, all would be for not.

Zero carb days were difficult. Zero carb weekends were even harder. Even a big serving of protein and fat seemed to induce carb cravings that were hard to ignore. And then there was that whole 1000 calorie caloric deficit each day. The temptation to eat myself satisfied at night loomed large but I resisted. My bro science told me that if I went to bed hungry there was a significant chance that I would wake up leaner. I was largely correct.

Rethinking Real World Application of Physiology

Eleven days isn’t a long time frame. Despite however difficult my training and nutrition may have been, I didn’t have to maintain the sacrifice for all too long. Being able to see the light at the end of the tunnel made everything psychologically seem ok.

I reckon it’s similar to when you’re doing a set of high rep squats and instead of seeing this voluminous 20 rep monster, it all seems tangible and doable when you break it up into 20 sets of 1. Breaking up your set in this manner makes it seem significantly less daunting psychology.

And maybe that’s the point that we’re all missing in the industry. How often do we hear stories who just seemingly can’t follow a basic training program with simple dietary prescriptions long enough to make significant change but they’re willing to train hard for two months so they can do that Tough Mudder with all their friends. And you know what the crazy part is? Often times they succeed at the more difficult task.

If you can control dopamine, you can produce significant change and get big time results. The best physiology in the world doesn’t mean a goddamn thing if you can’t win over that individual’s psychology.

Clearly the answer isn’t fad diets or program ADD which surely will bring a whole lot of dopamine to the brain with little results to show for it. Maybe the answer is breaking big time goals into incremental pieces and attacking them bursts at at time. Hard six weeks of training and dieting followed by a couple weeks off and then the cycle repeats itself. It keeps the body fresh but more importantly it keeps the brain stimulated.

The brain wins – period.

A Challenge

Try out the new model I presented and see what happens. Push the volume and intensity higher than what your textbook advises and then back off. Go lower carb than what is comfortable and then restore homeostasis and maintenance calories. I think you’ll find that the all too familiar burn out that the recreational trainee experiences just doesn’t happen when you program for the brain and the body.

Our “Six Weeks To Shredded” program is Show Me Strength’s experimental trial into this new model of adaptation. It’s hard, you will suffer, but most importantly you’ll get quicker results than you ever have in the shortest amount of time. We still have a few spots open to those who want to escape from the mediocre bullshit that runs most people’s lives.

If interested, contact us at showmestrength@gmail.com with the subject line, “Get Shredded.” If what happened to me took only eleven days with our protocol, imagine six weeks. Below is another “guinea pig” who busted his ass for a month’s time to get diesel results.It’s science.

6 Weeks To Shredded: I Need You

August 12, 2014 by Andrew Ferreira 1 Comment

I pride myself on being a self proclaimed above-average writer. To continue to toot my own horn, I generally find that I am able to convey high level scientific concepts in a manner that is both informative and more importantly enjoyable all while still giving you the ability to directly apply whatever I said to your life in a matter of seconds without having to consult your local PhD. Whether my half-hearted poking fun at my girlfriend adds any value to my writing is still under considerable review, namely from both her and her parents but I digress as that is neither here nor there.

When I sat down to write this, it was my full intention to spare you any longwinded introduction and just give you the details. My plan was to quickly tell you how I personally think I’m a good writer and write reasonable interesting introductions that hook the reader in seconds to read the rest of my 4,000 word exposes on topics like getting shredded and looking better naked, which seemingly are one and the same. Then make a quick transition and tell you how this article is just going to be bare bones with full details on my experimental parameters sparing you any anecdotal introduction that you may give a courtesy laugh if you happened to be reading it in front of me.

Obviously, I’ve failed since I’m 241 words deep and have yet to mention a single word about guinea pigs and/or getting shredded.

Let’s not waste anymore time…

You Win, I win, Everyones Happy

This is a mutually beneficial partnership.

First, I help you get shredded. The scientific framework governing the plan is too sound not to work. Trust me, you will get leaner than you ever in a short time frame.

Second, you help give me more data like any good guinea pigs would. The issue isn’t the science, any Harvard physiology professor that likely doesn’t remember my name would concur that my science is damn good. However, science doesn’t directly translate to the real world when it comes to getting shredded. There are hiccups and kinks that need to be ironed out in order to make this plan as perfect as possible.

I’ve already run this program on a few people with outstanding results. Though my timeframe is shorter (2 weeks compared to 6), I am running the same program on myself in my attempt to have abs that cut granite.

But I need more data and that’s where you come in.

Details

Because of the extreme nature of this program, I have some requirements that must be met for those interested.

15% bodyfat and under – If you’re not already this lean, then you don’t need a program of this nature. You need to master the basics and get lean first before you take the next step

Must be male – Male and female fat loss physiology is different. For perfection sake, I want to limit as many variables as possible. For now, males only

100% committed – What I’m going to ask you to do will be to take extreme measures in order to accomplish an extreme goal. If you’re not 100% committed to this with your entire being then don’t waste my time or yours because you won’t succeed
The ability to train 4-6 times per week, sometimes twice a day – Remember, extreme goals require extreme measures

Ability to cook and prepare meals – In order to get shredded, every last detail matters. Simple prescribing nutritional installments each week isn’t going to work unless you’re a genetic freak. Hitting specific macronutrients is paramount to achieving our goal. Controlling macros requires the ability to cook and prepare your own meals

Willing to suffer – Look this isn’t your local boy scout fat loss plan. Comfortable incremental fat loss isn’t the goal here. I want to push your body to adapt as fast as possible. Calories will be lower than comfortable with a high volume of movement. If you’re afraid of being uncomfortable, this plan isn’t for you

Ready to be elite – Like all things, being elite isn’t easy nor does everyone achieve it. In terms of body composition goals, being shredded is elite. If you have veins popping in your abdominals then you my friend are part of a select company. This program is only for people who have a burning desire to be elite

I think the vanity reasons for applying to this program are pretty obvious. I mean, seriously, who doesn’t want to be shredded and look unbelievable naked.

Vanity considerations aside, I’m after another subset of individuals. Individuals that want to push themselves to a new level, both physically and mentally.

Chad and I are going to make you uncomfortable. I can promise you that there will be times during your training sessions when you’re going to want to quit and instances when you’re sitting there craving nothing but delicious feel-good carbohydrates. Can you say no to both? I want individuals who are interested in the question of how far they can push themselves, to learn about the true ethos that governs their lives.

Everyone Isn’t Invited

This program is only open to a select few individuals. I don’t have a concrete number in my head but right now there’s no way we accept more than 15 with a more likely limit being 10 people. Individual guidance is paramount to helping you accomplish this program. Opening it up to 100 individuals doesn’t make this possible.

If you’re interested in getting shredded in six weeks and taking your body and mind to a new level, send an email to showmestrength@gmail.com with the subject “Let’s Get Shredded.” We look forward to hearing from you.

Two Weeks To Shredded: My Experiment (Part 1)

August 8, 2014 by Andrew Ferreira 1 Comment

Note: Obviously I don’t think PhDs are try-hards or greedy. I respect the hell out of them and what they do to increase our knowledge about the world. I poked fun because I liked the introduction to my article being framed that way. If you were offended, well, lighten up.

I really think PhDs are try-hards. Sure, doing research in order to gain more knowledge about the world to try and save it from the assholes that is the human race is admirable, praise-worthy even.

I like research and science. It’s cool and every second that my mind is occupied with something other than training and sex, I consider a small victory for my pre-frontal cortex. You know the part of your brain responsible for all your decision-making, the “executive branch” if you will. For now, I’ll overlook the fact that most humans are an emotional wreck and their hindbrain will hijack their behavior far before the little angel on their shoulder has time to tell them to not do something stupid like request a song on the Dalilia show for your ex girlfriend as a 34 year old man (no joke, heard it the other day).

Anyways, back to my beef with PhDs. They’re greedy. They want two prestigious laboratories all to themselves.

Two? Yes, two.

I don’t have a PhD nor will I ever; yet, my CV is pages long with a litany of completed experiments. I run the most prestigious lab in the world and I didn’t even have to kiss some advisor’s ass to get into it. I can run an infinite amount of experiments and my only limiting factor is time. There are no rules, no compliance issues, and certainly no shortage of test subjects.

My body is my laboratory. As humans, we are all blessed with one and whether you are conscious of it or not, we continually run experiments testing our own physiology on a daily basis. While the frat star tries to see how many days his body can handle being black-out before it shuts down, the average American continually runs fad diet after fad diet hoping for a miracle. There are test subject(s), procedures, data sets, and even conclusions to be drawn if you’re consciously aware of what’s happening.

I’ve run a few noteworthy experiments in my day. How strong can I get and how much dysfunction can I cause by max effort squatting 21 days in a row. How many drunk 1-arm pushups can I do in the middle of a street in Boston (35 if you’re wondering). How many times can I bang my girlfriends call before she sends the SWAT team to find out my whereabouts. You get the idea.

These next two weeks are time for a new experiment. If you haven’t lost yourself and become enthralled in my exceedingly long introduction, you probably would have remembered why you clicked on the link in the first place. You saw shredded and two weeks and your brain’s dopamine receptors probably got high.

It’s an extreme goal, one that I’m certainly prepared to suffer for. You see shredded and lean are two entirely different entities. While certainly not enough, there are a lot of lean people out there. Few are shredded, which I constitute to being anything under 8% body fat. I’m lean and quite honestly there hasn’t been a day in my life that I haven’t been able to see my abs. Cue the genetics card that people are so quick to play.

I am undertaking this experiment for several reasons:

1) I’m a vain bastard sometimes and want to look damn good on a beach in the Caribbean in two weeks

2) I want to get cat-calls from other girls and make my girlfriend jealous. You know, the stuff every good boyfriend aspires for. You may think I’m kidding but…

3) I want to push the limits of physiology, see how much stress the human body can adapt to, and see how lean I can get in an extremely short amount of time

If I may say so myself, I think they are all admirable goals, in line with every other researcher trying to genetically grow meat so we have some supply come 2050. It’s a cool Ted Talk, check it out.

A Fair Warning

Extreme goals call for extreme measures. What I am going to attempt cannot be sustained nor should be attempted over the long term. Your body is smarter than you are. Like I’ve said on numerous occasions, it is a survival machine and it’s going to fight you every step of the way in giving up its body fat stores. The leaner you are, the more stout the opponent. Trying to utilize these methods over the long term is like trying to stop George Foreman before he met Ali in “The Rumble in the Jungle.” You’re going to fail miserably and not get as lean as you desire. Now that we got that out of the way, let’s examine my protocol…

Dietary Basics 101

I’m going to be implementing intermittent fasting (leangains style), meaning fasting for 16 hours with an 8 hour eating window.

Intermittent fasting increases catecholamine release. Catecholamines are the primary activators and increase the activity of hormone sensitive lipase, the enzyme responsible for breaking down the stored trigylcerides in your cells.

I’m going to have a near ~1000 calorie deficit on all days, training and rest. It’s a large caloric deficit, one that I am only able to undertake because of the short duration of my diet. As a general rule of thumb, the shorter the diet, the more extreme the measures can be.

Because of my caloric deficit, I’m going to increase my protein intake to 250 grams per day (about 1.25 x Lean Body Mass (LBM)) in order to avoid any catabolic muscle loss.

On days that I do nothing but cardio, my carb intake will be zero. Yes, zero. Insulin is the primary inactivator of hormone sensitive lipase. When there is an increase in insulin, you can be assured that your body is no longer utilizing your fat stores for energy. I’m going to keep insulin as low as possible by having two meals that day. One medium sized protein intake to break the fast and then a huge meal at night.

I am going to backload all my carb intake, no matter what time of day I train. I do this for a couple reasons.

1) I want to keep insulin as low as possible during the day

2) I want to ensure restful sleep. Ever have trouble sleeping on a low carb diet? Carb intake leads to serotonin production which equates to a restful night sleep. By backloading my carbs at night, I ensure adequate serotonin production and induce a shift to my parasympathetic nervous system when I want to optimize the greatest recovery tool the human organism has: sleep

Much of my fat intake is going to be saturated fat from coconut oil, grass-fed butter, and grass-fed beef. I need to optimize my cell’s physiology in order to facilitate greater levels of fat loss. Adequate saturated fat intake will ensure this as your body thrives on it. Further, medium chain triglycerides are not reesterified and are more easily transported into the mitochondria for energy usage.

I will have one refeed day. Because the duration of my diet is short I typically wouldn’t utilize a refeed but I have a wedding tomorrow and I’m not about to be cupping spinach levels in the corner at a wedding, so I’m going to chalk up whatever happens tomorrow as a refeed day. Call me uncommitted.

Training Protocol

I am going to do something almost everyday with only two days completely off in the two week span.

I am going to utilize four metabolic type workouts, written by Show Me Strength’s own Chad Rodgers. Two upper body workouts and two lower body workouts. I’m going to do something different for both, however.

In the morning of my upper body workouts, I’m going to walk for a half-hour. Because of my fast, my body will be utilizing nearly 100% fatty acids for energy, making it prime time to get some fasted aerobic work in. Typically, it wouldn’t matter if I had a long time to get shredded, but time is of the essence and every gram of fat counts. Following my upper body workout (which will be performed in the fasted state), I am going to go on a jog afterwards.

Why you may ask?

Though high intensity exercise uses glucose (from liver and muscle glycogen) as its primary substrate, there is a large pool of fatty acids released into the bloodstream shortly upon completion. That’s cool but why the jog after? Because if I just went on my merry way and headed home after the workout, the fatty acids would be reesterred and pulled back into the fat cells, equating to a missed opportunity. Because aerobic exercise utilizes fatty acid as it’s primary substrate, my jog post workout is going to burn that pool of fatty acids off.

Lower body days are going to look a bit different. In the morning, I’m going to utilize the interval training protocols found in Lyle McDonald’s Stubborn Bodyfat Solution. In the afternoon, I’m going to perform a lower body oriented metabolic workout. It’s going to be miserable and I’m going to suffer. Oh well, fight on.

On the other two days, I’m going to go on a morning jog because of the same physiological principles governing my decision to wake up and walk.

Brutal? Yes. Incredibly physiological efficient? Let’s just say I’m not going to fail because my science is wrong.

Supplementation

I’m going to keep using the basics: Amazing Grass, fish oil (going to up my dose to 10 grams), and Vitamin D, except I’m going to add one: Yohimbine HCL.

Yohimbine combined with caffeine in the fasted state is going to turn my body into a fat-burning machine. First, the basics…remember the role catecholamines play in fat loss? Well, caffeine is a thermogenic that increases the release of catecholamines. More catecholamines equals more hormone sensitive lipase equals more girls cat calling you on the beach. It’s science.

Yohimbine’s mechanism of action is a little more complex. Because I’m already lean, my target is getting rid of stubborn fat. To keep it simple, alpha receptors act as brakes for fat loss while beta receptors act as accelerators (thanks Lyle McDonald and Martin Berkhan). Problem is that stubborn fat has a lot more alpha receptors compared to beta receptors, making it a whole lot more difficult to lose. Yohimbine is an alpha receptor antagonist meaning that it blocks its effect. Utilizing yohimbine in the morning during my fasted cardio and interval training will ensure that losing stubborn body fat is an efficient process.

Wrap Up

This is going to work. The science is too bulletproof for it not to work. The question that I’m most interested in is how much fat can the human body lose in a short amount of time. This isn’t going to be one of those lose 14 lbs in 10 days of water weight gimmicks that informercials try and sell you.

I want true physiological fat loss and it’s a question that I’m eagerly looking forward to answer. Sure, I could look up study after study and try and get some educated guess as to what the possibilities are but to be quite honest that’s boring as hell. I’d rather suffer through blood, sweat, and tears in my own laboratory than spend my time twiddling my thumbs on a keyboard. In my lab, the experimental possibilities are infinite, the only limitations are my mind and will.

I earn my PhD everyday of my life.

P.S. Chad and I are mad scientists always tinkering with variables to produce the most badass body possible. Check out our coaching page for more information.

IIFYM: My Take on The Good, The Bad, and Everything In Between (Part 1)

July 18, 2014 by Andrew Ferreira Leave a Comment

Calorie counting is a real bitch.

Say you order a large hand-made pan pepperoni and bacon pizza (one of my college dietary staples for those wondering). Honestly, who wants to go through the arduous process of heading over to the Dominoes website and checking to see how many calories there are right before you commit carbocide.

But let’s say you decide to do it. Your brain’s thoughts immediately transition from hot, sweet lust for that pie in front of you to WTF.

Here you are all excited to eat this pizza that’ll probably leave you feeling better than any imaginary sex you’ll be having later on and there you go and induce a momentary onset of depression because it just hit you that you’re going to consume 2,000 calories in the time it takes you to watch one Family Guy episode. 1800 of which your vegan hipster girlfriend will remind you are satanic for your heart. The purported evils of saturated fat is a story for another time.

This all transpires because you’re trying out some sweet new eating philosophy called, “If It Fits Your Macros (IIFYM for short)” whose sole maxim is that you can eat whatever you want throughout the day as long as your end totals equate to what they were supposed to.

The practice works because your body (at least over the short term) will respond to whatever stimuli you provide it with and won’t fight back with insulin insensitivity and low testosterone until you’re at least three kids deep with a miserable wife and then you try and get lean.

I’ve used IIFYM to get crazy lean (report me to the internet police for the selfie below). During that time I ate my fair share of ice cream, pizza, bread, candy, etc. All foods that have been deemed not only dangerous for your health but even worse for your abs that have been hibernating all your life. It’s just not the case if your macros were given to you by someone who is equally good-looking as he is intelligent…like me.

Before you start salivating uncontrollably over all the junk food I just described, let’s take a look at some of the ways IIFYM successfully goes about changing body composition:

1) Generates dietary flexibility

Besides now acknowledging that all diets will fail eventually (you are welcome), we are all well aware of the worst kinds of diets. They are the ones that eliminate your favorite foods FOREVER. Now with that last statement, I’m making one giant assumption that you are like every other human in that you crave foods that are both fatty and loaded with carbs. Call me crazy, but I can’t think of anyone that willingly will list a spinach salad without any croutons as their go to cheat meal.

So the resident guru from the latest Amazon best-seller says that if you eliminate chocolate for the next six months, fat loss will accelerate by 147%. Sure, for some time making that sacrifice is cake. And then a few weeks have passed and suddenly one day you think that Comcast is intentionally psychologically assaulting you because there have been ten chocolate commercials in the last three hours.

Eventually the intense urge passes until suddenly it doesn’t. You have created such a psychological vendetta against having chocolate that the craving becomes uncontrollable and next thing you know you are sitting there on the couch Dwight Goodman style exhausted because you just ate enough chocolate to feed several hundred trick or treaters. By telling yourself you cannot have said item, you make your body want it that much more.

IIFYM eliminates this problem because essentially there are no foods that are off limits. Have 200 calories left over after you just ate dinner? By all means, eat that chocolate or whatever other vice you’ve been thinking about all day being a cube monkey at work.

Flexible dieting (term created by Layne Norton?) is essential to adherence. A diet or lifestyle modification that says you can’t do X behavior or consume your favorite food will always fail because your psychological desire for that one thing you cannot have will always overpower your will power. In this sense, IIFYM is brilliant.

2) Instills order into chaos

You’ve heard of Martin Berkhan yes? If not, he and Brad Pilon are the men responsible for bringing fasting mainstream. More importantly, have you seen the kinds of meals that Berkhan’s clients eat while simultaneously getting outrageously lean? Take a look here and here. (don’t if you are already hungry).

Old school wisdom says that there is no way people should be able to get that lean eating what they do. Fat cells should hypertrophy at a rate greater than Barry Bond’s head following his visits to Balco.

But they don’t because through the implementation of specific macronutrients, Berkhan has instilled order into the typical chaos that is a refeed day. His clients may consume four boxes of Frosted Flakes and be in a caloric surplus of 20% but there is minimal fat gain because implemented into the macro totals is a deep understanding of human physiology and metabolism.

You see, human de novo lipogenesis (the conversion of carbs to fat) just doesn’t happen. It’s incredibly inefficient and doesn’t actually start happening at a meaningful rate until you consume enough carbs to exceed your total daily energy expenditure (Hellerstein 1999). It’s just never going to happen. I’ve had some legendary days of eating in my time but I think it’s fair to say that I’ve never come to close to that level of carb intake. The result? A refeed day of high protein, high carb, and minimal fat intake contributes insignificant amounts of added fat but instead serves to increase levels of leptin, thyroid, and testosterone and more importantly signal to your body a surplus of energy, spurning the body to burn more fat.

The typical refeed day prescription goes as follows: eat whatever you want. Not very scientific if you ask me. It’s fair to say that even if it’s unregulated, one day can only contribute so much to fat gain and it won’t set you back weeks or months in terms of losing body fat but if your goal is to get shredded, precision matters. For that reason, IIFYM instills order in a manner that free for all “cheat” days don’t.

3) Eliminates the Feel of Dieting

I’ve never been leaner than I was in those pictures above. Technically, to get to that point, if you want to put a label on what I was doing, I was “dieting,” yet I certainly didn’t feel that way.

Now, I wasn’t nor have I ever been bodybuilder stage ready lean where more than likely you feel like crap before/during/after the show. My training sessions were still high octane and I felt like I had at minimum maintained my strength levels despite the overall caloric deficit. Further, and most importantly, I felt I still had the same sex drive as my baby fawn 16 year old self, meaning my testosterone levels hadn’t taken a nose dive the moment I transitioned from lean to shredded.

These are all important considerations given what typically happens metabolically as you progressively lose more and more body fat. Sure, it wasn’t all sunshine and roses. My rest day macros (high protein, moderate fat, low carb) forced me to be strict in what I ate. There were definitely some minor hunger pangs and yes I had to make some sacrifices in what I ate meaning I couldn’t scarf down the post-game pizza like the rest of my teammates. But this was all manageable because I knew tomorrow was a training day and I could eat like a glutton if I so choose. On these days, I regularly consumed 500+ grams of carbs. There wasn’t a food choice off limits and subsequently my cut was a piece of cake.

Contrast this scenario when my former inexperienced self tried to take on the Paleo Diet in an effort to stay lean following a surgery where my training would be somewhat limited. My meals consisted of nothing but dining hall chicken breasts (cardboard tastes better), hamburgers without the bun, and salads. I became a carb nazi because I had read Robb Wolf’s “The Paleo Solution” and thought that carbs were basically the devil.

I WAS MISERABLE.

My training went through the shitter, I got sick, and I honestly don’t think I got any leaner then when I had started. My experiment with the Paleo Diet concluded with an all out binge I had at dinner one night with the dining hall bread. I swear it looked like I had never seen bread before with the ferocious manner in which I attacked it.

Of course, I could have structured my plan a bit better but I remain convinced that it would have always felt like dieting to me even if Robb Wolf himself wrote my meal plan. There is no dietary flexibility and it was far too restrictive with the elimination of carbohydrates (for the most part) from everyday living.

I’m convinced IIFYM coupled with intelligent carb cycling eliminates the feeling of dieting altogether. I have too much anecdotal evidence from myself and clients to think otherwise.

Who I’d Program It For

I think there are specific target populations that IIFYM works best for. Just like you wouldn’t program tabata front squats for a pregnant woman approaching labor, in my opinion IIFYM is best served given specific demands or when certain conditions are present.

1) If You Want To Get Shredded

Let’s define as anything under 10% body fat. I say 10% because it’s a heck of a lot leaner than most people think it is and you’ve probably never been 10% body fat. In general, to get shredded, unless you’re a genetic freak, will require some sort of calorie and macro counting. From previous posts you know that your body has a multitude of reasons evolutionarily for fighting you while trying to get lean. Getting lean is tough but losing stubborn body fat is even tougher. It’s stubborn for a reason, as your brain is smarter than your limbic desires.

You will encounter fat loss plateaus on your journey to magazine cover lean. Fact. Pushing past such plateaus will necessitate a subtle adjustment in either your caloric intake, macronutrient make-up, or both. It’s surely a pain in the ass but it’s the only way you can be scientific about what your next step is.

But let’s examine the other situation (don’t track macros) just because I like writing obnoxiously long blog posts and having you read them…

Putting it mildly, chasing that 8th ab (which doesn’t exist) without tracking macros and calories is like asking for a unicorn for your birthday.

Given that you have some reasonable idea on what you’re doing, fat loss will happen. Assuming that your body doesn’t churn out levels of HGH like Andre the Giant, fat loss plateaus will occur and then the broscience takes over.

Say you make a seemingly reasonable educated adjustment to eliminate carbs at dinner time. Fat loss begins again and everything is all sunshine and rainbows. But what you didn’t realize is that by cutting carbs at dinner time you just eliminated 400-500 calories from your diet putting you at 1300 calories, which is too low even for my grandfather who God bless him does nothing but watch soccer and ask for more cookies all day.

Boom, another plateau happens sooner than the last one did. Cutting calories worked once so let’s do it again. Yet, the scale doesn’t budge and you start looking the exact same week to week no matter how much HIIT you start to program in. Instead of incrementally dropping calories in an intelligent manner that will allow you to “fool” your body to give up it’s fat stores, you cut calories too low too fast and your body is chucking up a big middle finger at you. It senses an extreme energy deficit and thinks your starving to a point where no reckless all weekend carb binges are going to fix your now defunct metabolism.

Be content with the 12% body fat you’re at because you ain’t getting any lower. Not this time around, at least not anytime soon.

If you’re looking to get shredded, you got to count or at least have a fairly good handle on what you’re intaking every day.

2) The Skinny Fat Guy

The easy answer would be a traditional bulk. You know… the “See-Food” diet where you eat anything and everything in the attempt to finally gain some muscle and look like you’ve lifted everyday for the past 10 years of your life.

Bad approach.

For reasons I discussed in my previous article, this gentlemen’s insulin doesn’t listen to what he wants so it is damn near impossible for him to partition nutrients adequately. All this means is that a traditional bulk will be an utter failure. Sure, our test subject will get bigger but it’ll be like transforming a clementine into an orange. Bigger size, same shape.

A better approach is a to either get lean first or to make physiology your bitch and undergo a body recomposition where you mix signals of anabolism and catabolism to your body within a mesocycle.

Sorry, I made that sound a lot more complex than it actually is. Basically, on days you train, eat in a caloric surplus (an anabolic signal) and on days you rest, you maintain a caloric deficit (a catabolic signal hopefully targeted at your fat cells). While I maintain that getting lean first will give you better results, our skinny fat brethen is in a unique position where a macro structure like this would serve him wonders.

A macro based approach can take your skinny fat body to the next level. We can’t just tell him to follow a general carb cycling approach because he could easily create a caloric surplus when he’s giving free reign to go ham on some bacon all day. Maybe he’s a stressed out New York City executive who enjoys a bulletproof coffee or six throughout the day. Well, that added grass-fed butter and coconut oil is going to equate to about 1000 calories of fat and that’s not even counting the grass fed filet mignon (if those exist), he’s about to crush for dinner. Instilling order into chaos is necessary when what we signal to our body needs to be handled with precision.

Anthony Mychal has some great information on transforming the skinny-fat syndrome. I encourage you to check him out.

3) The Advanced Trainee

I’m of the opinion that we need to look past someone’e physique in making the determination on whether or not someone can be considered advanced. If you’re a bodybuilder, figure competitor, or anything of the sorts, yeah we get it, you know what you’re doing. But for everyone else…

Some people have just won the genetic lottery. You know, it’s the same old story of someone that eats like shit, never trains, and yet still has a better body than you will probably ever attain.

Take a quick peek over on Instagram and see whose considered a fitness expert these days. I’m not one to make sweeping generalizations but if you’re very attractive, have a kick ass body, and post pictures of yourself working out, chances are you got about a million times more followers than me (go follow me right now). I’m not naïve enough not to get it but does that mean these individuals should be handing out diet and supplement advice because they got a sweet body? Sure, some are qualified. But the majority? I think not.

Exhibit A

It’s quite possible to be in excellent physical condition and yet health wise be an utter disaster. You got abs? Cool, it just sucks you got bowling ball sized LDL particles floating through your blood vessels.

Habits and in turn behaviors that stem from habits are the key to unlocking an individuals apparent readiness for IIFYM implementation. I can recall having a conversation with the brillant Pat Davidson earlier this year and he asked how my nutrition was. I told him that I typically started out my day with some Bulletproof coffee. He didn’t need to ask another question because he knows that people who are keen enough to add in coconut oil and grass fed butter first thing in the morning probably have their shit together the rest of the day.

Here’s by no means a definitive all-encompassing checklist, but it’s a start to where I would begin:

Do you try and get some serving of protein, preferably animal sourced, at every meal?
What’s your vegetable intake like? If you know you aren’t the best with getting an adequate amount, do you supplement with greens, either Athletic Greens or Amazing Grass (just like Bulletproof coffee, if you’re intaking something like Athletic Greens, you more than likely have your act together
What’s your saturated fat intake look like?
Do you earn your carbs by training or practice some form of intuitive carb cycling
And most importantly, Harry Potter or Lord of the Rings… who ya got? There’s one right answer here.

If there’s some reasonable understanding and adherence to some variation of the above checklist, particularly the right answer to numero cinco, then IIFYM can do wonders for whatever specific goal you’re targeting by dialing in the precise macronutrients.

IIFYM is not rocket science. If you did well in second grade math, you can handle the calculations once you start reading the labels on everything you eat except that pint of Ben & Jerry’s ice cream that accomplishes nothing but making you feel bad.

Yet, if your habits suck, I don’t care that your double bicep pose is the best at your local Planet Fitness. In my book, health and vitality come before aesthetics. Generate good habits first and subsequently “healthy” behaviors and then you can worry about hitting your macros.

The Wrap Up

There are a lot of benefits to IIFYM and the flexible dieting movement in general. I like it a lot and for that reason I have personally used it myself and with a fair amount of clients.

Despite the glaring benefits, IIFYM is not a perfect system and I don’t think it’s appropriate for everyone. In my next installment, I’ll explore the subsets of the population who I think IIFYM is contraindicated for along with issues that arise with lifestyle design, transitioning to maintenance, and long term considerations.

Until next time,

A.F.

P.S. We have the most badass shirts on the planet. Check them out here.

Look Better Naked This Summer: Intermittent Fasting 101

June 19, 2014 by Andrew Ferreira 3 Comments

You can catch updates about our training, and learn more on our philosophies on becoming awesome on the field and off at Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. You can find the first two installments of “Look Better Naked This Summer,” here and here

June 18^th.

As we get into the heart of summer, it’s crunch time to looking and feeling your best. Now, personally, I think everyone should make it part of their mission in life to feel and look good year round but for vanity purposes, summer time is where it really counts.

Now if you’re the guy (or girl) who likes to take their shirt off at parties and bars well hell more power to you. Because that’s become more socially unacceptable the older I’ve gotten, I’ve resolved myself to eventually live in a climate where shirts (ideally clothes) are optional year round. My reasoning is purely based on the scientific fact that it’s more efficient for Vitamin D absorption, relegating any vanity notions as purely side notes that have never crossed my mind for more than two seconds. It’s science brah.

My life goals aside, it’s about that time where you need to look lean and you needed to look lean yesterday. So let’s figure out how to do that in installment #3 of Look Better Naked This Summer.

Tip #1 Use Intermittent Fasting to Get Photo-Shoot Ripped

Ever since The 8 Hour Diet came out early last year, the internet has been a buzzing with a fasting craze.

“Eat whatever you want, but restrict it to a certain time period, and there’s like a 1483% chance you’ll have abs by next week” – Resident Bro Scientist

Wrong. Erroneous on all accounts. If Newton ever tried to get shredded back in the day, he’d be surely rolling over in his grave based on that bastard attempt at good science.

The truth is that macronutrient intake (how you make up that macronutrient intake is a post for another time) is the most important aspect to losing body fat (aside from the obvious caloric restriction). If your macro calculation resembles anything like my senior year calculus homework, then frankly you are shit out of luck. No amount of fasting, sans starving yourself, is going to make a appreciable difference.

If however, your nutritional knowledge is seasoned enough to know the difference between protein, fat, and carbs and how those three pieces fit into a nice puzzle equating to fat loss, then intermittent fasting could certainly take you to the next level.

Let’s discuss the science for a second. Don’t worry you don’t have to have graduated from Harvard to understand the basics (I dropped out, we’re solid).

When you eat, your body uses that energy for food. Well duh, thanks Andrew. As your fast prolongs, your body shifts from pure glucose oxidation to begin utilizing your bodies’ fat stores for energy. We know this because there’s some fancy measurement tool known as the Respiratory Quotient (RQ) that quantifies what your body is utilizing for energy. While RQ is between .95 and 1 (pure glucose for energy) two hours after a meal, after 16 hours of fasting, your body’s respiratory quotient is .72. Pure fat oxidation is denoted by a measurement of .7. (Source: Martin Berkhan)

What all that really means is that the longer you restrict food (fast), the greater amount of time your body has to use body fat for energy. Contrast this with someone who eats six times a day and whose blood sugar is constantly elevated and you can see why intermittent fasting is a preferable means to lose body fat in the shortest amount of time.

Here are a couple examples of clients of mine (and me) who have used IF fasting to get humbly “woah that guy is shredded” lean.

As you can see, it works. So how would I go about implementing it? To clarify before we jump in, I recommend 16 hours of fasting for males and 14 hours of fasting for females.

1) Honestly Assess Where You’re At

If you’re a male above 15% body fat or a female above say 22.69% (yes, that’s the cut off), then intermittent fasting isn’t a necessity. Of course, you’re still more than welcome to adopt it but eating real food and getting your macros in decent shape are more important in the fat loss hierarchy.

If you’re at a place where getting as lean as the pictures above is within reach, then I recommend IF 100%.

2) Understand the Hunger Pains Go Away

Over the first couple days of fasting, you’re going to get hungry and at times it’s going to suck. For the majority of people, we fall into habitual patterns of eating. Whether that schedules includes three-four moderately portioned meals a day or you’re more the 1 meal large pizza and a few too many 12 oz curls type of eater, your body comes to expect foods at certain times throughout the day.

You can thank gherlin for that. It’s a hormone released by your body when it is hungry or expects to be fed. He doesn’t care how devoted you are to fasting for 16 hours, gherlin wants energy and he’s going to make himself known in your stomach until he’s satisfied.

Tame gherlin for a few days and the hunger pains will go away. I promise.

3) Adopt carb cycling

There are a couple fat loss principles that are essential to implement.

Understand that carb manipulation is the key to rapid fat loss

Understand that pizza and cake are not only allowed but encouraged to get sexy

Sure, you can go low-carb for 17 weeks straight and get lean but that sounds about as fun as getting as root canal. And in truth, because of a bunch of fancy hormonal interactions, my 12^th piece of pizza on Saturday night is going to get me leaner than your 4^th serving of chicken breasts and broccoli.

I’ll go into the specifics of carb cycling in my next installment but understand that if you’re not manipulating carbs the right way, I’d bet my house that I don’t have that you’re not going to be as lean as you want come the July 4^th Block Party.

4) IIFYM

If you’re not familiar with the nerd speak in the fasting community, IIFYM stands for “If It Fits Your Macros.”

Basically, if you have someone who knows what they’re doing (like this guy) then you can eat whatever kind of food you want as long as at the end of the day you eat precisely 17 grams of fat like you were told to.

Word of caution: if your diet guru ever prescribes you 17 grams of fat as a daily intake, you’re getting bamboozled.

You heard that right. Pizza, cake, brownies, beer. If somehow you can Huddinhi your way into fitting all those foods into your macros, then you will A) lose fat and should B) write a book detailing how you managed that.

I’ve done a pint of ice cream, six bagels, and a bag of goldfish but never have I managed to squeeze the above combo into my IIFYM.

Personally, I don’t love the concept of IIFYM over the long term for health reasons but assuming you have better insulin sensitivity than an obese chimpanzee, then I see no problem in imploring such a protocol for the summer.

5) Don’t Expect Magic

If done correctly, IF works. The results I have seen with both myself and clients is a testament to the efficacy of adopting an intermittent fasting framework.

And yet, IF is not going to take you from Dwight Goodman at the end of Dodgeball to Arnold in a matter of weeks. In case you forgot, after Peter LaFleur went all Matrix on him, Dwight put on a pound or two.

Understand this upon its adoption. There is still no magic pill out there that allows you to defy the laws of thermodynamics and evolutionary biology. At the heart of our deconstruction, we’re still just hunter-gatherers living in a foreign environment where having abs unfortunately didn’t let you get laid any easier 50,000 years ago.

Where to Go From Here

There are many fantastic resources on the web regarding the nuts and bolts of intermittent fasting. I’ll warn you that The 8 Hour Diet isn’t one of them, but I do wholeheartedly recommend Jason Ferruggia’s Renegade Diet.

I also heard through the grapevine that there are two handsome gentlemen offering online coaching to do exactly what I extolled throughout this piece… to look better naked. Check it out here.

P.S. Chad and I are close to announcing a body transformation contest in the coming weeks where we’ll actually pay you to look damn sexy by the end of it. Be on the look out 🙂