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THE
ZBULK
Zigging and zagging using
intermittent fasting and
nutraloops to gain muscle
without getting fat.

Copyright © 2013 by Anthony Mychal

The part where I cover my legal behind
All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical,
including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or
retrieval system, without the prior written permission of Anthony
Mychal.

And let’s get serious: this book is not a substitute for medical or
professional health and/or fitness advice. Please consult a qualified
health professional prior to engaging in any exercise. The content here
is intended for informational and entertainment purposes only. Talk to
the health care professionals that can better direct the application of the
materials to your specific circumstances. Never disregard their expertise
regardless of what you read in this text or through my website. The
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can sue me from reading or putting into practice anything within these
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D
r. Felix Oswald says that “during the
zenith period of Grecian and Roman
civilization monogamy was not as
firmly established as the rule that a health-
loving man should content himself with one meal
a day, and never eat till he had leisure to
digest, i.e., not till the day’s work was wholly
done.

For more than a thousand years the one meal

plan was the established rule among the civilized
nations inhabiting the coast-lands of the
Mediterranean.

The evening repast–call it supper or dinner–

was a kind of domestic festival, the reward of the
day’s toil, an enjoyment which rich and poor
refrained from marring by premature
gratifications of their appetites.

- Dr Herbert M. Shelton, The Hygienic System: Orthotrophy

Zero
results
 I
’ve been playing around with this “diet” for years now.
I’ve made good progress considering my traditional
lackluster propensity for muscle building and ease of
gaining body fat. If you glanced at the pictures above, what
you’re probably wondering is why I’m so lean and small in
July. The answer, quite simply, is chaos.

Don’t worry, it will all become clear soon enough. (At least, I
think. Sometimes I don’t even know if I know how to
navigate these tough nutritional seas.) And keep in mind
these aren’t professional shots. There’s no superstar
treatment here, just results from a regular guy with methods
that are soon-to-be in your brain.

DAJVE

Another regular guy? Dajve. Using this philosophy and the

training program I also use (which we’ll talk about more
later), he’s gotten some impressive results of his own. Oh
sure, it’s not a landmark research study with billions of
people, but it does show honest extrapolated results for
mortal men.

Not to toot my own horn, but I’ve gained enough muscle to

be happy over the past two years without having to go
through annoying bulking and cutting cycles. I also helped
some other guys do the same thing with what you’re about to
learn.

I hate the idea of doing “cardio” or walking on the treadmill

for a gazillion hours even more than the next guy, so I pride
myself on the fact that I haven’t done that stuff. Throughout
the pictures above, not once did I do any “cardio.” Instead, I
lifted weights, I tricked (which is basically self-taught
acrobatic mischief) in my backyard. I did things I enjoy
doing, and I built a body I enjoy having.

Apparently, this means I’m supposed to know something

about nutrition and gaining muscle without getting fat. After
all, if I’ve been successful (and have helped others),
something I’ve been doing has to be working.

Now, I think I know some things, but I’ve never seen a world
more topsy-turvy than the nutrition world. It seems that
things come and go every month. Carbs are the enemy one
year, but they are the savior the next year. Fats are vilified,
then worshiped.

We’re about to charge into this maelstrom, and it can seem a

little daunting at first because it’s all oh-so esoteric. After we
look at each piece, we will put it all into actionable and
simple advice. With realistic implementation, the concepts
become simpler. Hang in there.

The following are also classic “by the book” interpretations of

the implications behind the principles. I will show you what
rules I’ve broken at the end, and whether or not doing so has
worked. I’m a skeptic at heart, so I’ll provide alternative
view points and caveats along the way. These are all great
philosophical questions, but again, the implementation will
all follow.

I’d prefer you read this as someone interested in the big

picture rather than a prescription. I know when we’re off
seeking results in body composition, we want the
prescription. We want the pill to take with no questions
attached. But the body doesn't work like that.

I can’t explain these philosophical swings that dominate the

nutrition world. Sometimes, I feel more confused than
anyone. Yet, at the same time, this makes me smile, because
if there’s one thing to be learned throughout all of these
nutritional ideological shifts, it’s that it seems doing one
thing statically over the long haul is less than ideal. It’s as if
our bodies adapt to whatever we eat, and then when
something novel is introduced, it responds differently.

That’s a good thing though, because that’s exactly gist of the

maelstrom we’re about to dive into. That’s chaos. And
there’s beauty here, as long as you’re willing to look.
Table of contents

one the body is asking questions 11

one point five the ez guide 36
two stress 43
three nutralooping 64
four shell 80
five energy 95
six macronutrients 103
seven Zigzigging, zagzagging, the wind 131
eight biofeedback 144
nine nuking numbers 166
ten the switch 192
eleven chaotic results 233
twelve the goku effect 245
thirteen fasting and athletes 267
fourteen take home tips 284
 one
your body is asking questions

I
magine being so hungry that you had to eat flowers to
survive. That’s what went down during the Dutch
Hongerwinter (hunger winter) of 1944-45. The
combination of the Germans disrupting the food
supply and a brutal winter made for some tough living
conditions. If you survived, I’d imagine you’d be no more
than a skeleton. This is fat loss 101, and what we’re
regularly taught: “calories in vs. calories out” determines
weight gain and weight loss.

Because you want to look good naked (just about everyone

does, and you shouldn’t run from this inkling), the answer
seems simple at first: lift some weights, build some muscle,
and ride off into the sunset. That’s how it goes, right?

Eh, not quite. Building muscle is tougher than most people

expect. This is precisely why most supplement companies
not only stay in business, but also make millions of dollars
per year. You’re promised that the new x, y, z formula will be
your breakthrough.

But is it ever?

The Chaos Bulk © Anthony Mychal

11
 The common muscle building solution, known even by even
pimply adolescent high school athletes, is something called
“bulking.” Bulking has been around for a long time, and goes
something like this: eat more and more food until weight is
gained regularly—there’s recognition that calories matter if
you want to gain weight.

But there’s a side effect of eating more and more. You

usually gain some body fat. Body fat! What!? Why body fat?
Body fat wasn’t part of the original deal! It was all
about muscle! No one said anything about body fat! Who
wants more body fat?

Really, to you, body fat wasn’t in the original deal. Most

people will tell you that, sadly, traditional bulking comes
with some fine print: body fat gain likely.

But that’s OK. Bulking’s sister is “cutting.” Where bulking

adds weight, cutting drops weight. After bulking and
fattening up, you go on a “cut” for a while.

Now, this neglects a few important things, one being the

perils of gaining body fat. Fat cells are nasty buggers. Fill
the ones you have and the body creates new ones (until you
reach adulthood, at which point you’re essentially stuck with
what you created [or didn’t create] when you were younger).*

*According to Dr. Robert Sapolsky in Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers,

we don’t really create new fat cells as an adult. We’re just stuck with
the ones we created when we were younger, and they fill up until
they can’t fill anymore. If you’ve been skinny your whole life and
suddenly start to notice the chub coming on in your older years,

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12
 you’re just filling the empty fat cells you probably had laying
around, as even if you were skinny the body still has a lot of fat
cells; they’re just minimally filled. When they reach capacity as an
adult, you’re looking at a slew of metabolic disorders, most notably
type II diabetes.

True, you can just “lose the fat,” but all signs point to the
cells getting rid of their contents and shrinking, not
vanishing all together. (Talk about “stubborn” body fat.) Just
think of deflating a balloon; even if there’s no air inside, the
empty balloon is still there. And so it’s not quite as simple as
“cutting” fixes “bulking.” And if that isn’t enough, cutting
comes with its own peril.

This self-starvation doesn't just cut body fat; it cuts muscle,

too. Muscle? Blasphemy! Losing muscle wasn’t in the
original deal!

And you’re right: it wasn’t. But if it’s any consolation, I’ll

throw in another perk of cutting: hating life because of
constant energy depletion, which also whacks out your
hormones. Fun, right?

But that’s cutting, and these things are expected. Just like
bulking has baggage, cutting too has baggage. Sadly enough,
it's usually a loss of muscle. Indeed, when you deprive your
body of incoming nutrients and energy, it will find
somewhere else to get the energy it needs. Play your cards
wrong, and muscle tissue becomes a more viable energy
option than body fat. (By the end of this book, you’ll know
why this might not be the end of the world, and why it might

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13
 actually be beneficial. But assuming a chronic underfed
state, it’s usually bad news bears.)

Your body doesn’t care about your hulking shoulders, it cares

about living another day. Those giant muscles aren’t doing
anything besides increasing your need for energy. The body
can kill two birds with one stone by wasting away muscle
tissue. Not only does wasting away the muscle tissue provide
energy for immediate use, but it also reduces total energy
expenditure. So much for that whole “calories in vs. calories
out” deal that everyone preaches about. There’s a difference
between weight loss and fat loss with simultaneous muscle
retention.

But you’re a good, law-abiding citizen. You know the rules,

and there's no way but juggling bulk and cut until you reach
an ideal body composition. You bulk and gain muscle and
some fat. You cut and lose fat and some muscle.

If this sounds terribly inefficient to you, you're right.

Few people want to gain body fat, just as few people want to
lose muscle mass. This makes the clean bulk—gaining
muscle without gaining fat—the Holy Grail of the training
world.*

*Some use the term “clean bulk” for the same old school bulking idea
but only with eating “clean” foods. In other words, I’m going to bulk
eating steak, oats, and eggs as opposed to chicken wings and pizza.
For this book, anytime I refer to a “clean bulk” don’t think about the
food itself, think about the idea of gaining muscle without getting
fat—adding muscle “cleanly” without fat.

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14
 You can only bounce between bulking and cutting for so long
before asking the question: why not gain muscle without
gaining fat? The answer: because 99% of the people that try
gaining muscle without gaining fat fail to gain any muscle.

This further fuels the widespread advocacy for alternating

between cutting and bulking. Seeing some results are better
than seeing no results, even if those results are a body fat
yo-yo.

Because clean bulks have such a high failure rate, there are
whispers of impossibility. A few years ago, I was one of those
whisperers.

Not anymore.

Bulking and cutting and calories

Bulking and cutting are calorie games. Eat more and more
and more to bulk and gain muscle and some fat, eat less and
less and less to cut and lose fat and some muscle. This is just
the way things are. This is the way they will always be.
These aren’t the droids you’re looking for. Don’t question the
status quo.

Maybe they are the droids you were looking for, because the
Hongerwinter tells a different story. As tough as it may have
been to survive during this time, some did. Even pregnant
women. Imagine being one of those pregnant women. You’re
starving. Your baby is starving. Times aren’t fun. The lucky
ones that birthed successfully lit the way for an interesting
discovery.

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15
 Turns out, if you were a third trimester fetus during the
Hongerwinter, you had a much greater chance of having type
II diabetes and all of the wonderful dysfunctions associated
with metabolic syndrome and metabolic disorders once you
were all well and grown.

To this you might ask: what’s the genetic rationale?

Something in your third trimester has the potential to make
you obese later in life? That’s gotta’ be something mom or
pop gave you, right?

Actually, the scientific explanation is that during the third

trimester, as a fetus, you’re asking some questions about the
world you’re about to pop into. One of which is, “What’s the
deal with energy and nutrients out there?”

The answer to that question determines how you’re going to

go about handling any said energy and nutrients that
happen to come your way. If you aren’t getting a lot of them
(as in the case of the Hongerwinter), you develop a
metabolism that extracts and stores as much energy as
possible from food—a “thrifty” metabolism, as they call it.*
So you can see this isn’t genetic, because the only reason it
developed was the third trimester environment of energy
and nutrient shortage. If it had a genetic origin, it would
happen regardless of that environment.

*I should say, instead, that the body finds some way to make this
happen. Maybe it cuts energy costs elsewhere or downplays other
processes so that it can purposefully store more energy. I don’t really
know.

The Chaos Bulk © Anthony Mychal

16
 Quite frankly, this almost makes too much sense. If there
isn’t a lot out there, you can’t be lax with what comes
your way. When you’re barely paying the bills, even
the tiniest expense is scrutinized.

This changes everything.

The calorie fairytale

Thermodynamics: energy cannot be created or destroyed.
The calorie is law. It’s impossible to gain weight without
excess energy, just as it’s impossible to lose weight without
energy deficit. So . . .

• Aren’t losing weight? Eat less.

• Aren’t gaining weight? Eat more.

It’s that simple. Or is it?

Something so apparently simple likely isn’t so. There are

many processes going on within the body that use energy.
Most of the time, you don’t consciously control them. Oh
sure, you can expedite your expenditure by walking on the
treadmill and burning an extra 300 calories. But digestion,
respiration, and all sorts of good things going on inside of
you are using energy every second of every day. In fact, if
your body stops producing ATP (the energy catalyst within
you) for one second, you’d die.

The Hongerwinter tells us that the body can regulate its

energy output (somehow, someway—I won’t pretend like I
know how it works) based upon the feedback it gets from the

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17
 external world, especially as a third trimester fetus (which is
when metabolic imprinting goes down).

The last time I took a gander at a basal metabolic rate

[BMR] calculator (or anything else designed to measure my
calorie intake needs) I don’t remember it mentioning
anything about my environment as a third trimester fetus.
So knowing this, let’s play a little game.

You have a clone that went through third trimester trouble

and developed a thrifty metabolism and is more efficient at
storing energy and nutrients now. You didn’t have third
trimester trouble, so your metabolism is “normal.”

It might be true that, to lose weight, both you and your clone
might only need to eat less and less and less until you start
to lose weight. But with your “normal” metabolism, you
might hit that point at 1900 calories—a fair amount of food,
and certainly not starving. But what if your clone and all of
its thrift hits that point at 1400 calories? Which would be
more sustainable? (Most very low calorie diet interventions
show short-term progress followed by long-term regress.)

When you play a game of numbers with the body, you

often lose.

Is your body a calculator or a cloud?

The cultural obsession over calories has led to a (+) and (-)
mindset. Want to lose weight? Just be negative—just be (-).
The opposite holds true for gaining weight—just be (+).

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18
 But what’s the start and stop time? Where’s the clock? We
talk about eating more or less than needed, but that implies
there’s a distinct start and stop time when the body’s
accountants sit down, close the door, and crunch the
numbers to determine if you went over or under your “needs”
(whatever that means).

This kind of thinking has led to people believing that

measuring things on a daily basis with a man-made scale is
possible. In other words, “How many pounds did you gain or
lose today?” For starters, the body has no idea what one
“pound” is, nor does it operate on any sort of metric or
imperial scale.

We don’t operate in 24-hour segments. It’s easy for us to

think in these terms because that’s the world we’ve
created—at the end of each day before you go to sleep, the
body calculates everything and then gnomes make the
necessary adjustments, repairs, and modifications while you
sleep.

But if you eat 10,000 calories over your allotment for the
day, do you gain three pounds of fat overnight? (One pound
of fat has 3,500 estimated calories.) It doesn’t happen that
way, and to best understand why you should look at the
opposite: what happens if you eat 2,000 calories in ten
minutes? Technically, in those ten minutes, you’ve taken in
more energy than you expended. But in those ten minutes,
the body accountants don’t say, “We only needed this much,
put everything else away in storage immediately.”

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19
 So if you pull the Kobayashi and eat a Godzilla portion of
hotdogs in ten minutes, you’re over on calories for those ten
minutes . . . but maybe not the entire day. So what happens?

It’s hard to make use of numbers without defined

parameters, and those get confusing. Say you naturally burn
2,000 calories per day. If, for one month, you ate no more
than 100 calories per day, you’d probably say that at the end
of that one month, you’d lose weight. If it’s a thirty day
month, you’d be in the hole 57,000 calories.

If you followed that month up with eating 3,000 calories per

day (1,000 over), you’d be (+)30,000 for the month. At the
end of the two months, you’d be (-)27,000.

But this is all calculator logic, and it neglects the

Hongerwinter's lessons: the body is smarter than you. It
knows to slow things down when energy and nutrients aren’t
around. That 2,000 estimation isn’t a static 2,000. It likely
drops as your food intake drops throughout the first month.
On the other end? Your body probably wants food after one
month of starvation. It will purposely do a better job at
storing it.

Although energy can’t be created or destroyed, that says

nothing about caloric management or the changes the body
makes under our nose. In this respect, our body isn’t a
predictable machine. Instead, it’s like a cloud. It shifts and
changes every second of the day. Predicting its long-term
shape is impossible. The most reliable insights come with
shorter-term predictions. You’re better guessing the shape of

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20
 a cloud one second from now than ten seconds, than one
minute, than one hour, than one day.

Spending money at strip clubs

Calculator logic neglects environmental factors entirely. This
is why I’m all for getting to a point where you don’t count
calories or have to rely on these terribly inaccurate
measurements. In fact, I think super specific calorie
counting is blatant physiological disrespect.

We need both energy (what we call calories) and nutrients

(macronutrients in carbohydrates, fats, and proteins; and
micronutrients in vitamins and minerals) from food to
survive. Despite your six-pack abdominal ambitions, the
body doesn’t care about its aesthetic composition as much as
it cares about its own survival. This is a crucial nugget in
understanding how the body makes decisions.

We might not be as adaptive as a third trimester fetus, but

the basic tenant remains: I need energy to live, so I can’t
really fling it around like money at a strip club when
things are tight in the budget.

Every time the body uses energy and nutrients extracted

from what we eat, it’s an investment. Investments must be
justified. In the grand scheme of evolution, humans didn’t
have refrigerators and grocery stores. Famines were a real
danger. A hyena doesn’t eat a fraction of its kill and save the
rest for later. The moment it leaves the dead carcass, dozens
of other creatures won’t hesitate to clean up the remains.

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21
 Being sloppy with nutrients and energy made for sloppy
survival rates. In a sense, we’re almost built to get fat. We
need all the excess energy we can get for storage in case of
famine.

And here we enter the world of muscle building with this

survival logic. News flash: muscle is metabolically
expensive!* It takes a lot of energy and nutrients to build
and maintain. Muscle is an investment; investments
must be justified. In other words: even though I’m giving
up these precious nuggets of energy and nutrients, I might not
survive if I don’t build this here muscle tissue.

*Especially when you consider the alternative: no building.

I need bigger legs to help me sprint away from a

predator. I need bigger legs to prevent being crushed
by the bar the next time I squat. I need bigger arms so
they don’t rip from their socket the next time I do chin-
ups.

Half of this battle is training and signaling that you need to

build muscle. This book is written for those that “train.”
When I talk about “training” within this book, I’m talking
about the good kind of barbell and bodyweight training done
with progressive intent. You should be picking up heavy
things, fiddling around on gymnastics rings or pull-up bars,
and doing other strength building activities.

Even when you signal the right things, building muscle is

still a Catch-22. Not only do you need immediate energy and

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22
 nutrients to build muscle, but you have to justify the long-
term expense—keeping it around is just as burdensome as
building it.

Re-enter: traditional bulking.

Regulating thirst
Say you’re watching The Goonies, like any self-respecting
human being should be doing. You notice your throat is in
need of some liquid refreshment. You grab a cup to fill with
water. Now, you don’t know how much water will quench
Everyone has a your thirst. Maybe a half-filled cup? Maybe more? Less?
different metabolic
rate. So the bulk
If you fill the cup half way and you’re still thirsty, you’ve
mindset always errs
on the side of failed. But you can also fill the cup to the top and chug it
“enough” to ensure a down. Thirst quenched, problem solved. While the full cup
semblance of
could be more than needed, at least your thirst is quenched.
progress. Gaining
body fat just happens
to be a side effect of Building muscle is like quenching thirst. You can bulk
ensuring “enough.” (ensure thirst quenching) by consistently filling to the
maximum. There’s no way to tell what “enough” is, so you’re
probably consistently overfilling. In this case, you have to
accept the consequence of getting fat—it’s the only way to
ensure you’re regularly getting enough.

Cutting follows the flip side of that philosophy. Every day is

optimized for fat loss. You’re consistently filling the cup one-
quarter of the way, even though some days you might need
more to quench your thirst. Every day ends in a caloric
deficit. Although this doesn’t bode well for muscle (you’re

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23
 starving it of energy it needs to survive), it’s necessary to
ensure fat loss.

One of the perils of cutting (of which there are many) that
natural people face is the loss of muscle from a consistent
nutrient deficit. (Natural in this sense means no use of
performance enhancing, hormone altering drugs.)

Bulking and cutting cycles usually last at least four weeks,

but they typically land somewhere in the eight-to-twelve
week range. So for eight straight weeks, depending on
whether you’re bulking or cutting, you eat the same quantity
of food day in and day out.

An often-recommended goal for bulking is gaining one pound

of body weight per week. The hope is that some of the weight
ends up as muscle. Remember, fat gain is expected since it’s
a consequence of ensuring an optimal state of growth. For
cutting, the goal is usually losing two pounds per week.

The ratio of muscle gained in comparison to fat gained

during a bulk depends on training, nutrition, and genetics,
but it almost always ends up less than ideal. (Same goes for
the muscle-to-fat-loss ratio during a cut.)

I dare say the majority of natural people will split the

muscle and fat 50/50, gaining one pound of muscle per every
one pound of fat. This, in my opinion, represents a
“successful” bulk. A better ratio is ideal. A poorer ratio is a
failure.

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24
 A hypothetical eight-week bulk that splits muscle and fat
50/50 would end in an eight pound weight gain—four pounds
muscle, four pounds fat. This wouldn’t be too bad. But since
the body is chaotic, the 50/50 split isn’t guaranteed.

It’s impossible to distinguish what causes a 75/25 muscle-to-

fat gain ratio to one of 25/75. For the people with the latter
ratio, the end result is a sloppy body fat induced “pseudo
bulk.” People synthesize muscle at different rates. 75/25
people bulk and cut like champions. Forcing linear progress
just “works” for them. But for those without ideal genetics,
forcing linear progress ends ugly.

Most clean bulk attempts fail because they’re

approach-ed with the same mindset. Where bulking
consistently over-fills the cup and cutting consistently under
fills the cup, failed clean bulks attempt to fill the cup half-
way every day. But the half-way strategy sucks because
sometimes your body needs more when you’re delivering
less, and sometimes the body needs less when you’re
delivering more.

Traditional bulking woes

Since the body is always weighing the investment of muscle
(can I afford to build this?), one of the quickest ways to
convince your body that everything will be OK is to deliver
an excess of nutrients it needs—to win the energy and
nutrient lottery. There’s so much here, we’re rich, we can do
anything we want! If you’re a billionaire, throwing a few
thousand bucks around won’t be that much of an issue,
right?

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25
 This is why the traditional bulk exists. There’s no better way
to ensure that you have enough to justify the investment
than to give your body more than enough. The downside, as
explained, is that enough extends beyond muscle and into
body fat, too.

When you think of the clean bulk, then, you see why it’s
tough to build muscle without getting fat. If you’re just
scraping by to pay the bills, you won’t be apt to throw money
around recklessly.

Most people that fail to build muscle simply don’t give the body
enough energy and nutrient assurance to justify the
investment. (This is also assuming your training is encouraging
muscle building.)

You try to find a level of nutrient intake that builds muscle,

but it kind of doesn’t. You eat more and more and then you
gain weight, but then find out that you’re also getting fat.
You try to split the difference, but it never seems to work.
You’re back to the problem of thirst: how far do you fill the
cup?

Linear logic folly and cup filling

In a sense, traditional bulking and cutting are linear. If
you’re bulking, you’re drinking the full cup every day. If
you’re cutting, you’re drinking one-quarter every day. It’s
the same thing every day no matter the circumstance.

The bulking and cutting mindset draws a line in the sand:

you’re either building muscle or burning fat given an

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26
 extended timeframe. It has to be that way to ensure
progress in either direction, or so the thought process goes.

Considering the body is continually tearing itself down and

rebuilding back up every second of every day, this mindset is
shortsighted. (Admittedly, sometimes shortsighted works.
Some people can clean bulk easily, and they usually have
epigenetics to their favor.)

Sadly, there’s no “money” caloric intake and

accompanying master training program that, when
combined, create the holy grail for clean bulking.
Things aren’t that predictable. Some days you’re really
thirsty. Other days, not so much. Filling the glass to the
same place daily is nonsense. You won’t see results that way.

Few bodily processes are linear aside from blowing out

candles on a birthday cake. The body rarely does “one thing,”
or lives in “one mode.” It’s constantly churning through
contradictory processes—building up and tearing down. It’s
constantly chaotic. Yes, unless you just ate a meal, you’re
probably catabolic—breaking something down—in some way
right now.

Fat loss, for example, plateaus. Few people lose the exact
amount of weight week in and week out. The super obese can
lose a lot at first, but it will stall after a few months of
consistent work. Even normal physiological processes, like
growth, happen in spurts. We don’t gain a consistent “x”
pounds per year. We a hit a tipping point with puberty
where most magic happens.

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 It’s the nature of chaos.

Why, then, is bulking and cutting popular? First, because it

provides tangible feedback fast. Second, because we’re
lemmings. Third, because some people do have more linear
physiology.

1) Tangible feedback
We will get into expected rates of progress later, but
traditional bulking and cutting are usually favored because
we live in a world that’s all about instant gratification. It’s
the microwave culture that’s been instilled in us. No longer
do we have to cultivate a fire to warm our food, we just have
to throw it in a contraption, press a few buttons, and wait
one minute.

With traditional bulking and cutting, you have faster visual

feedback. Even if you’re getting fatter (or losing muscle), you
can see changes happening on the scale or in the mirror
faster because you’re pushing the boundaries of your
physiology more aggressively.

We tend to thrive on this rather than the unknown, so it

becomes the obvious choice.

2) We’re lemmings
It takes most discoveries a few generations to be realized
and accepted because at the initial time of release, anyone
credible is likely to be dismissive.

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 Maybe it’s a pride thing, but people seem to have a hard
time accepting new things, even if they show initial promise.
I encourage you to go with Einstein on this one.

“Imagination is more important

than knowledge. For knowledge
is limited to all we now know
and understand, while
imagination embraces the entire
world, and all there ever will be
to know and understand.”

3) Linear physiology
When it comes to aesthetics the muscle building world, most
figureheads live on an extreme end of the “body” spectrum.
There are skinny-dudes that don’t gain fat, and then there
are the pure genetijacked (cool word, eh?) dudes that are
naturally hench (another cool word for being a muscular
brick house).

I’m nowhere near these extremes. My bone structure is more

on the skinny-fat side, but I’m also prone to put on body
fat—a combination that I call skinny-fat syndrome. I’m
rather tall, and I’m not really meant to be a maze of muscle.

This skinny-fat middle area where people flirt with stubborn

body fat and, perhaps, lackluster muscle building is where

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 chaos lives. Earlier we talked about having to justify the
investment of muscle. That’s what it is for a lot of guys in
this world . . . but not all guys.

When I was working with an NCAA DIVISION I Collegiate

Football team, most athletes were disgustingly underfed. My
mentor was around 230 pounds at the time (mostly muscle)
and he needed to eat 5,000+ calories every day to maintain
his weight. Some athletes, however, didn’t eat anywhere
close to a comparable level and still maintained sick muscle
tone. This is one of the benefits of having great genetics—the
body is more likely to hang onto muscle in less than ideal
environments. For these “lucky ones,” muscle isn’t as much
of an investment.

Sailing into the wind

When muscle isn’t an investment, you’re more apt to keep it
around. Likewise, when you don’t deal with body fat, it’s
easy to support the investment because there’s no baggage.
True skinny dudes just need to ignore their appetite and
learn how to eat the house; genetijacked dudes just need to
breathe. They’re sailing with the wind at their back.

The rest of us? We’re sailing into the wind. If you’re

sailing into the wind, you can’t tackle it head on. To gain
muscle without getting fat, we have to consciously alter the
signals we send our body. We have to embrace chaos and
understand just how smart our body really is.

Since people naturally draw from their own experience,

wisdom of, “Just eat everything in sight,” gets passed down

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 from those with the wind at their back to us on the lower end
of the totem pole.The end result: we get fat and not-so
muscular. It has happened with me and many other people
I’ve come to know in person, on forums, and through e-mail
conversations, etc.

To number is to numb
Gaining muscle isn’t easy, which is why it usually doesn’t
happen unless we make it happen. From the start, we’re
doing something the body doesn’t want us to do: we’re
sailing into the wind. In an effort for precision,
predictability, and control, we try to make this a linear
process.

But you can’t sail straight ahead into the wind; you won’t get
anywhere. When you sail against wind resistance, you can’t
sail in a straight line. You have to move the boat back and
forth. You have to sail in a zigzag to capture the wind.

If you’re a good sailor and know how to capture the wind,

you can actually begin sailing faster than the wind itself.

By linear logic of (+) and (-) this is impossible. But what if

something like this is possible inside of your body? What if
there is a way to zigzag back and forth to “capture” some sort
of power that’s greater than anything that could be
understood by linear logic?

There’s one thing consistent with the fattening bulk, the

emaciating cut, and the failed clean bulk: they treat the

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 body as if it were a stupid calculator. It’s the same thing
daily, as if the body never changes.

Your body is smarter than that, and the sooner you realize
this, the sooner you can take advantage of it. In fact,
embracing linearity might only be ineffective, but also
damaging.

Nutrition is what?
For a long time, I thought gaining muscle without fat was
indeed impossible. All of my attempts failed. With every
failure, I resorted back to bulking and cutting even though
they weren’t much more effective. All of the fat I gained
during bulks made cuts all that more aggressive. And the
more aggressive the cut was, the more my muscle melted
away with the fat.

Knowing what we now know, this makes sense too. In a

prolonged time of energy and nutrient shortage, it makes
little sense to keep a bunch of metabolically expensive tissue
around. It always seemed like I did a bunch of work for
minimal results in the end.

Many people “get” why bulks add fat and why cuts are
dangerous for muscle. But what many people miss inside of
this story, and the foundation of this clean bulking strategy,
is the basic lesson of the Hongerwinter.

How you handle nutrients depends partly on how

your body interprets feedback from the external
world. Nutrition, itself, is a stressor.

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 Harnessing the wind
This is a book about how “calories in vs. calories out” might
not tell the whole story because it neglects our inquisitive
bodies—the idea that we’re always interpreting and making
sense the outside world through silent questioning. This isn’t
to dismiss thermodynamics, but it is to dismiss our
perception of calories, diets and the body being a static
entity that functions like a simple calculator. (This isn’t even
getting into the idea that cooking can alter the energy
needed to digest and use food, which then changes the
caloric load.)

It’s a book about nutrition itself being a stressor, and what

exactly that means. But most importantly, it’s a book about
how all of this relates to body composition, specifically how a
mortal man can gain muscle without getting fat. Since we
aren’t really programmed for muscle, our body weighs the
investment—the resulting decision is almost always bad for
muscle growth.

The popular way to shift the direction of the wind—to have

the wind at our back—is to bulk and chronically overfeed.
This is the thermogenic calorie story we’re all told: eat more
and more.

But what if there was another way? What if, instead of

thinking about having the wind at your back, you think
about sailing into the wind being a good thing? What if there
was a way to zigzag your way through and harness the wind?
And what if harnessing the wind could, in fact, move you
closer towards your end faster?

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 Most people that see their body as a calculator almost
always fail to gain muscle without getting fat. It’s very hard
to add muscle without getting fat unless you appreciate the
body for being a smart, receptive, and changing being. A
being that understands the external world and adjusts itself
to accommodate for current need and future perceived need.
A being that doesn’t sail into the wind head on like a goof,
but rather captures the wind and use a disadvantage as an
advantage.

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 CHAPTER ONE
key points
The body is aware of its environment. It changes its
functions based upon the feedback it gets from it, too.

Bulking and cutting are more or less linear: they’re all

about doing the same thing over and over day in and day
out.

The linear logic doesn’t work with clean bulking.

Trying to find a magic calorie intake isn’t the way to go.

Most linear bulking pursuits end unfavorably for just

about everyone not on steroids or naturally
gentijacked. The rest of us are better served gaining
muscle slowly over time to so that we don’t give the body
reason to keep (and fill) fat cells.

When you sail into the wind, you can’t sail in a

straight line. You have to zigzag back and forth, and when
you do that, you actually capture the wind and sail faster
than the wind itself. It’s a physics phenomenon.

When it comes to muscle building, most of us are

sailing against our own genetic wind.

We need to capture the wind.

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 one.five
The EZ GUIDE

I
was originally going to save this chapter towards the
end of the book as a recap, but I thought it would be
best for you to read it now. Understanding this will
help you put a lot of what’s to come in perspective.

The ZBulk hinges on a few easy to understand concepts.

Instead of having them woven into the fabric of the rest of
the text, here is what we’re working towards.

In, Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder, Nassim

Taleb says that we’re part cow and part lion.

Herbivores are primarily grazers. There’s not much of a

grass shortage (or, at least there wasn’t in the free days
when cows could roam to new lands at will). They eat rather
frequently, but it’s mostly low energy plant food.

Carnivores eat sporadically, but when they eat, it’s

more feast-like—a kill only stays fresh for so long—
with primarily fats and proteins.

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 (Another way to look at it: consider food without a
refrigerator. Some cultures found out how to preserve food,
but, for the most part, shelf life of food couldn’t have been
long for meat and protein sources. It’d be rare for a culture
to have an excess of meat hanging around, as it’d go rancid
quickly. Vegetables fare a little better.

We often see animals in the wild make their kill and feast
their brains out, likely because there’s not only no knowledge
of the next kill, but also nowhere to store leftovers. Fill up
now, or run out later. Contrast this to cows [or any grazing
animal]. They eat bit by bit for a long period of time. When
food is as plentiful as grass, leftovers aren’t much of a
worry.)

So on a continuum, you have low energy plant matter

(veggies and such) on one end and protein and fat foods
(meats and such) on the other.

• Low energy plant stuffs: eat small quantities

frequently with a graze mentality
• Protein and fat animal stuffs: eat larger quantities but
sporadically

Humans, being omnivores, should embrace these extremes

by, at times, completely eliminating protein intake in favor
of “grazes” on grass and other things with a long shelf life.
But, on the flip side, they should also go through times of
great protein and meat influx.

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 There’s a gray(er) zone with things like fruits and nuts and
seeds and eggs, but I like to put them sort of somewhere in
the middle—with more of a graze mentality, but without as
frequent of an intake as the lower energy plant food.

Transferring this to your life, you’d say that most

meat indulgences should take place in a relatively
small window. Get in, hunker down on your nutrients, and
get out. If you get full and have leftovers, browse around,
come back, and finish the deal within a relatively short time
span.

Vegetables, and most green things, set themselves up

for snacking. Considering most of these things grow from
the ground and on trees, they’re more readily available.
There’s no preparation. It’s grab and go. Eggs! You come
across a nest of eggs and throw two in your satchel. Eat
them on the go, too.

Is this madness?
This exists in direct opposition to the frequent eating and
ingesting of protein camp. You’ve probably heard that you
need to eat protein every three hours or your body will melt
away its own muscle, haven’t you? You might have even
heard that you should wake up in the middle of the night to
eat protein to stave off “catabolism.” In fact, I remember
having a pre-bed snack every night with cottage cheese and
oatmeal (because these were slower digesting carbohydrates
and proteins) with hopes of staving off night time
catabolism.

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 A lot of emails and questions I get have to deal exactly with
“catabolism” or some kind of muscle eating or muscle
wasting. We have a perpetual fear of our body breaking
down our muscle, which makes us want 24/7 anabolism.

Just to let you know, I’m using “anabolic” and “catabolic”

with some leeway. I’ll clear this up later, but your body is
anabolic and catabolic every second of every day. When I use
the terms, I simply mean some things we do make for a more
anabolic-muscle-building environment, other things we do
make for a more catabolic-muscle-destroying environment.

But here’s the rub: there’s nothing bad about a

catabolic-destroying environment; it does not make
for permanent muscle waste.

Trying to be anabolic 24/7 is something I like to call “Cry

Wolf Syndrome.” Sometimes when you want to be heard and
elicit a huge response, the absolute last thing you should do
is freak out over it and “cry wolf” every second of every day.
When you do that, you make for numbness. And with
numbness, when you actually want to get your point across,
no one is listening.

The best way to get someone to listen to you isn’t to cry wolf;
if you want someone to listen you, you should only speak
when you want to be heard. Even more so, be mute until you
have something to say . . . and then shout it, preferably at the
right time.

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 Those that try being anabolic 24/7 suffer from Cry Wolf
Syndrome, which is why most people have sloppy fat kid
bulks. The muscles get “numb” and don’t respond to your
anabolic cues quite the same.

The punch line that you’ll read from here on out: catabolism
isn’t a bad guy. Catabolism is absolutely necessary in
order to make for better anabolic environments. So we
want catabolism . . . probably even more than you think.

And we can handle metabolism because our body is

mediocristan. One day of bad eating or starvation only
represents 1/365 of the pie. If you eat 2000 kcalories every
single day, you’d eat 730,000 per year. Even if on your worst
gorging holiday feeding (if you eat 10,000 kcalories that day),
that only represents 1% of your total yearly intake.

Catabolism is a friend, not an enemy. And using catabolism

to your advantage is how you capture the wind.

The extremes
We have catabolic and anabolic, just as we have cow and
lion. Looking at the cow and lion structure, each of them are
associated with a catabolic-anabolic end. I’m going to spend
the rest of the book explaining why (with the breakdown of
fuels that happens via training and such), so I’ll just ruin the
plot to some degree now.

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 The cow is a catabolic zig. It’s purposeful. Even if some of
our muscle gets broken down (and it might), we want it to
happen. Short term muscle loss is not permanent and
actually rather beneficial—this is mediocristan.

The lion is the anabolic zag. To avoid Cry Wolf

Syndrome, the zag should only go down one or two times per
day.

This is the zig and the zag you need when you sail against
the wind. And remember, unless you’re a genetic freak,
there’s a good chance you are sailing against the wind. The
zig and zag is what helps you capture the wind. And so from
here on out, anytime you hear me use the phrase “capture
the wind,” it’s likely referring to the switch between a zig
and a zag.

What’s left?
It might seem like it’s time to close the book. I gave away the
secrets already, what else could you want to know?

A lot, actually. The overall strategy might look a little

something like [ leaves and grass by day, meat and organs by
night ] (and it does . . .), but there’s more to it. And more not
only about the philosophy that I’ve quickly explained here,
but also about how everything comes together.

• Is there an optimal training frequency?

• Does it matter if you train in a “zig” state or “zag”
state?
• When should the zigs and zags go down?

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 • What does training say about zigging and zagging?
(Even if you play the anti-cry-wolf card and are mute
your entire life, if no one is around when you shout at
the top of your lungs you still aren’t heard the way you
need to be heard.)
• How do you ensure you don’t gain fat, but yet gain
muscle?
• What about zigging for an entire day?
• What does it mean to eat meat in a small window?

And I could go on and on, but that’s why the book doesn’t
end right here. Just try to keep the zigging and zagging and
carnivore and herbivore ideas swimming in your brain as
you continue.

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 Two
stress

B
reak away from reality. Imagine a life before the
industrialized world you live in. It’s just you in
nature, and you’re fighting for your life every day.
There’s no refrigerator. No supermarket. Anything
you eat or drink has to be scavenged for, killed, or gathered.

There’s something that happens in this situation—a

situation that has been practically built into our biology
because of how long it was a part of humanoid life—that
almost never happens to us in today’s world: food becomes
stress. But before we talk about stress, we have to talk about
the absence of stress.

The body likes to be in a stasis of sorts. Stasis simply means

your body hovers around some kind of level of good for
different processes—these levels of good are known as set
points. You might have heard of homeostasis before, which is
the common term to describe all of this. I use the concept of
allostasis though, because it makes me feel like I’m smarter
than I really am.

Let’s take body temperature, for instance. Humans generally

have a set point around 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit. This is

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 your round-about point of stasis. Nowadays, people much
smarter than me would consider it as a point of allostasis.

Homestasis was (is) the notion that one variable was the
only thing responsible for change. In other words, when the
house reaches a certain temperate, the thermostat kicks on.
But allostasis says that many things can be done to keep you
comfortable. You could open the windows, take a cold
shower, strip down to your skivvies, and as you can see—lots
of things come into play here.

This is just jargon though. Use whatever word makes you

feel smartest, just keep the message consistent. The premise
remains: your body settles into a certain “set point” of
function and generally likes to hover around there. It’s not
that a set point is one specific point, but rather a range of
“good.” The fabled human temperature of 98.6 degrees
Fahrenheit is a good example in that if you had a 98.8
degree temperature you wouldn’t be dead.

Stress is anything that alters stasis. We could get into

positive stress (eustress) and all of that stuff here, too, but
for now it’s just stress vs. stasis. When your body is in stasis,
you’re happy. All systems are going like they were designed
to go. Stress, either positively or negatively, throws the body
out of balance.

Food harms your body?

Go back to your primitive self. Many things can disrupt your
body’s stasis. It might be really hot or cold outside, which
forces you to sweat buckets or shiver like a drug addict. You

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 might have walked into a lion’s den, and had to sprint across
the savannah for your life.

Or you might be starving for food.

That last one is something most of us with Internet access

rarely experience in the modern world. We might have
hunger here and there, but we’re never really in a position in
which we don’t know where our next bite will come from.
Given that food and nutrition is kind of a big deal, this state
of hunger and food shortage is something very threatening to
survival. It’s something very stressful.

The nervous system and stress

With the talks of allostasis and stress, we have to integrate
the nervous system into the conversation, specifically parts
of the autonomic nervous system: the sympathetic branch
and the parasympathetic branch. Consider these two
branches to be the yin and yang of
managing stress.

The sympathetic branch is generally in Sympathetic think

charge of what you’d consider to be fight, flight.
“stressful situations” like running away
Parasympathetic
from a predator. What needs to happen to think rest, digest.
ensure you get out of there alive? Well, the
body stops all processes not essential to this
end. Digestion stops, as there’s no need to
process energy for the future—you need it now. Heart rate
increases, as does blood pressure. Blood to exercising
muscles increase. Brain power boosts. And if you remember

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 back to biology class, this is all why the sympathetic nervous
system gets tagged in for fight or flight responsibilities.

The parasympathetic branch does the opposite. It’s the rest

and digest branch of the autonomic nervous system. The feed
and breed master. It digests food, makes you mellow, sleepy,
and calm. Just think of how you feel after a giant holiday
dinner. Your body is restoring itself by assimilating
nutrients and shutting the system down so that it can do
some self maintenance.

In general, these two branches always work in opposition to

one another. When one is going, the other is silent. There are
only a few situations that contradict this, so it’s best to think
about them functioning separately.

Stress of underfeeding and overfeeding

A lack of food is a stress that threatens survival. In some
sense, it’s no different than being chased by a lion. Since you
aren’t eating, you’re breaking down stored energy. You’re
scrounging around for food.

The lack of food is challenging your body’s norm. With little

incoming, it’s sympathetically tearing itself down. What good
is muscle tissue at this point? Fat tissue? None of it matters
because it’s all made of energy and nutrients that are better
served to keep your biological clock ticking long enough so
that you can find more food.

I often say that the best way to think about building muscle
is to put your body in a place of need. When you think about

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 why squats build big legs, it’s because if the body didn’t build
legs the barbell would crush your body. So by squatting, over
time you build bigger legs.

But if you’re starving to an unhealthy point, the body has no

choice. It could roll the dice and keep the muscle tissue
around, but that means you’re closer to dying from an energy
and nutrient shortage. What’s likelier to happen is your body
breaking down muscle tissue for immediate energy use.
From an investment and risk standpoint, the latter almost
always happens because energy shortage is a 24-hour stress.
Squatting is much more of an intermittent stress, so it takes
a back seat. (Funnily enough, non-exercising muscle is the
first to get broken down. The body is smart enough to know
that eating away at your legs isn’t a good idea if they’re the
only thing keeping you from being lion dinner.)

In the realm of stress being anything that forces the body

out of balance, overfeeding is also a stress. If underfeeding
makes the body say, “Ahh, no energy! What am I going to
do?” Overfeeding makes the body say, “Ahh, all of this
energy! What am I going to do?”* And each of these ends
have opposite effects within the body, much like the
sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system.

*Or maybe, “Ahh, all of this energy! Time to get to work!” Either
way, the body is doing something that’s going to help you better
survive another day—either tearing down or rebuilding, neither of
which are exactly relaxing on the beach sipping a cocktail.

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 The effects of over and underfeeding
We once again return to this idea that the body doesn’t
really willingly kill itself and that energy and nutrients are
essential for survival.

When you underfeed, you don’t have a lot coming in. The
body is smart. It knows what’s going on, so it slows itself
down. Your overall metabolic rate slows and non-essential
processes come to a stop. It starts tearing itself down for
energy. It’s similar to the sympathetic response in this
regard.

When you overfeed, the opposite happens. Your metabolic

rate actually increases (because your body is breaking down
things and using them).* Your pulse increases. You have
excess, you’re anabolic, you’re building. It’s similar to the
parasympathetic response.

*If you’ve ever ate a lot of food, fell asleep, and then woke up sweaty
and warm you’ve experienced this.

Now, I’m saying “similar” to the nervous responses because

it’s not 100% the same. When you think sympathetic and
“flight,” you probably think of a high metabolism, but the
latter is more so a parasympathetic big-feeding effect.
Nevertheless, these are the overt signatures usually
associated with each feeding, likely because of the energy
available. When you have none, you need to be alert, up, and
moving in order to find food. When you have plenty, you
need to be calm and relaxed to let your body process what
you have.

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 It’s easy to see these two extremes as opposites. You’re
either this or that. And that returns us to more of the linear
logic we trampled upon earlier. You’re either sailing with
the wind or against the wind.

But what about harnessing it?

Feedback loops
Your apartment complex’s heat broke. While you were at
work, the heat system was fixed, but yours didn’t kick on.
When you get home, it’s freezing inside. You turn on the
heat, put on sweat pants and a sweat shirt, and cocoon
yourself in a dozen blankets.

About an hour from then, you turned into a hot and sweaty
mess. In an attempt to regulate your body, you
overcompensated in the other direction.

The overcompensation is the premise of a feedback loop—

something stimulating something else to happen. The
specific example above, however, is an example of a negative
feedback loop.

A negative feedback loop is the same in that it stimulates

something to happen, but the stimulation is generally in the
opposite direction. So your apartment was cold, you made
yourself hot. In a positive feedback loop, if your apartment
was cold, you’d make yourself colder.

Consider the Hongerwinter. A lack of incoming nutrients

ended up becoming a hypersensitivity to nutrients. They

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 didn’t just take up nutrients like any other baby, they
responded by swinging in the opposite direction—a negative
feedback loop. So keep in mind that negative doesn’t mean
bad, it just means opposite. Think “negation.”

Harnessing the wind

It would seem the best way to do something is to do that
thing violently and aggressively. In other words, if you want
someone’s attention: scream and yell over and over and over.
Unfortunately, something happens in this case: selective
ignorance—the general response to a stimulus weakens and
you become numb.

There are widespread accepted notions of what makes for an

anabolic muscle-building environment and the flip side, too:
a catabolic muscle-wasting environment. These
environments tend to live on opposite sides of the spectrum.
This is what makes for the typical bulking advice; you know
what makes your body more anabolic, so go to that. A lot. All
the time. Make sure the wind was at your back.

That’s all well and good, but as you should know by now,
that’s also a recipe for total anabolism in which fat gain is
likely baggage—especially if you’re prone to store fat at all.
If that wasn’t bad enough, it’s also a recipe for numbness.

It’s like the boy who cried wolf. Something that’s novel at
first becomes less so over time. It also works in the positive
direction, too. Something joyful and happy becomes less so
overtime—the hedonic impact.

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 Sometimes it’s much better to not sail in the direction of the
wind. Knowing about negative feedback loops, sometimes it’s
best to zigzag. The best way to get someone’s attention isn’t
to be the boy who cried wolf—someone constantly blabbing.
It’s to be mute your entire life until you want to say
something that you want people to hear.

The zigzag effect of loops

When you capture the wind, you end up sailing faster than
the wind itself. When you capture negative feedback loops,
you end up getting a response greater than the original
stimulus itself.

When the body gets out of balance, it slingshots (and I say

that to differentiate it from rebounding) in the opposite
direction. Not only does the body get closer to allostasis, but
it usually swings past it.

We started this book by saying that the common prescription

for bulking and adding muscle for those sailing against the
wind was to eat the house and flip the boat around so that
you were now sailing with the wind. But we're going to dare
to have crazy ideas. Maybe it’s about sailing against the
wind, zigzagging, capturing the wind, and moving faster
than you ever could otherwise.

When you hear the word catabolism in this body composition

world, you typically think it’s a bad thing. (It means tissue
breakdown, typically associated with muscle breakdown.)
But, in reality, catabolism is needed for fat loss and a bunch

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 of other processes within your body. You’re catabolic every
second of the day.

But something is often missed with regards to catabolism

and feedback loops.

Catabolism stimulates anabolism,

just as anabolism stimulates
catabolism.
That’s why football players often gain a bunch of muscle
directly after the season. And this really is Hongerwinter
101. Too few nutrients? What happens? Super nutrient
uptake. There’s also muscle building itself. Go to the gym,
trash and damage your muscles and what happens? They
don’t just repair to their baseline state. Your body makes
them stronger. It supercompensates.

These are all examples of negative feedback loops, of how

you capture the wind.

Shaping who you are with zigzags

Your entire being is made up of these zigzags. Most people
make use of them without conscious thought. You get sick,
your body melts down, but then it does the dirty work and
heals, and then is actually stronger having been sick. It’s like
acquiring a new skill. After you have chicken pox, you
acquire chicken pox defense and now have +10 armor.

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 Or as I like to say: A true Saiyan gets stronger after every
battle.

Another way to look at things is that something the

sympathetic nervous system has to deal with from a stress
perspective has the potential to be addressed and
supercompensated for when the parasympathetic nervous
system “deals” with the recovery from the stress.

This process is essentially what creates who we are. More

and more, scientists find that DNA is shaped by the
environment. We are shaped by these stressful
moments and by what our body does to overcome
them.

Training drives nutritional stress

Remember: muscle doesn’t magically appear. You have to
put it there. You have to train for it. Nutritional stress is one
thing, training stress is another. Yet when you’re working
with both, you have to talk compatibility.

An important piece to all of this is that training drives

nutrition. And that’s independent of any kind of nutritional
stress. Thinking in terms of deprivation and stress: certain
training forces our body to use a certain kind of fuel source,
which then adds to that stress and demand of that specific
fuel.

The biggest (and arguably most impactful) form of food

stress is caloric deprivation. Not enough energy coming in
means you’re going to have a tough time supporting normal

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 biological processes. On top of this though, we have training
demands and making use of a specific fuel source.

There once was a time when I’d write out some hardcore
physiology here, but let’s face it: I’ve never put on a lab coat
in my life. I’m just a goonie that envisions himself as Goku.
If you want to details, I suggest doing the dirty work and
reading both a human and exercise physiology text book (as
any good goonie should). Here are the cliffnotes though:

You have three types of muscle fibers, each of which can

make use of (or prefers to use) a certain fuel substrate:

• Type I slow twitch = fat

• Type IIA fast twitch = carbs / fat
• Type IIB fastest twitch = phosphocreatine

As this relates to good old training for body composition,

most high intensity strength-power training taps into the
fast twitch fibers. When the phosophocreatine stores run low
your IIB fibers get exhausted and then you tap primarily
into the type IIA, which predominately use glycogen for fuel.
They can use fat, but that’s less likely as it’s slower process
for energy delivery. When you’re jumping around violently or
trying to overcome a crushing barbell, slow isn’t good. If the
glyocogen is there, it’s using the glycogen.

Someone that regularly does high intensity resistance

training (in a way that depletes glycogen) usually needs
more carbohydrate fuel in their diet. This is Nate Miyaki
101, and we’ll talk about this later with The Goku Effect.

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 This is a great example of training coming first though,
because without the training this doesn’t apply. No high-
intensity muscle contractions, no glycogen depletion. This is
why training stress drives nutritional stress. If you use your
carbohydrate stores up through training, you now have
nutritional stress.

We are shaped by these stressful moments, and by what

our body does to overcome them.

In this situation, protein intake is generally required to

increase too, as it helps rebuild damaged, trained muscles
more than the other macronutrients (as muscles are made of
protein).

Need and rebuilding

This notion of “need,” stress, and damage explains why
marathon running and endurance training doesn’t really
build muscle. Although the muscles are stressed, they are
stressed in a way that demands more mitochondrial
adaptations via the slow twitch fibers—perhaps even more
fat fuel-source adaptations, too, as that’s the preferential
fuel source for low intensity work.

This is the body’s strategic way of saying, “In order to run for
a long period of time, what limits me isn’t how forceful I can
contract my muscles, but rather how long I can sustain the
mediocre contractions.”

On the other hand, with higher intensity contractions, the

limiting factor may be force, in which case more muscle

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 tissue is an obvious adaptation. It’s been shown that fast-
twitch fibers are primarily the fibers that grow, and so let’s
go back to the negative feedback loop.

The best way to get them to grow is to tear them down. To

capture the wind and kick-start the zigzag.

When they get torn down, they not only rebuild, but rebuild
in a way in which they were better than their previous
versions. It’s +10 strength. It’s a Saiyan getting stronger
after every battle and doing it in a way specific to the battle.

Endurance training and carb loading

If fat is the source of fuel for endurance work, why do
marathon runners carb load? Well, some marathon runners
also fat load, but the reason is to ensure that your body’s
glycogen stores are full. Even though you’re running a
marathon, there are times in which exercise intensity can
creep up and use glycogen as fuel.

Remember how I said fat can be used for fuel by the Type
IIA fibers? But that it’s slower? In general, fat is a huge
source of potential energy. We have near infinite stores of it,
really. It’s just not always used because it takes a lot more
time to breakdown and make use of effectively.

Since fat fuel takes a lot longer to make use of, whenever
glycogen fuel is all used up, runners usually hit a “wall,” in
which their performance tanks.

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 The reason this isn’t buried in a footnote is because it’s also
useful to understand a bit of the workings of the body’s three
energy systems.

• Aerobic = lower intensity = fat fuel

• Anaerobic lactic = high intensity = glycogen
• Anaerobic alactic = highest intensity = phosphocreatine
fuel

As you can see, they correspond well to the muscle fiber

typing. Also, these systems don’t exist in a vacuum. They’re
always churning at all hours of the day and during every
activity you do. Even though their contributions at times
may be very small, they’re all still kicking.

When you consider “aerobic” training and it using fat, we’re

talking low intensity—like sitting at your computer chair
and reading a book on clean bulking. (That’s assuming you
haven’t just eaten a big meal and are cruising through
digestion.) Yes, when you sleep you are “aerobic.” (And now
you have a reason to be tired when you go to work in the
morning. Just tell your boss you were training your aerobic
system all night!)

So when you consider even something as “light” as

endurance training, it’s still of a higher intensity than
sleeping or sitting, which means it’s more prone to climb the
ladder of carbohydrate fuel use. Combine that with running
for hours and hours, maybe up some hills that require
intensity to creep higher and higher at times, and you’re
gently going to deplete your glycogen stores here and there.

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 When your glycogen stores exhaust, you “bonk out” or “hit
the wall.” (If you’re a fan of The Oatmeal, you might even
consider this “The Blerch.”) Your pace slows because you
can’t deliver energy at the same high rate because you only
have fat at your disposal.

Combining zigs and zags

Consider the nutritional stress of underfeeding as a zig.
You’re breaking yourself down, searching for energy, and
churning through sympathetic power doing so.

Now consider training. Training is also a breakdown process,

a search for energy, and a churn through sympathetic power.
Zig.

TRAINING + UNDERFEEDING = SIMILAR

When you add training on top of underfeeding nutritional
stress, you compound stressors. You’re adding a zig and a
zig. You’re zigzigging. Since you’re depleting your body’s
energy and breaking your body down, you enter into a
stressful state faster than if you’d just live life and have it
deplete “naturally.”

Training is arguably a more intense zig—a more intense

form of depletion. This is likely why, even in the absence of
any sort of underfeeding nutritional stress (in other words,
people that know nothing about anything in this book),
training builds muscle all well and good. By depleting the

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 energy stores of the muscles, it creates a nutritionally
stressful situation by its lonesome!

What’s this saying?

• Higher intensity training = more physical adaptations.

• Higher intensity nutrition stress = more adaptations.

Basically, you dig yourself into a deeper allostatic hole,

which means you have the potential to rebound further on
the other end. You’re taking advantage of the feedback loop.

So say you train and deplete muscle glycogen. That’s a hole.

You want to rebound. Most people rebound all well and good
without thinking of anything else. But say you’ve read about
loops and you add deprivation on top of this hole. That’s a
deeper hole. You want to rebound more.

This sets up the flip side. The zag.

RESTING + OVERFEEDING = SIMILAR

If you couldn’t tell, the zag is the opposite of the zig.

When you zigzag you master the loops. When you zigzig and
zagzag (combine both training and nutrition stressors with
rest and overfeeding), you capture the wind.

The inverted-U

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 No doubt that stress is
necessary for the adaptation
process, but the question we
need to ask is how much
stress? The body isn’t a stress
magician. It’s good. It can
handle a lot. But, ultimately,
the capacity is finite.
Nutritional deprivation is
different in hour 1, hour 24,
hour 56, and hour 100.

This is called diminishing returns, but it best falls under the

law of the inverted-U curve that seems to govern, well, just
about everything. Wine, training, medicine, and all that jazz:
some is good, but more isn’t always better. You climb a hill of
good, reach a plateau somewhere, and if anymore is added,
you’re now on the downhill.

The goal is to fall somewhere in the range of good. Here’s the

chaotic part though: there’s no such thing as knowing this
down to an exact amount. All we can do is ballpark.
Sometimes we might overshoot. Sometimes we might
undershoot. It’s our job to understand OURSELVES over
time. Yes, this is the part where if you’re looking for
universal rules that govern every human being you’re going
to soil yourself in discomfort.

My physiology is different than yours. On top of that,

physiology changes every day. Think about it.

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 You never train the same body twice, because what
you did last training session recreates who you are.
Everything you do every day is something the body copes
with and adapts to.

Take something like complete fasting, for instance. Imagine

the physiological effects of a 24 hour fast. Sounds brutal
right? Now add this bit: the day before this fast, you ate like
a pig to the point of almost vomiting. Without a doubt, the
effects on the fasting day would be totally different than if
you only have one slice of toast the day before the 24 hour
fast.

All we can do is abide by some rules and then tweak them

overtime so that we begin to understand how we function as
an individual. We’ll return to this point of individuality soon.

Lack of stress and bulking

Let’s return to the idea of traditional bulking and shoving
the house down our face every second of the day. In some
respect, this totally eliminates nutritional stress. There’s
probably some period of time during training where you’re
chewing through stored material (which explains why some
people pay no attention to nutritional stress and see results),
but for the most part, nutritional stress is out of the
question. Any stress that’s encountered and
compensated for in the long run is a result of training
stress. This eliminates some of the power of the negative
feedback loop.

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 If you decide to sail with the wind and do a traditional bulk,
you might be anabolic 100% of the time, but how far anabolic
are you? And how targeted is that anabolism to muscle
tissue and not total physiology? Most people don’t want
anabolically rabid fat cells that overtake muscle cells. Oh
yeah, that's a thing.

The goal we have is to combine stressors (training and

nutrition) that make the muscle cells hypersensitive for
anabolic potential, and that undoubtedly requires some
catabolism. It’s requires a zig before a zag.

People get in a tizz over short-term muscle catabolism. But

you have to ask: why? If your muscle tissue is being broken
down out of short-term deprivation, that means it can be
rebuilt just as quick, and it also will be a signal to the body
that muscle tissue is somewhat important, so it will build
MORE to supercompensate.

Remember, that’s what training does. You destroy your

muscle tissue. You injure it. Why not use nutrition to do
much of the same? Why should short-term muscle
catabolism be vilified?

Our goal is to compound stress atop stress to dip as far as we

can in a stressful direction in order to rebound all that much
more on the other end. It’s the zig and the zag.

It’s capturing the wind.

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 CHAPTER TWO
key points
Nutrition can disrupt the body’s stasis because, all
things considered, dying from starvation is pretty serious
business.

You can’t talk about stress without mentioning the

nervous system, specifically the sympathetic and
parasympathetic branches.

• Sympathetic = fight, flight

• Parasympathetic = rest, digest

The nervous system has ties with nutrition.

• Resting + overfeeding = similar PNS “dominance”

• Training + underfeeding = similar SNS “dominance”

The body, when regulating stasis, depends on

feedback. One common mechanism of regulation is a
negative feedback loop.

Some is good, more isn’t always better. The inverted-U

has ties with a lot of physiology.

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 three
nutralooping

S
ailing with the wind is linear. Some are born with the
wind at their back. Others are born sailing into the
wind. For the unfortunate latter, many try to go on a
traditional bulk and artificially put the wind at their back.
But a better solution is to embrace the wind and then find
out how to sail into the wind correctly. When you zigzag, you
have the potential to capture the wind and sail faster than
the wind itself.

You have a zig and you have a zag—you have two ends that
you bounce back and forth between. (Just an FYI: I’m not
assigning “zig” or “zag” to either of these ends, just using it
as a metaphor. Anytime you see these words it will all be
contextual.)

Our ends that come from everything talked about to this

point:

• times of energy consumption and anabolism and

parasympathetic love
• times of energy utilization and catabolism and
sympathetic love

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 Capturing the wind is all about waxing and waning between
these extremes in a way that respects the inverted-U so that
we don’t end up doing more harm than good. There comes a
point when sailing sideways isn’t capturing the wind, but
rather just sailing sideways and not making any forward
progress.

As a neophyte to this philosophy, you probably need some

experimentation to get this right. Don’t expect to hop on a
boat and sail like a champ your first go. You’re probably
going to zig too long or zag too little. That’s all fine as long as
you allow for some learning time. As long as you strive to do
both and are willing to get out there and sail, it will work
itself out over time.

Loopology
When we talk about zigging and zagging, we’re talking about
taking advantage of feedback loops, specifically negative
feedback loops. Doing one thing allows for a greater potential
for another thing in the opposite direction. Since we’re
talking about food and ways to better nutrient delivery and
uptake, I’m going to call making use of these loops,
“nutralooping.”

It’s not that I want to create another jargony term for you to
remember, but it does sound kind of cool and it’s a lot easier
to write than “negative feedback loop of blah blah blah . . .”
Ah, who am I kidding. Who doesn’t want to invent a cool new
word?

Nutraloop it is.

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 The process is reactive
You don’t become immune to the flu virus until you’re
injected with a bit of the flu strain. With zigging and zagging
and nutralooping (just giving it a test drive—how did it
feel?), undergoing some kind of stress is the catalyst. This is
either underfeeding or training or both.

Without the training, there’s no glycogen depletion, no

muscle damage, and no loop—there’s no rebound potential in
the other direction. Without a time of nutrient deprivation,
there’s no tearing down for energy.

This is all predicated on something being depleted or

something happening. In this sense, the process is reactive
more than proactive. What happens during times of
sympathetic breakdown gets addressed during times of
parasympathetic repair.

Although the body is likely weighing future decisions

(Hongerwinter), the initiation of any kind of nutraloop
hinges on a certain stress or stimulus. So let’s consider
[energy consumption-parasympathetic] and [energy use-
sympathetic] as pistons for now. The next step is putting
some kind of time frame on the two.

Zigzagging catabolism and anabolism

Piecing the picture together, this means that times of
catabolism make for stronger times of anabolism. Of course,
anabolism is good for muscle building. This sounds scary, as

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 catabolism tends to instill fear into the hearts of those that
pour emotion and time into their training. Remain calm.

Let’s start with the natural rhythm of one day—24 hours.

We have a natural parasympathetic process built into our
day: sleep. Now, I know the word “natural” is abused a lot
these days, but it’s pretty appropriate here.

Without sleep, we die. Sleep is a parasympathetic activity

that is best described by George Carlin:

“People say, 'I'm going to sleep now,' as if it were nothing.

But it's really a bizarre activity. 'For the next several hours,
while the sun is gone, I'm going to become unconscious,
temporarily losing command over everything I know and
understand. When the sun returns, I will resume my life.'

If you didn't know what sleep was, and you had only seen it in
a science fiction movie, you would think it was weird and tell
all your friends about the movie you'd seen.

They had these people, you know? And they would walk
around all day and be OK? And then, once a day, usually after
dark, they would lie down on these special platforms and
become unconscious. They would stop functioning almost
completely, except deep in their minds they would have
adventures and experiences that were completely impossible
in real life. As they lay there, completely vulnerable to their
enemies, their only movements were to occasionally shift
from one position to another; or, if one of the 'mind
adventures' got too real, they would sit up and scream and be
glad they weren't unconscious anymore. Then they would
drink a lot of coffee.'

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 So, next time you see someone sleeping, make believe you're
in a science fiction movie. And whisper, 'The creature is
regenerating itself.”

I like to think of sleep as the body’s way of saying: you’re

going to get stressed out there. You have to get stressed out
there, else you won’t be human. And given the chance, you
probably won’t think about the other side of that—learning
how to recover from all that nonsense you’re doing—so we’ll
just build that into your being by knocking you temporarily
unconscious for a while.

Sleep regenerates, which makes ideas about getting up in

the middle of the night in order to eat something to prevent
catabolism rather silly in my book. If you think a few hours
of sleep without food being digested is going to completely
trash and tear apart every last muscle fiber you have leaving
you nothing to your bones when you wake up then, well, I
think you have more problems on your hands than learning
how to gain muscle without fat. (Only slightly joking. If this
were true, then for the greater part of four years I had those
problems on my hands.)

But, really, sleep is a parasympathetic activity. As you

should know by now, parasympathetic things tend to be
more anabolic and rebuilding. How can sleep be both
catabolic and anabolic? We have been and always will be
using these terms loosely just because they’re familiar. We’re
always anabolic and catabolic somewhere inside our body,
but I’m using these words to essentially mean:

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 • Anabolic: probably building muscle
• Catabolic: probably not building muscle

Any anabolic process involves making use of some sort of

materials that have been torn down. With sleep, you’re
tearing yourself and your food down and you’re rebuilding at
the same time. Like I said, both of these things are
happening at all hours of the day. It’s not really true to
categorize “anabolic” and “catabolic” as we have, but it works
well enough to stick with it.

The rest of the day

So we have sleep, which is an inherent anabolic piston and
part of the 24 hour day. Since sleep has a parasympathetic
signature, we can keep that factoid in our back pocket for
later. But where does that put us for the rest of the 24
hours?

Breaking it down into zigzags proves tricky. You could

technically say that any minute you aren’t eating, you’re
undergoing nutritional stress. Of course, it doesn’t work that
way, just as you aren’t grumbling with hunger 24/7.

Digestion time depends on the size of your meal, but let’s

assume you eat three square meals per day. Or, at least,
bigger meals, and not six or eight meals per day—just for the
sake of example.

Assuming you’re eating a “normal” portioned sized meal for

dinner, you’re probably looking at six to eight hours of
digestion time. During this digestion, let’s also assume the

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 body isn’t really feeling like it’s under great nutritional
stress—after all, it’s digesting food, so it can’t be freaking
out that much.

Let’s also say that right after digestion stops that the body
doesn’t go into immediate freak out mode. Maybe it takes a
few hours before you really start to think about the food
situation at hand.

Keep in mind, this isn’t to say anything about hunger or

stomach growling. Hunger, especially in modern society,
isn’t always an accurate sign of your body needing food.
There are a lot of social ties with feeding that make this
cloudy. I know I crave sweet desserts even when I just
finished a huge meal. We can’t often trust our instincts when
it comes to hunger.*

*Hunger is many things, which goes back to the idea of food being
more than energy. If you drop salt, you crave salty foods. If you drop
carbs, you’ll often crave sweets. We’ll talk about cravings later, but
these things appear even if you’re energetically well off. Just another
reminder that the body is more nuanced than we give it credit for.

For most people that eat traditional meals or a traditional

dinner, there’s usually around twelve hours between dinner
and breakfast. It’s safe to say no one is dying within that
time frame of meal separation, so let’s use that as a cutoff
point. At twelve hours without food (maybe 4-6 hours after
digestion completes), things get dicey.

So imagine having a 5PM dinner and not eating breakfast.

After that normal breakfast hour to lunch, you might be

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 feeling a little iffy. Or imagine having to skip breakfast and
lunch and only eat dinner. It’s safe to say that the hours of
sleeping combined with the waking hours without food, and
you might be undergoing some nutritional stress.*

*Here we turn to individuality. Some people that are used to going

longer periods without food might not find going 12 hours without
food very tough. Others used to more frequent meals might see it as a
death wish.

With this hypothetical construct though, you can see that

most people rarely undergo nutritional stress. With
regularly scheduled meals, you rarely hit any sort of true
freak out point. It’s a society of comfort.

But humans are built to endure times of stress.

We not only recover from stressful events, but we also come

out for the better. I call it hardness. Going through these
times of nutritional stress make you hard. Calloused. If you
get grumpy after going without one meal, you’re soft. I feel
bad for you when aliens attack the earth and the apocalypse
goes down. You’re going to be the first one gone.

The time windows

So far we have some windows to consider for nutritional
stress.

• The 24 hour window.

• The after digestion window, which can be seen as the
12+ hour window.

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 Noting these two windows is important because you can
have nutritional stress within a window of time of the day
without having a net stress for the day.

Let’s take this example. You’re a primitive hunter and it is

5PM. You haven’t eaten all day, and you’re starting to worry.
You’re about 16 hours into no food, so you’re uneasy. The
stress is coming. The body is likely breaking some stored
energy down to help fuel itself.

At 6PM, you find a cow and kill it. You feel better
psychologically, but it’s still 7PM before the fire is built and
going. At 8PM some of the food is finished cooking and you
eat it while the other bits and pieces fry up. You finish your
feast at 10PM, and it was a feast that toppled 4,000 calories
worth of cow.

So, for a huge chunk of the day, you were in a stressful

underfed state. But you didn’t end the day underfed. So for
the 24 hours, there wasn’t a net energy stress, but there was
intermittent energy stress.

Capturing the wind

Another way to look at this is how many times you zig and
zag in a certain time period. We have the day itself which
can either be a zig or a zag (or break even, but we won’t go
there yet). And then we have one switch within that day that
goes from a zig to a zag.

So we go back to our extremes.

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 (a) times of (b) times of
energy energy
consumption utilization
and anabolism and
and catabolism
parasympathe and
tic love and sympathetic
nothing is more love and nothing
anabolic than eating
is more catabolic than
a big meal, eating
being totally fasted,
more energy than
nothing being
needed + resting +
digested + training.
sleep.

Every day can take one of these tones, or a time period

within the day can take one of these tones. This gives us net
stress and intermittent stress. You can be underfed or
overfed for part of the day (intermittent) but not the entire
day (net).

Net stress is “calculated” at the end of the day. Did you get
enough energy and nutrients to support yourself? In our
primitive hunter example, the answer to the question is yes
because he ate a bunch of cow.

Independent of that is intermittent stress. Did you get

enough energy and nutrients to support yourself in a distinct
window of the day? In our primitive hunter example, the

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 answer to the question is no because he didn’t eat anything
for a big chunk of the day.

This means that insofar as capturing the wind is concerned,

we can float back and forth between an anabolic tone and
catabolic tone in two ways:

• From one part of the day to another part of the day

• From day to day

Erring high and erring low

This can get tricky. The truth is that we’re all guessing
about what’s going on inside of the body, and so it’s best we
err on the side of positivity for the goal at hand. The more
extreme you get, the better.

With this in mind, the day should only be broken into

two phases. That’s as “detailed” as we get. In no way
should you try to alternate between anabolic buildup and
catabolic breakdown more than once per day.

If you try to say that from 8AM to 11AM you’re going to do

the catabolic thing and then from 11AM to 3PM you’re going
to do the anabolic hurrah and then from 3PM to . . .

No. Flip the switch once. For a part of the day, you’re in
sympathetic-catabolic mode, in the other part, you’re in
parasympathetic-anabolic mode. Flip the switch once. (Or
don’t flip it at all, as you’ll see.)

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 Types of nutritional
stress
Net energy stress Intermittent
energy stress
• Fasting
• Scavenging • Fasting
• Portion control • Scavenging
• Portion control

Net energy stress is all about what it looks like at the end of
the day.

Intermittent energy stress is what it looks like within the

day.

Capturing the wind within the day involves

intermittent energy stress: going from one extreme to the
other—time of little-no food to time of more food

Capturing the wind between days involves net energy

stress: going from days with less-than-enough food to days
with more-than-enough food.

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 Knowing this, it’s important to keep the net and intermittent
buckets separate. They won’t always add up. It’s possible to
make use of intermittent energy stress without net energy
stress. Go back to the example given a few sections ago,
about the man troubled by hunger most of the day only to
find a kill and gorge later in the day. This would be a net
overfeed with intermittent energy stress.

You can also have a net underfeed that also has intermittent
energy stress by fasting for a potion of the day and
consuming a large amount (yet still in the underfeed range)
portion of food at once. In other words, if you need 3,000
calories in order to break even on your energy intake for the
day, you could fast from morning until dinner and eat a
2,000 calorie meal. 2,000 calories is certainly hefty, but it
doesn’t match the 3,000 you needed.

This presents a unique situation because the intermittent

stress stimulates catabolic activity, which then boosts
anabolic activity upon food intake. This theoretically means
you get a greater anabolic spike from less, which then piques
the question of whether you could potentially build or retain
muscle better even despite being in an energy deficit. This
brings up the recomposition conundrum, and the possibility
of gaining muscle and losing fat simultaneously.

Personally, I tend to think that this is too small of a scale to

base a recomposition around. We will get to this more a bit
later.

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 Net energy stress = calorie cycling
This idea of energy stress falls under the umbrella of cycling
calories. You can cycle calories throughout the day (eating
most of your calories in the AM or PM), or you can cycle your
calories on a daily basis (eating more calories on Tuesday
and less calories on Wednesday).

The advantages and disadvantages being:

Intermittent energy stress

• good because you’re catabolic for part of the day, but
not the entire day
• good because the time of catabolism might make any
potential bigger meal more anabolic (meaning you
might be able to get more muscular potential from a
smaller amount of food and yet still be within
underfeed boundaries)
• bad because you never know if you go so anabolic (with
the above point) as to prevent any sort of fat loss

Net energy stress

• good because you know you’re catabolic
• bad because you can fall trap to the inverted-U and
start to fall off the cliff and lose muscle mass

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 Nevertheless, this world of underfeeding and calorie cycling
is not only the first level of nutritional stress, but also
perhaps the most powerful and impactful because it’s total
stress. If you aren’t getting enough energy, you likely aren’t
getting enough of anything to support even basic
physiological functions.

This makes muscle pursuits tough. It’s hard to justify

building extra tissue when you don’t have a lot of resources
coming in. Because of this, it makes energy stress arguably
the most important variable in this entire world of
nutralooping. Many people might not even need or want to
go further than zigzagging energy intake, but we’ll go as far
as possible—it’s my nature.

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 CHAPTER THREE
key points
Without the right kind of training forcing the right
kind of depletion, there’s no zig to a zag. Training the
right way is an important part of this entire philosophy as it
supercharges the depletion.

Catabolism isn’t a bad guy. By negative feedback loop

wisdom, catabolism actually stimulates anabolism. The key
to catabolism is respecting the inverted-U; if do that you can
use it to your advantage.

Making use of catabolism is making use of nutritional

stress.

There are two time frames for nutritional stress: net

and intermittent.

• Net: underfed over the course of 24 hours.

• Intermittent: underfed part of the day but not the
entire day.

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 FOUR
shell

ENERGY STRESS
Net energy stress Intermittent
energy stress
• Fasting
• Scavenging • Fasting
• Portion control • Scavenging
• Portion control

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 FASTING
Anytime I use the idea of “fasting,” I’m referring to a period
without food. Water, black coffee, and plain tea are allowed.
That’s all. Some people get all huffed up here because they
can’t go without a little cream in their coffee. To this, I say:
you’re then doing a scavenge, not a fast; the effects of which
only you’ll be able to tell with experimentation. In other
words, if you’re wondering how big of an effect it’s having on
your progress, the only way you’re going to truly know is to
experiment and go through a stretch without it.

Safety and effectiveness

It’s best to get to this sooner rather than later, but
depending where you come from, this idea of fasting might
not be settling well in your stomach (boosh!).

Fasting has been around for a long time, and is a common

religious practice—probably the most notable being
Ramadan, in which observers aren’t allowed to eat or drink
anything from sun up to sun down. Old school Catholics,
during observation of Lent, used to eat one meal per day and
fast from meat.

Most religious fasting is done to connect deeper with the self,

learn discipline, and do other spiritual junk that I won’t
pretend to know about.

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 And so the idea of using intermittent fasting for body
composition or physical training is relatively new (but it’s
growing in popularity), but generally speaking, it’s
established.

As for safety, the literature errs on the side of safety. At the

end of this book, there are some sources that cite studies of
athletes that observe Ramadan while they also train.

If you look at ancient civilizations of the past, it hasn’t

always been three square meals either. A lot of times, people
were used to fasting or having a lower energy intake.

At the period of their greatest power, the Greeks and

Romans ate only one meal a day.

Dr. Oswald says: “For more than a thousand years the

one-meal system was the rule in two countries that
couldraise armies of men every one of whom
would have made his fortune as a modern
athlete–men who marched for days under a load of iron
(besides clothes and provisions) that would stagger a
modern porter.”

- Dr Herbert M. Shelton, The Hygienic System:

Orthotrophy

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 Breakfast as we know it didn’t exist for large
parts of history. The Romans didn’t really eat it,
usually consuming only one meal a day around noon,
says food historian Caroline Yeldham. In fact, breakfast
was actively frowned upon.

“The Romans believed it was healthier to eat only one

meal a day,” she says. “They were obsessed with digestion
and eating more than one meal was considered a form of
gluttony. This thinking impacted on the way people ate
for a very long time.”

- Denise Winterman, Breakfast, Lunch and Dinner:

Have We Always Eaten Them?

And there are even modern athletes that don’t eat normally,
one of which is Serge Nubret who once said, “. . . I never eat
breakfast . . . But I eat a lot in the evening so I had enough
calories to train during the morning.”

And even more modern is Herschel Walker, who is known for

only eating once per day.

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 SCAVENGING
Think of yourself as a wild animal, scavenging the plains.
You’re not a lion taking down a zebra here; you’re scouring
for bits and pieces. You might come across some plant food,
or perhaps some berries. Maybe a dead carcass with a couple
of fragments of meat still attached.

And so with scavenging, you’re looking at:

• Raw vegetables
• Berries, small amount of fruit
• Small rations of meat (for ease, hardboiled eggs work
well, too)

You aren’t really eating to fill yourself, but rather to just get
enough to keep going on. Resist the temptation to make it a
“meal.” That’s more suited to the portion control model.

If you put on your paleo goggles: scavenging would be a

glimmer of hope. Maybe you’re scouring for some meat, but
at least you have some berries and veggies in your satchel.

Work off your own hunger cues and have just a little bit
when hunger strikes most. Scavenging is a great way to
train yourself into fasting. Keep that in mind: you don’t have
to dive into fasting from the get-go. And even if you never
want to fully fast, you can always do the scavenging
replacement.

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 PORTION CTRL
Where the scavenge is more raw and unrefined, portion
control is the opposite. It should consist of the same foods a
scavenge has, but with set-in-stone meals and mealtimes.

The brown paper bag technique

To see the difference (and outline a pretty worthy strategy)
between a scavenge and portion control, I use the brown
paper bag technique. At the beginning of the day, load up a
brown paper back with 0.2 pounds of chicken breast, two
hard boiled eggs, a few handfuls of raw vegetables.

If you went with a scavenge, whenever you felt a deep

hunger pang you’d pull something out of the bag and munch
on it—whatever you felt was most appealing. Since you’re
relying on your own hunger cues for this, you wouldn’t make
it a point to finish what was in the bag. Eat just enough to
kick the hunger. It might even be one bite of a vegetable.

With a portion control, when the clock struck 12PM for

lunch, you’d pull out the brown paper bag and eat everything
inside.

The difference is trivial, and often best dictated by lifestyle. I

know it’s a little daunting being a goober in a faculty or co-
worker lunch room without a “meal” of sorts to eat.

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 NET ENERGY STRESS
NET ENERGY NET ENERGY *I only use hyena for
STRESS [FASTING] STRESS the imagery. Just like
the T-Rex has been
[SCAVENGING]
taken down as of late
isn’t something I for not being an
usually recommend. would be having the almighty hunter
This would be not hyena mentality because of being too
eating anything for an throughout the day.* large (and the credit
goes to other creatures
entire day. I’ve done Letting hunger come,
like the raptor for
it. It’s not too and then responding
being the true killers),
pleasant, and it tends with small rations of some have been saying
to corrupt the mind. If meat, hardboiled eggs, that hyenas are like
you know you aren’t raw veggies, and fresh the raptors and are the
eating anything the berries. ones doing the most
killing. But we
following day, you
typically see hyenas as
might go a little crazy. NET ENERGY swindling, stealthy
STRESS [PORTION creatures. How’s that
In general, I think CTRL] for useless
that any longer fast is information? I’ll give
you some more since
best cut to 24 hours. is what most people
you’re here: hyenas
Now, this might seem use when trying to
have reversed gender
like I’m talking about lose weight. Smaller, roles, and female
an entire day without but regularly- hyenas have external
food, but I’m not. If scheduled meals. genitals. Gosh aren’t
you stop eating at you happy you bought
this book? If nothing
5PM on Monday and
else in here sticks, I’m
have your next meal sure that little nugget
at 5PM on Tuesday, will. Can’t say you
that’s a 24 hour fast didn’t learn anything
but you never went new now, can you?
one full day without
eating.

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 INTERMITTENT STRESS
INTERMITTENT ENERGY INTERMITTENT ENERGY
STRESS [FASTING] STRESS [SCAVENGING]

would be eliminating food for a is a lot like the fasting only sticking
portion of the day. We do this all the to the hyena mentality when hunger
time, as we aren’t eating 24/7, so I’ll strikes. It’s an attempt to fast, but
go back to the idea of extending to a allowing yourself to eat bits as
time beyond digestion. This usually needed.
means beyond 12 hours without food.
Most settle into 16-20 hour INTERMITTENT ENERGY
templates, but we’ll get into this more STRESS [PORTION CTRL]
soon.
is having set-in-stone meals that
Once we get into specific plans, you’ll don’t quite meet energy demands.
see that one of the most common Again, think a more regulated
ways to do this is to skip breakfast scavenge.
and eat your first meal at lunch.
When you combine the 6-8+ hours of
sleep with the early waking hours
without food, you often easily pass
the 12+ hours.

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 The stress of scavenges, portion ctrl
How are scavenges and portion controls stressful if you’re
eating? Well, maybe you consume 200 calories of veggies and
100 calories of meat over the span of 16 hours.

That’s 300 calories compared to the 1500 or so calories your

body churns through to support your regular functions. So
while you’re eating, you aren’t quite eating enough to match
your energy needs.

Once again, it’s best to stay as extreme as possible which is

why I like sticking to raw vegetables, lean cuts of protein,
and hardboiled eggs. The bigger the disparity, the better it
works in your favor.

Capturing the wind every day

It’s my particular philosophy to capture the wind within
every day with intermittent energy stress for reasons we’ll
uncover later when we get into training. Doing this within
every day opens up the realm known popularly as
intermittent fasting, which is a nutrition strategy that’s
rocking the physical culture world right now. We’ll touch on
a few common intermittent fasting strategies here.

Consider our 24-hour bucket. For some of those 24 hours,

you avoid food for intermittent energy stress. The most
common form of intermittent fasting is probably Martin
Berkhan’s Leangains, which generally recommends:

• Intermittent energy stress [fasting] for 16 hours

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 This 16 hour fasting window is followed up with an 8 hour
feeding window, and what gets eaten within the feeding
window depends on the goals at hand, but it’s important to
note that it doesn’t always end with a net energy stress. If I’m
sounding redundant with this, it’s because it’s important
enough for me to keep reminding you about it.

Intermittent energy stress isn’t a direction, it’s a vehicle.

A lot of people start intermittent fasting to lose weight, but

intermittent fasting only dictates what goes on for part of
the day. It says nothing about the net. In other words,
intermittent fasting is simply a way to arrange the tides, but
not to decide which is dominant.

For now, I just want you to get a picture of what the day
would look like on Leangains. The common Leangains
implementation looks a little something like this:

• 12PM-8PM = Feeding window

That means during all other hours, you’re to avoid eating

food. No snacks. Just water and no-calorie beverages.
Because of these windows, Leangains is often referred to as a
16/8 intermittent fasting scheme. (For more, you can visit
the Leangains website.) It’s a great resource and what got
me started in the world of intermittent fasting.

Another fasting guru is Ori Hofmekler, who often

recommends 20/4. But unlike Leangains, Hofmekler
typically recommends intermittent energy stress [scavenging]

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 rather than total fasting. So for 20 hours you scavenge on
raw vegetables and ever small rations of meat (he’s also a
big fan of whey protein). After those twenty, you have four
hours in which you consume most of your digestively
stressful foods.

Both Leangains and Hofmekler’s strategies are done daily

and say nothing about a net underfeed, which contrasts a
fasting strategy popularized by Brad Pilon called Eat Stop
Eat. Brad recommends 1-2 longer duration fasts per week in
which calories aren’t compensated for.

The rationale behind this is that instead of nickel-and-

diming your way to a calorie deprivation (something like -
200 daily), instead you take two days and do real damage
(maybe -1500 or greater by eliminating some meals). The
obvious benefit to something like this being that you’re only
under stress twice per week, which bodes well for muscle
retention, and yet you’re still zigging and zagging.

Here you see where using the broad term of intermittent

fasting gets complicated though. Eat Stop Eat is called
intermittent fasting as is Leangains, but they’re entirely
different. Now you know why those brackets are being
thrown around.

Nutraloops. Brackets.

What’s next? I don’t know. But I do know that Eat Stop Eat
is a nice little read for those interested in intermittent
fasting. Give it a look-see if you want some further reading

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 material. Mr. Pilon introduced me to donut ice cream
sandwiches some time ago, so you know he’s a good guy.

The inverted-U of effectiveness

Given that we outlined parameters for nutritional stress
(deprivation of any sorts above), you have to consider it
against the inverted-U. At what point does deprivation
become counterproductive?

You see Berkhan’s Leangains at 16/8. Hofmekler’s strategy

(often called The Warrior Diet, but he outlines the same kind
of strategy in almost all of his books) at 20/4. Pilon’s is
around 22-24.

Is this just convention and adhering to the 24 hour day, or is

there something backing this up?

There’s some individuality, but there’s also some science in

that when you extend a nutrient-energy shortage beyond 24
hours you extend beyond the bounds of benefit. Keep in mind
though: if you grew up in a society where you adapted to
eating one meal at 7PM every day, your tolerance for
deprivation will be different than if you adapted eating 10
meals per day.

I like using the 24 hour window as it’s culturally recognized.

In general, I don’t think it’s possible for the body to do
irreversible damage over 24 hours. In other words:
catabolism? Who cares? Your body knows how to handle
daily short-term stress.

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 Think about it. One day you don’t eat. What does that do to
you? Does it kill you? Are you bed ridden?

You’ll be just fine. And chances are, save for your own
mental hardships, your performance will be fine too. Many
Ramadan studies confirm this. Most athlete’s had unaffected
performance, save for those that thought their performance
would be affected.

But it again goes back to adaptation because your mind very

strongly drives the body. For a long time, the four-minute
mile was thought to be impossible. That is, until one man
broke it and then a slew of others followed in his footsteps.
Some have to start off easy to curb their own perceptions of
possible.

Keep in mind though, this is assuming you’re relatively

healthy. If you have any underlying medical conditions with
blood sugar or whatnot, things get trickier. In general
though, food stress is just like training stress: it’s possible to
improve, and that’s the goal . . . until you fall off the far end
of the inverted-U. And it’s just my personal feelings that
nothing done in 24 hours can’t be undone or overcome.

A recap to the present

We started under the premise of nutritional stress. Now we
moved into energy stress and the two ways to make it
happen:

• Within one day (intermittent)

• For an entire day (net)

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 Beyond fat loss, something like this is effective for us
because of the zig and the zag. To capture the wind. A day of
underfeeding and catabolism could make for a slingshot to
anabolism.

You zig and then you zag. You break down and then you
build. When you do a net underfeed, you do one of these for
an entire day. When you intermittent underfeed, you do one
of these for part of the day.

It’s important to remember that underneath all of these, we

have two ends in mind:

• anabolism, building
• catabolism, breaking down

The whole idea of energy stress is (b) and is positioned, for

now, in the bucket of calorie stress. In other words, eat less
than you need. That’s it.

If you have net energy stress, you eat less than you need for
the entire day. If you have intermittent energy stress, you
eat less than you need for part of the day. The reason why
you’d want either of these things to happen: to capture the
wind.

In order to capture the wind, you have to not only zig, but
you also have to zag. This means times of underfeeding
should be followed up with times of overfeeding. The goal is
to actively stimulate some kind of nutraloop, and in order to
do that it’s best to dip further and further into one direction.

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 CHAPTER FOUR
key points
Fasting is not eating and drinking water, black coffee,
and plain tea.

Scavenging is snacking on small rations of meat and

raw vegetables.

Portion controlling is eating the same foods as you

would scavenging, but only using normally timed
meals.

It’s all about zigging and zagging between anabolism

and catabolism.

As of now, our sole marker of “catabolism” is being

over or underfed. In other words: either getting or not
getting enough energy/calories.

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 FIVE
energy

T
he most believed and accepted principle in the diet
world revolves around quantity. If you eat more
than you need, you gain weight. If you eat less
than you need, you lose weight. Simple stuff.

Alas, there is wiggle room (“What if I ate nothing but

butter?”), but there’s also truth. No one eats like a bird and
gains weight, and no one eats like a hippo and loses weight.

If you want to signal for the creation of muscle, you have to

eat more than you need. That’s just how it works. You need
something to build muscle with—you need the raw materials.

The body uses a base level of calories to handle regular

bodily functions (known as basal metabolic rate [BMR]). It’s
not going use any of this basal metabolic energy for the
creation of muscle, because keeping your heart beating and
organs functioning is more important than your narcissistic
pursuit of gaining energy-grubbing muscle. If you struggle
building muscle, you may feel like you’d rather have a body
that disregards essential survival functions in favor of a six-
pack and sinewy shoulders. But if you were ever lucky

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 enough to stumble upon a genie that granted this
wish, you’d probably die soon after.
There also seems to be
evidence to suggest You have to have enough energy to maintain normal
body fat helps mediate
function, and then you have to eat “more” than that
the stress response and
glucocorticoid to give the body the excess nutrients and energy it
secretion. What this needs to create muscle.
means is that body fat
is more than a stored On the opposite side of all of this, you generally have
energy deposit. And
to eat less than you need to signal for the breakdown
what that means is
that even if you drop and use of stored body fat for energy. Body fat might
calories low, your body be an eyesore to you, but to your body, it’s an
fat might stick around essential repository of potential energy. It doesn’t
because you’re not
eliminating the totality
give it up unless it has good reason to. (One of those
of its purpose. good reasons is an energy shortage.)

Capturing the caloric-energetic wind means bouncing

back and forth between states of being overfed and
states of being underfed, and so every day has its own goal.
Some days are muscle-building anabolic days, other days are
fat-loss catabolic days. Even within each of those, you can
optimize hours for either muscle building or fat loss
(intermittent stress).

Muscle-building days need more calories to ensure adequate

nutrients are available for use; fat loss days need fewer
calories.

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 Our nifty symbol system makes this easier to follow.

• (=) represents “breaking even” on your calorie intake.

• (+) represents “coming in above” your calorie goal.
• (-) represents “coming in below” your calorie goal.

Now, at the beginning of this little journey, I trounced all

over calories. Lately, that’s all it’s been about: calories,
metabolic rate, meeting needs, exceeding needs—you know,
that whole chestnut.

This makes it seem like it’s a giant game of numbers:

calculate your metabolic rate, do these factors, those things,
live and die by the numbers. But the truth is that calculating
metabolic rate is so dang impossible unless you have access
to a science facility. Even if you think you know, you
probably don’t.

Realistically, we have no idea what our BMR or our final

calorie “goal” is. There are some fancy pants calculators that
Google throws your way, but they aren’t 100% accurate.

For instance, what if I told you to calculate the BMR of a

primitive hunter-gatherer that scavenges 15-20 miles for
food every day? Would you expect their calorie expenditure
to be the same as someone that has a desk job?

There was an interesting study done that compared energy

expenditure among Americans / Europeans and the Hadza
people of Tanzania (one of the few true “primitive” tribes left
who often cover 15-20 miles of ground daily gathering food).

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 This is what they found:

We found that despite all this physical activity,

the number of calories that the Hadza burned per
day was indistinguishable from that of typical
adults in Europe and the United States. We ran a
number of statistical tests, accounting for body
mass, lean body mass, age, sex and fat mass, and
still found no difference in daily energy
expenditure between the Hadza and their Western
counterparts.

How can the Hadza be more active than we are

without burning more calories? It’s not that their
bodies are more efficient, allowing them to do
more with less: separate measurements showed
that the Hadza burn just as many calories while
walking or resting as Westerners do.

We think that the Hadzas’ bodies have adjusted to

the higher activity levels required for hunting
and gathering by spending less energy elsewhere.
Even for very active people, physical activity
accounts for only a small portion of daily energy
expenditure; most energy is spent behind the
scenes on the myriad unseen tasks that keep our
cells humming and our support systems working.

So no, just because you threw bunk numbers into a vague

and inaccurate metabolic calculator online doesn’t mean
you’re going to make use of that many calories and then
whatever calories you need from the extra activity you’re
doing. Think Hongerwinter here and the body being able to
regulate itself on more than a numerical basis.

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 Part of the chaos is understanding this, and eventually
deleting the idea of counting calories from our database. You
will see how this is done later.

The symbol system, chaos, and linear

relationships
Old school bulking and cutting plans aimed to log one
symbol every day for an extended period of time. It was very
predictable. Zigzagging and nutralooping is chaotic. You can
log a (+), (-), or (=) on any day depending on your goal and
how you feel. Using biofeedback is an important part of this
process, and something we will get to later.

You aren’t likely to hit an absolute weight goal as fast as

possible with the caloric (+) (-) (=) fluctuation. It’s easier to
lose 20 pounds with consecutive (-) days. But anytime you
throw in the retention or gaining of muscle mass things
change. (+) and (=) days maintain muscle mass during cuts
and (=) and (-) days prevent fat gain during bulks.

Long-term consecutive (-) signals nutrient rarity. The body

functions differently under these conditions. It “senses” what
raw materials will be available and whether or not to make
strides in muscle building or fat loss. Often times, people
that log great (-) for a long time end up slowing their
metabolic rate. We’re back to nutraloops once again. I
mentioned this at the beginning of the book: if the body isn’t
getting the energy it needs, it will cut energy costs (and this
makes for a lower metabolic rate). This is the dreaded
“starvation mode” everyone talks about.

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 The biggest faux pas among skinny-fat people is dropping
calories to an absurdly low level every day for months and
months. It’s nearly impossible to not only build, but also
retain muscle under this circumstance.

If the body isn’t getting the energy it needs, it will find a way
to use less energy. You won’t burn as many calories as you
otherwise would. This is the peril of eating like a bird in a
misguided attempt to lose weight. This, of course, depends
on the length of the energy deprivation. To this, we also add
the inverted-U.

Energy stress as a whole

Respect total caloric intake in relation to your daily goal. Eat
to gain if you want to gain. Eat to lose if you want to lose.
The trick is to make sure you do “either or” of these at the
right place and right time, while also respecting biofeedback.
For now, just
remember: there is
power in calorie-energy
intake.

We’ve yet to define

what each of these
extremes really look
like in terms of food
quantity, but there’s a
strategy in the future for this. For now, just think of
extremes. This fuels my widespread recommendation: eat
like Goku at times. Yes, it can be as simple as the “this is
how you get big” picture.

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 The key to this . . . at times. Not all the time.

Going back to thirst, one way to ensure you aren’t getting

enough is to really not drink much. The opposite holds too:
drink way too much. If you mess around in the middle,
you’re going to get sloppy. The water analogy works on a
crude level, but it only captures one factor of quenching
thirst. What if orange juice quenched thirst better? Where a
full cup of water is needed, maybe only one-quarter cup of
orange juice is needed? What if a certain kind of activity
leads to a certain kind of thirst?

There’s more than one variable to consider outside of total

food volume. Therefore, the best strategy will be the one that
controls as many “thirst” variables as possible.

The best strategy answers more of the questions the body is

asking about the external world; it controls many different
nutraloops.

PILLAR ONE
Respect the reality of energy intake
• Some days, eat more than you think you need in order
to build muscle
• Some days, eat less than you think you need in order to
zig for a zag.

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 CHAPTER FIVE
key points
There is power in calorie intake: no one eats like a bird
and gains weight; just as no one eats like a hippo and loses
weight.

The key to getting big is eating big like Goku, but only
doing it sometimes.

The problem a lot of people run into is trying to

overly predict their calorie “needs.” Your body isn’t that
predictable, and you need to use your own feedback rather
than some random number.

The calorie story isn’t quite comprehensive enough.

The questions of, “What if I ate nothing but butter?” is
telling enough for us to need to uncover more.

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 SIX
macronutrients

O
ur first fundamental idea is that energy matters.
At least, to some extent. Starvation is a real
thing. When you want to build muscle, you need
at least enough energy to support the normal
processes of being a living and breathing human being
(which could depend based on the particular life you live and
stresses you go through) and then whatever else over
that the body decides is needed to justify the
investment of muscle.

Energy stress is tops. If you aren’t getting enough to sustain

normal functioning, you won’t have enough for anything else.
We know that building muscle is in that “anything else”
bucket too. When you’re starved for energy, your body breaks
down its muscle and fat before it stops its heart from
beating. This tells you that on the list of priorities, more
often than not, muscles are on the “only if capable of
supporting” list most times.

You can’t eat like a bird and expect to put on a bunch of

muscle.

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 Now, this isn’t really me trying to play the calorie-is-the-
ultimate hand card. I don’t like counting calories, nor do I
think being caloriecentric is the end to all of our nutrition
woes. But at the same time, there is some truth in energy.

The most superficial layer of muscle building is to overfeed—

to provide enough nutrients and energy to get the job done,
provided the signaling and reason for muscle is here
(translation: as long as you’re training the right way).

(a) times of energy (b) times of energy

consumption and utilization and
anabolism and catabolism and
parasympathetic love sympathetic love

• Overfeeding • Underfeeding

Nestled underneath though is that, yeah, you can die of

starvation—but you can also die of scurvy. Food is more than
energy, it is also nutrients, and specific nutrients have
specific functions inside of the body.

Food is information—a specific sentence, not random letters.

Here we get routed back to stress and the body

understanding, “I have what I need, I don’t have what I
need; if I need something I don’t have, I’ll be on the lookout

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 for it—I’ll be sensitive to its presence; if I have too much, I’ll
start to ignore it.” This is nutraloopology.

The layer beyond energy is the macronutrient layer, and we

will take a look at it through the lens of the anabolic-
catabolic dichotomy we have going on.

Flame wars
Having enough energy around tells the body it’s OK to build
muscle. What we’re looking at from here on out are other
things that do the same thing—other things that promote
muscle building. Remember, we are anabolic and catabolic
every second of the day. I’m using the words lightly here to
represent two ends. On one end: things that will promote
muscle building; on the other end: things that won’t promote
it as much.

The zig and the zag.

We are entering a world of uncertainty and flame wars with

the macronutrient layer. Seriously. Debates rage on about
this stuff I’m about to talk about, and I always dig as far as
my attention span allows. Usually when I get to something
that includes lots of capital letters and numbers, I take it as
a sign that I’ve gone too far and that I probably just need to
go train and eat something like 99% of the people did in the
past that cracked the muscle code before research got
intense.

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 For your own lulz:
SIRT1 Negatively Regulates the Mammalian
Target of
Rapamycin. http://www.plosone.org/article/info%
3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0009199. The
IGF/mTOR pathway, which is modulated by
nutrients, growth factors, energy status and
cellular stress regulates aging in various
organisms. SIRT1 is a NAD+ dependent
deacetylase that is known to regulate caloric
restriction mediated longevity in model
organisms, and has also been linked to the
insulin/IGF signaling pathway. Here we
investigated the potential regulation of mTOR
signaling by SIRT1 in response to nutrients and
cellular stress. We demonstrate that SIRT1
deficiency results in elevated mTOR signaling,
which is not abolished by stress conditions. The
SIRT1 activator resveratrol reduces, whereas
SIRT1 inhibitor nicotinamide enhances mTOR
activity in a SIRT1 dependent manner.
Furthermore, we demonstrate that SIRT1
interacts with TSC2, a component of the mTOR
inhibitory-complex upstream to mTORC1, and
regulates mTOR signaling in a TSC2 dependent
manner. These results demonstrate that SIRT1
negatively regulates mTOR signaling potentially
through the TSC1/2 complex.

I’m sure you can spend your days trying to decode this. Or
you can just train and eat like Goku four days of the week.
Just saiyan’.

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 Calories don’t exist
You could say, in some way, that there are no such thing as
plain calories, as all calories exist within macronutrients.
There are three popular macronutrients:

• Protein = 4 calories / gram

• Fats = 9 calories / gram
• Carbohydrates = 4 calories / gram
• Alcohol = 7 calories / gram*

*Not really considered a macronutrient, but just there to give you

some perspective.

These are all gross values rather than net, and dismiss the
thermognic effect of food. Protein, for instance, usually takes
more energy to breakdown, so the net yield is often less than
4 calories per gram. But you can see by this chart why fats
were vilified not long ago: they have the most calories, and
calories were thought to be the devil.

There’s still an overemphasis on calories in the world, but

it’s something that can’t be escaped: energy is energy. The
body is actually rather good at turning one source of energy
into another when needed. We’ll talk about one way the body
does this with ketosis in a bit, but it’s just a testament to the
body not wanting to die and being clever enough to make use
of available resources in whatever capacity possible, even if
it isn’t the most efficient way to go about things.

So even though the body is efficient at swapping this gadget

for that gidget when it needs to, we enter the world of

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 optimal, and not making the body fight uphill, but simply
giving the body what it needs to do the job—don’t make it
have to kluge together something off the wall; just give it
what it needs.

Each macronutrient has some kind of play in whether or not

it is going to help us convince the body to build muscle. The
big problem though is that most research in this area is all
about obesity and body fat. There’s considerably less
research about muscle building among those that have a
large(r) training history. To get the best glimpse, we’ll look
at some of the obesity-body fat stuff under the context of
athletics and look at some conventional wisdom and some
anecdotes.

Stress and replenishment

Although everything falls underneath the umbrella of
energy, macronutrient stress (sometimes avoiding
macronutrients) serves the same purpose as energy stress.
First, too much of a good thing always has the potential to
end up as a bad thing. Second , knowing that certain
training methods deplete certain fuels, it’s possible to be fed
and yet be underfed (or fed in a less than ideal way) for one
specific macronutrient.

What we’re getting into now is based on the idea that

training is a specific stressor inside of your body and that it
leads to a specific kind of depletion of nutrients and energy.

Remember, training (stimulation) drives nutrition

(supply).

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 When you go through a training session (a good training
session with good methods) you’re forcing a specific kind of
breakdown.

Much like the marathon runner that can make use of fat
when glycogen runs out, the body is pretty smart at
transforming non-ideal substances into things that can be
used. But the fact remains that when a runner bonks out, it
isn’t optimal. For best performance we want optimal, so we
can just rely on our body to be transforming random bits into
specific pieces.

With this, we come across the following idea: it’s possible to

be nutrient stressed but not energy stressed.

What does this mean? Well, say you go through a thrashing

strength training session. Your muscle glycogen is done for.
Your body wants protein to repair its muscles and perhaps
some carbs to replenish its glycogen. Yet all you do is eat fat.
You eat a ton of it—so much that your energy needs are
taken care of.

But fat isn’t exactly what the body needs in that situation.
You have plenty of energy, but you don’t have the specifics to
match the job that needs done inside.

And so from the most superficial point we can see that

anabolism should build up what got broken down.
Beyond that though, we know that we can create stress
by avoiding what the body needs.

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 What training breaks down
Training uses energy. Our body breaks itself down. The body
can make use of carbohydrates, fats, or proteins for energy in
times of desperation, but more often than not, it will spare
the protein and use either carbohydrates or fats pending the
job at hand. (This is why we talked about energy systems
earlier.)

Protein is usually a candidate for breakdown during high

intensity activity when carbohydrates/glycogen are zonked to
the floor. Fat is too slow to mobilize to match the high
intensity demand, so proteins get taken. (Implications to
come.) For the most part though, protein isn’t a primary
energy nutrient. So when it comes to energy depletion
through training, we’re looking at carbohydrates and fats.

From early energy systems talks, we know strength work (in

general) taxes glycogen stores. Lower intensity aerobic work
doesn’t quite hit it (unless you’re running for hours), and
really low repetition, long resting strength training might
not either. But, for the most part, if you’re doing most
strength training routines, you’re going to be tapping into
glycogen some bit, of which carbohydrates are the
preferential restorer.

From a first look then, nutrition to repair what training

breaks down is twofold:

• Getting protein to repair muscle damage

• Getting carbohydrates to restock glycogen

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 These are our more “immediate” needs, which isn’t to say
that dietary fat is bad or supposed to be eliminated all
together. But the reality is that:

• when focusing on depletion from training, these carbs

and protein are better suited to undo the specific
breakdown
• fat stores are near infinite and unless you’re anorexic,
the reality of you being somehow low on energy in that
department is slim.

So let’s start with the easy one in protein and then move to
the much sticker carbohydrate situation.

PROTEIN
Thinking in terms of building up what gets broken down,
building muscle starts with protein, as that’s what goes into
the creation of muscle tissue (amino acids). Naturally,
breaking down the muscle breaks down the protein the
muscle is made of. You then need protein to repair the
damage.

The old school recommendation for muscle building is

usually one gram per pound of bodyweight (that’s in the
neighborhood of two grams + some change per kilogram of
bodyweight). Some say it doesn’t need to be that high, where
as others say it needs to be higher. But this recommendation
has worked for many people for a long time, as anecdotal as

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 it may be. Protein sources are delicious anyway, so it’s not a
burden.

Some studies say protein intake should be somewhere in the

neighborhood of 0.7-0.8 grams per pound of bodyweight. You
can always experiment with different intakes, but my
opinion is that you’re in this to build muscle. If you’re
going to do the damn thing, do the damn thing. Don’t
shortcut yourself. You may be able to get away with less, but
do you really want to train your butt off and potentially have
nutrition limit your muscle growth and all around progress?

Hitting your protein intake is an important first step.

Make it the most important part of your meals.

I think that the bickering above and below this value is good
justification of its use, as it’s the middle ground. That will be
our low end for now. Top end is two grams per pound of
bodyweight (that’s four grams + change per kg of
bodyweight). If you’re somewhere between those two values,
you’re looking good.

PROTEIN
• Low end = 1 grams per pound of bodyweight
• High end = 2 grams per pound of bodyweight

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 PILLAR ONE
Respect the reality of energy intake
• Some days, eat more than you think you need in order
to build muscle
• Some days, eat less than you think you need in order to
zig for a zag.

PILLAR TWO
Get enough protein
• Low end = 1 grams per pound of bodyweight
• High end = 2 grams per pound of bodyweight

THE STICKY GLYCOGEN

CONUNDRUM
Many accept the necessity of protein for muscle repair, but
glycogen replenishment is a tougher subject. To get on with
it, let’s introduce a hormone known as insulin.

Insulin basically binds onto cells and “opens them up” to

allow for nutrient uptake and energy storage. It’s considered

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 to be the “master” storage hormone—even more powerful
than steroids in that regard, which is why a lot of
bodybuilders and athletes now make use of it for
performance.

Insulin is released to varying degrees upon eating certain

foods. You might have heard of the Glycemic Index, which is
a supposed measure of how insulin-provoking a food has the
potential to be. (The Glycemic Index, however, is flawed.
Instead, use Glycemic Load. The premise remains though:
have some insulin awareness.) The most insulin-provoking
foods are generally starchy carbohydrates like rice, potatoes,
pastas, and breads.

Non-starchy carbohydrates, however, are usually less insulin

provoking. Foods like broccoli, cauliflower, celery, and most
vegetables fit in this bucket.

Examples of Example of non-

starchy carbs starchy carbs

• Rice • Broccoli
• Grains • Cauliflower
• Cereals • Celery
• Breads • Carrots
• Beans • Onions
• Legumes • Tomatoes
• Potatoes

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 All seems well and good. You deplete glycogen via training.
You eat carbohydrates, which get insulin churning. Insulin
binds to cells and then the cells take up the energy and
nutrients, essentially replenishing what was lost. It seems so
magical and perfect.

But there are some issues.

Because of its role in storage, there’s been a push to avoid

insulin spikes, which implies keeping a low starchy
carbohydrate intake. This goes back to most advice being
obesity-and-fat related. More insulin, more storage, harder
to lose fat = not something most people want, which then
leads to avoiding the most insulin-provoking foods.

So now there’s hysteria and insulinphobia, but insulin is

important for muscles. Without insulin, we’re without
storage of any kind. In other words, some sort of insulin
secretion is necessary for muscle building. This is why a lot
of people that fear getting fat (probably also come from a
paleo low-carbohydrate background) actively avoid eating
enough (maybe in general, maybe of carbs) and overall
struggle building muscle.

Some call insulin the devil, but absence of insulin isn’t a

walk in the park. You might know of this situation as type I
diabetes. One of the problems diabetics face is that their
insulin no longer works (in type II diabetes, that is; in type I
diabetes, the body fails to produce insulin altogether). Their
body can’t take up or store the nutrients they eat, and it all
ends up surfing around in the blood stream. (Over time, the

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 blood thickens and can’t pump that effectively and suddenly
you’re looking at a host of issues.) Yeah, not fun.

Insulin is an important hormone that shouldn’t be shunned.

Without insulin, you don’t get much nutrient storage.
Without that, you don’t get much muscular repair; insulin is
rather necessary in order to take care of any muscular
ambitions you have.

Starchy carbohydrates have the most play with insulin, but

they aren’t the only thing. Some proteins (amino acids) also
stimulate insulin, which is interesting in itself. In fact,
certain proteins (the amino acid leucine) stimulate the
specific muscle building pathway within the body. It’s almost
as if they go and say, “I’m protein! I’m here! Let’s build some
muscle, woohoo!” Implications here: most sugary
carbohydrate drinks pre- and post-workout are
shams. We’ll get to this later though.

Of course, if building muscle were that easy you wouldn’t be

reading this. Many factors determine whether or not the
body will go along that pathway or not, and this complexity
is just the reality in a chaotic dynamic system like the body.

Because of this, insulin has also been compared to a traffic

controller, too. It dictates depending on what’s needed. This
is why we’re combining factors atop factors to be as
comprehensive as possible for one specific end. The right
training methods, the right energy state, and the right, well,
the right “as much as we think we know” stuff.

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 The truth is that we’ve probably blown insulin up more than
it should be blown up. Insulin does help the body store
things, but it says little about net storage. The body is
storing and releasing energy a lot throughout the day. If you
aren’t eating enough for the body to justify storage (or eating
so little that the body needs to break down its stored energy
to survive, as in the case with fat loss), then insulin won’t
exactly override the situation and have you store fat even
though you’re only eating one breadcrumb per day.

Suffice to say, carbohydrates are a good macronutrient to

make use of to stimulate the powers of insulin, and since
that spells good things to help our specific breakdown
problem, it’s probably best if we used it to our advantage.

That is, assuming one last thing.

Assuming you’re sensitive

One theory of fat loss that exists is based on the idea that
years of shady processed carbohydrate abuse has made our
body less receptive to insulin. We can’t forget that food,
along with being energy, is also information. Different cells
within your body respond to insulin differently. Under most
circumstances, this is governed by experience.

Say you’re in one corner of the room. In the opposite corner,

you have two cell friends: Mr. Muscle (the muscle cell) and
Chubby Charlie (the fat cell). You whisper a message to your
cellular comrades, and Chubby Charlie gets real use from it.
Mr. Muscle, not so much.

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 Over time of whispering these messages, as long as this
stays consistent, you’re going to want to make sure Chubby
Charlie always hears your messages because Mr. Muscle
doesn’t seem to understand what you’re saying. Why waste a
good message on someone that doesn’t need it? So what you
do is you give Chubby Charlie some hearing aids. You boost
his ability to hear and respond. Maybe you even take away
some of Mr. Muscle’s hearing power. This delegation of
means to cells that respond or don't respond is known as
upregulation and downregulation. Here, Chubby Charlie has
an upregulation of hearing and Mr. Muscle has a
downregulation.

With insulin, this happens at the muscle-and-fat-cell level

too. If you’re gushing a bunch of nutrients into your body,
and your muscles don’t need it, your fat cells will gladly take
the load. Over time, your muscle cells get less sensitive to
the nutrients and your fat cells get more sensitive.

In case you’re not familiar with the jargon, being sensitive

means that the cells respond well. If you’re sensitive, even a
tiny joke gets under your skin. On the other hand, being
resistant means that the cells don’t respond. If you’re
resistant, you have to start throwing around racial slurs and
yo mamma jokes.

We want our cells sensitive to insulin. When they become

resistant, you enter a world of feedback loops. Your body
saying, “Cells . . . what are you doing? There’s nutrients and
pieces of brownie floating around, there’s insulin floating
around, why aren’t you vacuuming this stuff up? Maybe you

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 just didn’t hear the insulin the first time around, I’ll shoot
more in.”

And so more insulin floats around, but if, by chance your

cells aren’t responding to insulin because they’re full to the
max, they get fed up with the insulin. They say, “You idiot,
I’m at max capacity. Your insulin gang is prodding me to
open up and store things, but I can’t. You know what? I’m
sick of this. I’m going to get rid of my receptors for you, Mr.
Insulin.”

Yaddah yaddah yaddah, diabetes. In most instances, you

aren’t going to be dealing with totally full fat cells but it gets
the point across that there might be some less-than-
responsive cells out there. We’ll get to this more when we
talk about nutrient partitioning, but I mentioned the rabbit
hole earlier because we’re in it. This entire world of
carbohydrates and insulin and body fat is a whacky one
filled with anecdotes of studies done on primarily sedentary
people and metabolically diseased people and rats. None of
these are the typical user of high-intensity training methods.

Carb depletion, carb replenishment

If we’re working under the rationale of carbs being depleted
from training, then we have to also think that our body is
going to take the carbs we eat and use them for muscular
purposes. In other words, we’re assuming our muscle
cells are insulin sensitive.

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 In my opinion, there are really two pieces to having good
muscle insulin sensitivity, which then means you’re more
likely to gain muscle rather than fat:

• Body fat levels

• The right kind of training

One of the most important mechanisms of

physical activity is to increase the sensitivity of
muscle but not fat cells to insulin, causing fat
uptake in your muscles rather than your belly.45
Physical activity also increases the number of
mitochondria that burn fat and sugar. These and
other metabolic shifts help explain why very
active people can eat so much with no seeming ill
effects.

Daniel Lieberman, The Story of the Human Body

Carbohydrates atop an insulin resistant body are different

than carbohydrates atop an insulin sensitive body. In other
words:

• Person A eats 500 calories of rice and jacks his muscle-

building potential through the roof.
• Person B eats 1000 calories of rice and gets a mild
response.

Here you can see the energetic implications of this. Person B

(insulin resistant) eats more and gets less. The response of
less doesn’t change the energy delivered, which means that
you’re under energetic baggage.

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 Often times people go on a low(er) carbohydrate diet to
“reset” their insulin sensitivity. The rationale: without the
severe insulin spikes, your body plays the caffeine card.
When you’re used to drinking 5 cups of coffee per day, go
down to 0, and then reintroduce coffee, you respond a lot
harsher to that one cup. This is the basis of “resensitizing”
your body to something.

This is nutritional stress, in a sense. And as you should

know, it’s only one half of the puzzle. Combining meaningful
resistance training atop this helps, as it’s a catalyst for
muscle insulin sensitivity. (A little note here: usually going
low carbohydrate is effective as long as the weight loss comes
with it. Overall body fat + strength training is more
important than going low carb.)

Suffice to say, in order to make use of loops, you should have

a body that’s efficient enough to get the job done. In other
words, if you’re going to flood your system with
carbohydrates in the name of muscle repair, it helps if your
body is working in a way that’s actually going to make use of
the carbs for muscle repair and not fat engorgement.

These types of things fuel my skinny-fat system in The

Skinny-Fat Solution, and it’s how I get people down to the
right position in order to build muscle without fat.

Although you can use what you see here to get lean and
improve your sensitivity, I see this kind of nutrition strategy
is one that you plop atop an already well functioning body.

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 CARBS & FAT
And so we’ve trickled into this little department. Dietary fat
doesn’t really have the same play with insulin, and we know
insulin isn’t really a bad guy—on some level, it’s actually
quite good for muscular ambitions assuming your body can
make good use of it. Also, the more-specific energy
breakdown from training is glycogen, and carbohydrates are
the preferential glycogen restockers. All of this is to say that
in terms of restocking what was depleted, carbohydrates get
the nod insofar as “building” is concerned. This has some fat
implications.

Fat implications
Even though they don’t have much play with insulin, fats
are immensely important within the body (especially in the
non-immediate muscle building production line) for reasons
best saved for a physiology text book. Just know that they
support muscle-building hormones and they aren’t to be
vilified like the early 1990’s wanted us to believe.

Being that carbohydrates take the immediate cake though,

what’s important to know about fats is that they are another
source of fuel. Even though fats are important, too much
energy floating around is just that: too much energy.

Remember, we don’t really get “low” on fat as a source of fuel

(unless we’re starving and emaciated) and our body is
actually quite capable of turning either carbohydrates or fat

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 into body fat if the situation ever presents itself. One of
those situations is having too much energy; the body won’t
waste it. So from a sheer energy standpoint I think when
starchy carbohydrate intake is high, fats should be kept
relatively sane.

Atop this, a high fat intake combined with a high starchy-

carbohydrate intake could blunt insulin sensitivity. There’s
some evidence of this, and you know the implications at this
point.

What does it all mean?

The first pillar: some days eat more, some days eat less. The
second pillar: get enough protein. To this (for now) we add
that we need carbohydrates higher at times. And when
carbohydrates are higher, dietary fat should be lower.

The above macronutrient relationship, assuming being

plopped on top a body with some nice insulin sensitivity,
seems the most sensible when you consider the specific
breakdown that muscle building training lends itself to.

You can put this on top of energy cycling and days of

overfeeding and underfeeding for starters. You’d have a
certain pinnacle calorie goal for the day. Each macronutrient
would then be a percentage of the pinnacle. This is calorie
cycling 101.

The problem is that a lot more things go down after training

than simple glycogen breakdown. The idea of chronic lower

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 fat days (or being afraid to eat a lot of fats because of a
relatively higher carbohydrate intake) might not be ideal.

Let’s not forget: to zig you have to zag. Our goal isn’t to
always be stocked to the gizzards, we actually want
depletion.

What does that mean? Since carbohydrates are going to take

the dominant energy spot on anabolic days, and we don’t
want to neglect fats all together, fats then take the dominant
spot on catabolic days. Since fats aren’t as much of an
insulin driver, yet are still very important, they are much
better served in bulk on a more catabolism-oriented day
when carbohydrate intake is lower. This rotation of
carbohydrates and fats as a primary energy nutrient is
known as carbohydrate cycling.

Carbohydrate cycling zig

Calorie cycling is easy. Most of us know what more or less
food looks like. Carbohydrate cycling makes the nutrition-
phobic pee their pants. (I’ve wet my pants many times trying
to understand it.) From the outside, only Sheldon Cooper is
smart enough to handle its complexity. But from the inside,
even a caveman can do it.

Carbohydrate cycling involves shifting between days of high

carbohydrate intake and days of low carbohydrate intake,
and it should be noted here that most times when speaking
of “carbohydrates” I’m referring to insulin-provoking starchy
carbohydrates, which is different than non-starchy
carbohydrates.

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 Now, even within the starch bucket there is some variance.
High intensity muscle contractions use glucose for energy.
Carbohydrates are the typical glycogen re-stockers. You can
even go further here, as Nate Miyaki often does, and
decipher the types (specific foods) of carbohydrates best refill
glycogen stores. Not all carbohydrates are created equally.
We will return to this with The Goku Effect.

The amount of cruciferous non-starchy vegetables isn’t

important because I’m of the philosophy that you should
shove as many of them as humanly possible down your
throat every day. There’s no such thing as too many. They
give you the nutrients you help you repair.

Since both fat and carbohydrates are energy nutrients and

yet both have different functions, people tend to rotate
between fat and carbohydrate intake like alternating
pistons. If carbohydrates increase, fats decrease. If fats
increase, carbohydrates decrease.

So the other half of carbohydrate cycling is fat cycling. (I

really don’t know why carbohydrate cycling got the nod for
the name over fat cycling. Maybe because of the alliteration?
It does roll off the tongue better . . .) Fat intake works in
opposition to carbohydrate intake to compensate for the loss
of calories on low carbohydrate days.

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 HiC: High LoC: Low NoC: No
carbohydrate carbohydrate carbohydrate
days usually have days usually have days usually have
a lower fat intake a higher fat intake zero starchy
and a decent and either a higher carbohydrates.
protein intake. or lower protein We’ll get into this
They’re better for intake. They’re soon. Our shortcut:
stimulating better for fat loss NoC.
storage, repair, and and fat utilization.
building within the Our shortcut: LoC.
body. Our shortcut:
HiC

High calorie days are better for muscle building. They

ensure adequate nutrient intake.

High starchy carbohydrate days are also better for

muscle building because they promote storage and growth
potential via insulin and are the preferred macronutrient to
refill muscle glycogen..

Low calorie days are better for fat loss. The reduced
nutrient intake lets the body use stored energy for fuel.

Low carbohydrate days are also better for fat loss because
of the reduced potential for storage and growth via less
insulin. See how convenient that works out?

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 Zig zag . . . protein?
On your catabolic days, protein can creep higher than one
gram per pound simply because sources of protein make you
feel full. You can eat a chicken breast or a handful of nuts.
What’s going to sit heavier in your stomach?

Protein isn’t often stored as fat. The body finds use for it
somewhere. So that extra chicken breast goes a long way in
stopping your stomach from rumbling without much of a side
effect.

Some people theorize that protein, when taken in excess,

won’t be used as efficiently for building over time. When you
over-deliver on protein beyond what’s needed inside to
rebuild and repair the body won’t waste it, and it will likely
be used for energy. So in the long run here, the body gets
familiar with using protein for energy.

We ideally want the protein we intake to be used for the

growth and repair of the tissues we tear down. By cycling
protein intake, you send the body a little hint that it
shouldn’t abuse protein or take it for granted and instead to
use it for the purpose of muscle—essentially, preventing the
body from “wasting” it as a source of energy. (Again, this
only works when you strength train.)

Out of all methods, this one is used most sparingly, but it’s a
nice little tool to have in our belt. So it’s entirely possible to
also have days of higher and lower protein intake, and I even
recommend some days of little-to-no protein intake in the
coming chapters. For now though, using our boundaries

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 created, a higher protein intake would be more suitable on a
low carbohydrate day because of protein’s potential impact
on insulin.

It’s not like we want to avoid insulin spikes altogether

through the zigging and zagging. Remember, insulin is
needed for the creation of muscle. A slightly higher spike on
rest days will be of good use. If you ever wanted to go beyond
one gram per pound of bodyweight, this would be the time.

Also, protein has a high satiety value. Often times when

eating lower carbohydrate food, people have a hard time
feeling full or satiated. Protein helps keep calorie levels low
and also promotes fullness. Since it’s not naturally an energy
nutrient, most people err to a higher protein intake with the
idea of being able to eat more and still stave off fat gain (or
even help fat loss).

On high carbohydrate days protein can be lower because the

insulin magic is being handled by the starchy carbohydrate
intake, which makes for better storage potential all around.
Theoretically, it all works down into the idea that the
protein will be used more effectively on these days, so you
don’t need as much.

I don’t think you have to cycle your protein like this, but it’s
certainly an option.

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 PILLAR ONE
Respect the reality of energy intake
• Some days, eat more than you think you need in order
to build muscle
• Some days, eat less than you think you need in order to
zig for a zag.

PILLAR TWO
Get enough protein
• Low end = 1 grams per pound of bodyweight
• High end = 2 grams per pound of bodyweight

PILLAR THREE
Use carbs or fats to assist ultimate goal
for the day

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 ZIG / CATABOLIC
Time of energy utilization and catabolism and
sympathetic love

Underfeeding: less calories, low starchy carbohydrate,

higher fat, higher protein

• less: breads, pastas, potatoes, rice, etc.

• more: non-starchy veggies and meats
• some: sources of quality fat

ZAG / ANABOLIC
Time of energy consumption and anabolism and
parasympathetic love

Overfeeding: more calories, higher starchy

carbohydrate, lower fat, decent protein

• more: starchy carbohydrates in breads, pastas,

potatoes, rice, whatever carb suits your body (see The
Goku Effect for more on this)
• enough: non-starchy veggies and lean meats
• some-less: sources of quality fat

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 SEVEN
Zigzigging, zagzagging, the wind

W
e can zig and zag with nutritional stress alone,
but we can make it more effective by adding
corresponding training stress atop nutritional
stress. We now have some rules uncovered for what makes a
catabolic-ish and anabolic-ish environment (at least, from a
broad muscle-and-recovery perspective) from a nutritional
standpoint, so let’s talk training.

Anytime you train, you’re activating your sympathetic

nervous system. This calls for tissue breakdown for
immediate energy. It sounds like a bad thing, but that’s
precisely what you want because the tissues build back up
better than ever. This is the loop, antifragility, zigging and
zagging, or whatever else you want to call it. Provided you
don’t step beyond the lines of sanity, you’ll make it out on
the other side better than ever.*

*I suppose I should note that my philosophy is all about training

and nutrition being closely intertwined. Like, closely. Your training
program has to adapt to the reality that you’re moving in and out of
“ideal” states for adaptations. I don’t train to failure, use forced reps,
or do anything that oversteps the body’s boundaries for recovery—
especially to the point of needing a diet that’s going to put you in
consistent anabolic mode. A lot of “bulking” programs out there are

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 demanding from top to bottom and are better suited to a different
nutrition ethos. If you want to know about the kinds of programs I
use, click here.

Training sounds a lot like undergoing underfed nutritional

stress, and that’s why we want to pair this state with
training. We don’t want to be overfed going into training
because we want the breakdown—the combined sympathetic
stressors for the double whammy.

On top of this, eating a huge meal kicks the parasympathetic

nervous system into gear. It simply doesn’t make sense to
kick start sleepiness and relaxation going into a training
session.

Train underfed or fasted

In order to combine nutrition and training stress for one big
zig, it’s best to train either fasted or underfed when possible
(if not always).

Fasted training tends to twist panties; some feel like they

don’t have energy, and others talk themselves out of it being
of use. (Or mentally convince themselves of not having
energy.)

If you aren’t used to fasted training, I agree that it can be

tough at first. It won’t be easy, but I think it’s something you
should experiment with. If all else fails (or you train at a
time that makes fasted training really tough), then you’re
probably more of a scavenger. You’d approach everything the
same way, but stick to smaller “scavenge” feedings. Since

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 you’d want to keep digestive stress low, I’d stick to the
following:

• Small rations of meat protein

• Hardboiled eggs
• Raw vegetables

We talked about this more in the initial scavenging sections

though, so revisit those if needed.

The switch windows

Earlier we talked about the anabolic switch and shifting
modes. Let’s finalize this. So far, we’ve been mentioning two
sorta’ ideas—two windows, if you will. These windows go
way back to our first uncovering of nutritional stress.

We have a net underfeed or stress, and we can also

have an intermittent underfeed or stress.

With the daily stress, you go through the entire day in a

certain mode. With an intermittent stress, it’s only part of
the day. And from what we mentioned before, it’s best to
segregate this time of stress and no stress into two distinct
portions of the day, not try to flip back and forth between
them multiple times. High tide, low tide.

It’s my personal strategy to always go through intermittent

stress. Given that we want to get into the habit of training in
a fasted or underfed state, it’s best to get your body used to
the feeling.

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 This means every day, part of the day will be dominated by
underfeeding or fasting. I say part, but I really mean
majority. How long you live with anabolism depends on your
personal tolerance to it. For those that don’t deal with a lot
of body fat (true skinny-guys), they thrive in a more
consistent anabolic environment. (Which is why they are
more of a candidate for traditional bulking rather than clean
bulking).

For now, I’m going to just say that I think most times of
“heavy” anabolism should be condensed into a 4-8 hour
window depending on how you stomach food. So on days
when you’re looking to be anabolic, the day is still heavily
dominated by catabolism. (Which isn’t to say you’re going to
be starving without food.) But if you figure eating larger
carbohydrate (one or two) meals within that 4-8 hour
window combined with the digestion time, the hours of being
fed extend beyond the 4-8 on paper.

Also, if you tend to eat a bigger meal on “catabolic” days—

days of underfeed calorie stress—chances are you’re going to
exploit some anabolism there, too. This is probably sounding
funky right now, but overlapping this with our built-in
anabolic mode in sleep, we can see that it’s likely best to put
our bigger meals later on in the day with no planned activity
afterwards.

One thing we can’t forget here is that we naturally have an

anabolic switch—a built in period of growth and recovery:
sleep. Assuming you get a decent amount of sleep every
night, when you wake up your body is relatively “clean,” in

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 that there’s probably not food being digested. It might take
you a few minutes, but you’re up and ready to start your day.
You’re ready for action.

In contrast, at night, you’re into the opposite. You’re

probably having a bigger dinner meal. You’re getting into a
calmer state for sleep. You’re ready to relax.

This is something Ori Hofmekler popularized, as there is

evidence that a lot of primitive folk tend to be out and about
most of the day scavenging for food, and then spend the late
hours cooking and preparing the food for feast.

The good news is that even if you train at night, you can still
use this sort of structure. The examples to come will be your
guide. One of the benefits of having a meal during the PM,
even if you’re underfeeding is that it will stimulate a larger
anabolic response and put you more in the “sleep” mode even
though you’re still underfed.

Pre-workouts
I don’t recommend any starchy insulin-provoking
carbohydrates pre-training. (So this also means no sugary
supplement junk.) I just think it’s best to save any bigger
insulin response for when it’s time to zag from a zig.

The supplement industry lives on pre-workout supplements

all targeted to ensure you’re fueled up and ready to go for a
training session, but these things neglect the fact that fuel
depletion is something we should be striving for, as it’s the

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 only way for our body to supercompensate and actually get
better at regenerating ourselves in the long run.

In athletic terms, perhaps some of these supplements are

useful during competitions where your goal is to sustain
performance as long as possible. But even stepping one foot
out of competition, it doesn’t make sense to use these things
during practice all the time. As mentioned, the only way
your body is going to get better at storing energy and
refueling is with the purposeful depletion.

We want our body to become the awesomeness it has the

potential to be, and the only way to make that happen is to
have it break down (within reason) and rebuild over time.
Anything designed to prevent this from happening takes
away from your potential. The body has a pretty nifty system
in place to be able to handle short-term stress; let the body
take care of business.

The biggest concern with all of this, honestly, is

psychological. The more you think you need food, the more
you will need food. I’ve experimented with 48-hour fasted
training sessions and I felt like complete garbage going into
the gym. After the warm-up, and once I got moving though,
I’ve never had better sessions.

I wouldn’t recommend doing this regularly. I’ve done it about

three times, personally, but it’s always the same. Drag
myself to the gym, start getting the juices flowing, and then
I just enter this state of flow. Ironically enough, I don’t do it
more because (a) I hate longer duration fasts [psychological]

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 and (b) it’s mentally challenging to drag yourself to the gym
when you feel low [psychological].

Since I’ve had my share of experiences trying to juggle

fasting with strength training and other athletic training,
I’ve expanded on all of this in chapter 11.

The anabolic switch

So far we talked about the catabolic switch: fasting or
underfeeding combined with training. As you should know,
after the zig comes the zag: now it’s time to talk about the
anabolic switch.

One of the reasons I don’t like including starchy

carbohydrates in the underfeed is because it just makes the
lines all that much clearer. And when it comes to clear lines,
you don’t get much clearer than being either on or off—
trying to fine tune things is a pain, especially because you’d
be trying to fine-tune a still-very-misunderstood and ultra-
complex body.

The truth is that we’re all guessing about what’s going on

inside of the body, and so it’s best we err on the side of
positivity. The more extreme you get, the better.

The refractory period

A lot of people believe that you should flip the switch
immediately post-workout, and that makes sense. You did
your duty to combine training stress and nutritional stress
together. You zigged. All is well, and now it’s time to zag.

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 But let’s take a look at this further. One class of hormones
that’s released during times of sympathetic activation is
called glucocorticoids. Different glucocorticoids have
different functions, but one thing they do is help build back
up what was broken down during times of sympathetic
stress, and they can do this over the course of hours.*
There’s also some studies that show it takes muscle glycogen
16+ hours to regenerate, and potentially 48+ hours for
muscle “regeneration.” In other words, muscle protein
synthesis and muscle refueling is a long-term process.

*Once again, this depends on the level of stress which comes back to
the training program. I do full-body-esque training programs, not
isolation programs. Arms day might be nice, but the overall stress on
the system isn’t the same. I prefer to freak out the body as much as
possible within the realm of feasibility and sustainability.

I think the idea of getting something immediately post-

workout is an overblown concept, and it’s overblown because
of what comes down about the body breaking down its own
protein (muscles) to fuel the recovery process. We once again
return to a critical question to ask: so what? That doesn’t
mean the protein is gone forever, and it might actually be a
good thing in the long run, anyway.

If you’re training three or more days per week, there’s a good

chance your body and muscles are always in a state of
recreation. They’re always a point of attention. What you do
in the post-workout hours is shadowed by the overall
construct of your diet.

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 First, let’s lay this down: you should probably wait 30-
60 minutes before eating anything post-training. Give
your body time to settle down and begin the recovery
process. Besides, growth hormone is usually elevated
when you train fasted, and one thing that tanks
growth hormone levels is stimulating insulin.

Second, when (and what) you eat post-training depends on

how it fits into the overall structure of your day. Most
evidence suggests that the most important
macronutrient is protein in the post-workout nebula
of unknown, not necessarily carbohydrates. And it
also suggests that your nutrition composition over the
day is more important than what goes down part of
the day. If I were to give a hat tip to my own words,
this would otherwise be stated as: net matters more
than intermittent.

Third, not eating post-training shouldn’t be seen as a danger

that can’t be overcome. In fact, there’s nothing to say
avoiding food post-training wouldn’t help you zig all that
much further into catabolism, which would make the
anabolic follow up all that much sweeter. Not saying that’s
absolutely true, but I do believe that nothing bad will come if
you have to wait a few hours to have a meal after training.

And so the time from post-training to first post-training-

meal from here on out will be called the refractory period,
and it’s anything but a black and white concept. The ideal
refractory period depends on what was in your system before
training, your adapted feeding patterns, and much more.

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 The important part to know is that your body is probably in
flux every second of every day if you train regularly. How the
nutrition all adds up in the end is more important than
giving your body immediate energy within the hours after
any one training session.

The wisdom most people abide by

I believe most people are overly obsessive about post-
workout meals (and pre-workout meals), but this sort of logic
fuels the masses right now. Given what we talked about to
this point, the notable way to zig and zag per mainstream
carbohydrate cycling principles looks something like this:

• Training days = enough protein, high carbohydrate

intake, low fat intake, more energy
• Rest days = more protein, low carbohydrate intake,
higher fat intake, less energy

These days are oriented because of the current idea of

keeping any sort of refueling in closest proximity to a
training session. This is certainly one way to go about
things, and it tends to work. It’s worked for me in the past,
but I’m beginning to shift to something else a bit more wild.

The REAL zigzag—capturing the wind

One of the complaints with arranging the macronutrient and
calorie stress the way it is above is that people sometimes
feel lethargic and tired going into training sessions, as they
often come off a low carbohydrate day.

Recapping some liver glycogen refueling stuff:

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 • Liver glycogen is always being used by the brain
• Carbohydrates best refuel glycogen
• By having a low carbohydrate day, you’re not getting a
lot of glycogen refuel
• This means you’re probably 24+ hours of sub-par
glycogen refueling
• This means you probably aren’t at your best mentally
• This means you might not feel good going into any sort
of training session in this state

Now, I talked about this before. Lethargy isn’t the end of the
world and can be mentally conquered. But it’s important to
retouch on because, as mentioned, if you’re training
regularly there’s a good chance your body is in a state of flux
just about every second of every day. (It’s in a state of flux
regardless of whether you train, but training makes it even
more so.)

Given my particular mindset of nothing being irreversible or

damaging in 24 hours, why not combine nutrition stress and
training stress for not only part of the day, but for the entire
day? Why not have a day with training stress, calorie stress,
and macronutrient stress?

This is the greatest zig of them all.

What this essentially does is flip the “accepted” days above.

You have days filled with a lot of physical stress and
nutrition stress and days of less physical stress and less
nutrition stress. This makes any rest day a truer “rest” day

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 as you’re not only resting your body but giving your body
what it needs to repair and recover.

How big…?
To this point, the words anabolic, catabolism, overfeed, and
underfeed are all pretty ambiguous. What’s needed to flip
the anabolic switch? How do you know that a “smaller” meal
condensed into one feeding is the same as smaller meals
spread throughout the day?

When it comes down to it all, it’s all stress. Everyone

obsesses over numbers and calculators, but the best way to
go from zig to zag, in my opinion, is on the extremes.

All of this might sound complex, but I’m going to boil it down
easy for you. First though, let’s talk about tracking progress.

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 CHAPTER SEVEN
key points
Liver glycogen is an important source of body fuel. It
feeds the brain, and when liver glycogen runs low so does the
brain.

Whether or not low liver glycogen is a “big deal”

depends on the focus of your training sessions.
Physique is different than performance.

To combine stressors, it’s a good idea to train fasted

or underfed.

To zigzig and zagzag, combine days of nutritional

stress and training stress.

Post-workout nutrition isn’t an immediate need. The

body is capable of handling itself in hard times.

How you eat over the course of 24 hours, especially

respective to your training session, matters more than
any kind of post-workout treat.

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 EIGHT
biofeedback

W
e use the concept of energy as a tool to dictate
whether or not we have what it takes to build
muscle. But we also know that most calorie
calculations are severely off. Maybe you’re in the Hadza tribe
running around like a gerbil all day only to find out that
your metabolic rate is as average as the rest of ours. Maybe
you’re a Hongerwinter survivor thinking you’re normal, only
your metabolic rate is sluggish.

Any attempt to overly refine your calorie intake, in my

opinion, is an attempt to sail straighter into the wind. You
can’t sail straight into the wind.

We have days of anabolic activity and days of catabolic

activity. The best way to navigate the seas is to have a
structure in which these points—“extremes”—get hit
regularly.

Regular hitting
Instead of using numbers to see if you’re hitting your mark,
use something real in biofeedback—how you feel on any

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 given day. In order to get a true grasp of how you feel, I
created this idea of “the solid base” starting point.

When you’re at your solid base you’ll have a certain feel from
day to day. You might feel puffier than normal, you might
feel average, you might feel lean, or even a little less lean.
The important part is that you can, indeed, feel.

The solid base is defined by body fat. Most males start

showing a six pack under good lighting and with a muscle
contraction at around 10% body fat. Using 10% as the “six-
pack benchmark,” the solid base is between 10-11% body fat.
(The solid base must be sustainable. Being as lean as a
professional bodybuilder on stage isn’t sustainable. Most
consider competition level to be around 3-5% body fat—a
point at which the skin is knuckle tight.)

The solid base ensures you never get out of hand. Detecting
daily fluctuations is tough when you get to 12-13% and
above. It’s not uncommon for someone at 13% body fat to
unexpectedly end up 15-16% body fat. When you have a
defined object, you can still tell what it is after wrapping it
in one layer of saran wrap. But when you wrap it ten times,
that’s less true. The more “wrapping,” the harder it is to
define, which is why more body fat is bad news.

Don’t worry ladies. I didn’t forget you. It’s just that the
projected body fat percentages are different. Women have
higher body fat percentages. Blame physiology. (They look
sexier in jeans and a tank top though. Win some. Lose some.)

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 Male to Female Body Fat Conversion
Estimates
• 3% to 5% on a male is about 11% to 13% on a female.
• 6% to 7% on a male is about 14% to 15% on a female.
• 9% to 10% on a male is about 16% to 17% on a female.*
• 11% to 12% on a male is about 18% to 19% on a
female*
• 14% to 15% on a male is about 20% to 22% on a female.
• 20% to 22% on a male is about 25% to 26% on a female.

*Solid base

You don’t have to get your body fat professionally measured.

There’s a good chance scales or calipers will be wrong
anyway. Take a look at the pictures below to get a ballpark
of where you’re at. The exact number isn’t as important as
how you look and feel. To get an idea of what certain body
fat percentages look like, check out this page on my website.

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 Why start at the solid base?
There are two huge reasons to start at the solid base. First,
because it represents an ideal physiological position to be in.
Earlier when we talked about insulin, I also talked about
your body being able to make use of all of this in the name of
muscle. Usually when you have a bunch of body fat, your
body isn’t in the ideal spot to partition nutrients well. At a
lower body fat, however, partitioning tends to be better.

Partitioning is a word used to describe what your body does

with excess nutrients and energy. We need a certain baseline
amount of nutrients and energy to stay alive. We also need
some to take care of everyday activities. Beyond that though,
the body makes decisions and on how to invest excess
nutrients and energy. Sometimes it’s convinced that the
excess is better used as body fat. Other times, it’s convinced
the excess is better used for the creation and upkeep of
muscle.

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 Those with über genetics have great partitioning. Most
excess nutrients go towards building muscle. The less
fortunate, like skinny-fat people, have terrible partitioning.
Most of their excess nutrients are stored as fat. (Partitioning
isn’t solely genetics-dependent. It’s influenced by training,
sleep, body fat percentage, etc. We have some control, but
not total control. The best way to gain more and more control
is to keep strength training like we mean it, keep our body
fat in check, and let time work its magic.)

Just because you eat a certain amount over your “needs”

doesn’t mean that excess nutrients and energy does the
same thing. When you have more body fat, your body tends
to err in that direction because that’s what it’s used to doing.
That’s why I liken partitioning to a flinch.

When something is thrown at your head, you flinch. That’s

just the wiring you’re ingrained with as a means of
protection. If you’re used to “flinching” excess nutrients and
energy to body fat, you’re probably going to keep doing that.
This makes any sort of clean bulk at a higher body fat a
tougher thing to do.

This is the foundation of my skinny-fat fat loss system. Yeah

it’s about losing fat, but it’s also about rewiring the flinch.
There’s a difference. The short version is that when you
combine leaning down and a bunch of muscle-centric work
(experience under a barbell or with bodyweight training),
your body is in a nice spot for better partitioning.

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 Another way to think of it: fat cells vs. muscle cells. What
cell is going to get more love? The best way to shift love to
the muscle is to mute the fat cell (lose the fat) and then boost
attention to the muscle. In other words: solid base + strength
foundation. This means, as we swing to the extremes, our
body will better make use of all of this for muscle as opposed
to body fat.

Second, the solid base makes daily change in body

composition easier to detect. You won’t feel or see any short-
term effects from feasting if you’re overly fat. But at 10-11%
you can detect these feasting effects, so if you have a bigger
intake one day, your abs might be less noticeable the next
day—you feel a bit “puffier.”

Don’t worry though. This feeling doesn’t mean you gained

any sort of fat overnight. Carbohydrates, for instance, make
your body retain water. This puffiness is just a reflection of
that: holding onto more fluid. It’s nearly impossible to gain
fat overnight, and most people that think they do are simply
bloated.

Once you sense these changes, you can begin toning things
back on rest days and trying to better balance your intake.
We’re still uncovering when you should build or tear down
and when the best time to flip the switch is, but the wildcard
is subjective feeling on a daily basis. This is what truly
makes things chaotic. You need to adjust things based on
how you feel. Sometimes you know you need more.
Sometimes you know you need less.

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 The clean bulk isn’t linear. Not only do you not do the same
thing daily, but the amount you swing towards the anabolic
or catabolic side also varies. So you have two flag posts:

• training status
• subjective feeling.

Expect to deliver the needed nutrients to your body on (+)

days. But it’s OK to break even (=) some days that are
supposed to be more anabolic. Likewise, it’s OK to break
even (=) or even go above (+) needs on days that are
supposed to be (-). So go into each day with the set plan from
the overriding structure, but don’t be afraid to deviate if
need be. Not everything needs planning in advanced. Give
“feel” some freedom. But the only way to do that is if you’re
at your solid base.

• Feeling puffy? Eat less or have a catabolic day.

• Feeling lean? Go high.

Part of this is not being afraid of losing your six pack from
one day to the next because you aren’t really losing your six
pack.

The effect of carbohydrates on the solid

base
Earlier we talked about calorie cycling vs. carbohydrate
cycling, each of which has some drawbacks. With calorie
cycling, we might shortcut out fat intake. With carbohydrate
cycling, we flirt with liver glycogen issues. We are lucky
enough to have a compromise.

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 What I want to touch on right now is more of the practical
reasoning behind recommending carb cycling. We can talk
confusing physiology all we want, but the truth is this:

When calories and carbohydrates are higher, I don’t overly

fret about adding fats into the mix. I don’t really seek them
out, but I don’t really go 100% strict. I’m much more strict on
the opposite end: including carbohydrates on higher fat,
lower calorie days.

The reason why is because carbohydrates retain water. Eat a

lot of them and you’ll feel puffier than normal, and most
people think this is puffy feeling is insta-body fat—tank a
bunch of carbohydrates and wake up the next day all puffy
and think, “Oh my, I just got fat overnight!”

You didn’t. You’re likely just holding onto more water and
fluid. No biggie. When it flushes, you’ll be normal. At least,
no biggie from a fat standpoint. There is another biggie
though: this retention makes day to day solid base
judgments tougher. By keeping them lower on some days
days, you’re less prone to retain water and you sort of “flush”
yourself and get an objective look at where your body stands.

It goes a little something like this:

• More anabolic days = more carbohydrates = more bloat

(expected)
• More catabolic days = less carbohydrates = clear the
bloat

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 If you have consistent bloat, it’s tougher to judge where you
are every day.

Why bloat?
The goal is to not feel 100% lean and mean after a more
anabolic day because that’s when you know you’re eating
enough. You have to find the extremes! You want to hit a
semi-bloat point. Don’t obsess over the six pack every day.
At 10% body fat, your abs will be visible in good lighting, but
not all the time. Dropping too low in the body fat column is a
recipe for disaster.

There’s a study that recently came out about a natural (read:

no performance enhancing substances) bodybuilder’s quest
to 5% body fat. Needless to say, his life and body went down
the tubes. You can see the abstract here.

Heart rate decreased from 53 to 27 bpm during

preparation and increased to 46 bpm within one
month following competition; brachial blood
pressure dropped from 132/69 mmHg to 104/56
mmHg during preparation and returned to
116/64 mmHg at 6 months following competition;
percent body fat declined from 14.8% to 4.5%
during preparation and returned to 14.6% during
recovery; strength decreased during preparation
and did not fully recover during 6 months of
recovery; testosterone declined from 9.22 ng/mL
to 2.27 ng/mL during preparation and returned
back to the baseline level, 9.91 ng/mL, following
competition; total mood disturbance increased
from 6 to 43 units during preparation and
recovered to 4 six months following competition.

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 If you try dropping too far, you won’t grow. Not only will you
obsess over keeping the low body fat, but your internal
workings won’t do you any favors.

Training frequency layer

Training is closely tied to nutrition. Since we’re zigging and
zagging on a daily basis, it’s important that, in the long run,
these days even out so as to not get too “bulk-centric” or too
“cut-centric.”

The “rules,” so to speak, that we’ve established say that

when exactly we flip the switch can depend on a lot of things,
but that the important part is that we make use of switches
and nutraloops to capture the wind. For our purposes with
this, we’re talking about the overall tone of the day—
whether or not you end with an underfeed or overfeed.

Even if you go though intermittent nutritional stress, the

overall tone of the day (net stress) dictates eventual gain and
loss over time. This isn’t to say you get fat or lose muscle
overnight, but your overall energy balance over time will tell
you a lot about whether or not you gain or lose weight. Keep
in mind that weight says nothing about muscle or fat either,
which is why partitioning is important. But the fact remains
that energy intake as a whole is important regardless of
short-term (intermittent) feeding patterns.

This is why I often say that intermittent fasting is a

vehicle, not a direction. It’s useful per nutraloopology, but
it also falls under the overall umbrella of total nutritional
stress.

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 It’s important to balance days of underfeeding and
overfeeding, which then means it’s important to take note of
training quantity. Every time we breakdown, we have to
consider the rebuild. If we have days of underfeeding, this
makes for a slippery slope. The more training tips to one end
of the spectrum (either too frequently or not frequently
enough), the tougher it is to walk the line.

The best amount of training

The ideal training frequency is three-to-five days per week,
with four being “best.” More than that, and the majority of
your days will be (+) days. Less and the majority will be (-)
days . . . as long as you’re trying to optimize recovery, or as
long as your training at an intensity that warrants a big
enough recovery hit from nutrition.

More aggressive muscle building attempts can have five or

six training days. You just have to accept one of two fates:

• You accept the higher calorie intake and err to the

“bulking” side of things, even though it makes fat gain
likelier.
• You treat a training day with less-than-ideal nutrition.

If you train daily, pick the heaviest days (generally 3-4 for
the clean bulk) and tailor your nutrition to muscle building.

I train with a higher frequency, but only have 3-4 overfeed

days because my training style has a lot to do with my
decisions. Even though I train with a high frequency, beyond
my four “harder” sessions, the other ones usually keep me

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 fresh and chipper. Also, I don’t have an “arms” day, which
goes back to breaking down the majority of the body when I
train to prevent further breakdown. I’m not sure an arms
day would do such systematic-sympathetic damage to
warrant huge nutrition.

This returns to the idea that training and nutrition should

match, which is why I don’t like advanced body part splits
combined with this kind of feeding scheme. You’re probably
going to shortchange some body parts because you’re
underfeeding at times. I tear down just about my entire body
every training session, it builds back up as one.

Not yet solid

If you aren’t at your solid base, that should be your first goal.
Not only is it going to better your partitioning and muscle
building, but it’s also going to make progress easier to track.

To get down there, you can use what’s in this guide to help
you, erring to more of the LoC- days with only one or two
HiC+ days.

You can also check out Brad Pilon’s Eat Stop Eat, as that
silently makes use of the concepts in this book. Taking one
or two days and really dipping into an energy deficit means
you’re not in said deficit the other days of the week, which
bodes well for muscle retention.

My personal fat loss ethos is more than “fat loss.” The solid
base represents a certain kind of physiological function. My
programs are designed to get you to this point.

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 The best position to be in for clean bulking is a position in
which (a) you don’t have to worry about losing fat and (b)
your body is already physiologically rewired to be nudging
nutrients towards muscle (insulin sensitive) and not
necessarily fat cells. This is nutrient partitioning, which we
touched on earlier.

We talk about muscle gain being primarily a factor of net

energy, but fat gain is also a part of this. If you have bad
partitioning, you might have the same net energy influx, but
you’re prone to store the excess as fat instead of muscle.

While you can use what’s presented in this book, if you’re in

this for the best way to reset the body in a way primed for
gaining muscle without getting fat that I know of, I’d check
out The Skinny-Fat Solution.

Clean bulk vs. recomposition

Clean bulking is about putting on muscle without getting
fat. This isn’t the same as putting on muscle and losing fat
at the same time. The latter is known as a recomposition and
is often something people try, usually unsuccessfully.

The problem most people run into is that they’re trying to

develop two skills at once. It’s like playing the piano and
guitar and trying to get good at both. If you don’t know how
to lose fat and don’t know how to gain weight, the odds of
you being able to do both simultaneously drop.

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 Not saying it can’t happen, as it can, but it’s not the norm.
On top of this, you have the fat cells that are always in the
mix unless you drown them out.

If you want to recomp, I say enter at your own peril. I think

that following a more solid structure is the way to go, but
that’s just me. That’s why I feel that, when trying to lose fat,
all of this nutrient rotation business is more advanced than
you need. Your first goal should be to find something that
facilitates fat loss.

Another thing that’s built into SOLDIER is gently acquiring

the skills needed to gain muscle without getting fat. I often
say that coming into the clean bulk requires two skills:

• Fat loss – you have to know how to lose fat rather

easily, preferably with nothing but nutritional
modifications
• Maintaining – you have to know how to maintain your
weight with nothing but strength training

The third skill that you need is the building skill. Once you
put those three together, you essentially rotate between
these.

The clean bulk starts with bulking. You have to intake

enough calories on anabolic days for some storage building to
take place. Maintenance won’t cut it. You need to eat at a
respectable amount when you’re ready to flip the switch. The
term “feast” is applicable here. And I only say this because a
huge hitch in most clean bulk attempts is eating like a bird

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 for fear of fat gain. You won’t get fat in one day. Embrace
experimentation with the high end of your calorie tolerance.
Jack up those carbohydrates after your training sessions.

This is where some people can even get away with “unclean
foods.” I wouldn’t make it a staple, but it’s not out of the
question. When you’re limiting meals, sometimes you need to
get more energy-rich foods, but check out The Goku Effect for
more on this.

Eat as much as you “feel” like you need on catabolic days. It’s
an ambiguous recommendation, but that’s part of the chaos.
I can’t predict this for you. Treat your catabolic days as fat
loss days and your anabolic days as weight gain days. You’re
doing things right when you feel ripped and jacked coming
off low carbohydrate catabolic days and when you feel full
and dense on high carbohydrate anabolic days.

The toughest part about all of this is the chaos. The gray
area. People want total control when it comes to dieting. I’m
telling you that there’s no control. There’s only chaos. You
can’t predict what the body is going to do. You can only
follow a set of principles that hopefully nudge the body in the
right direction.

Setting baselines
Forget about fat loss and not being at your solid base. We’re
back into clean bulk mode.

The toughest part about this is setting baselines. And it’s

only tough because you have to forgo calculations. Pick a

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 baseline level of food and an eating scheme (both of which
are explained in detail soon enough) then just eat. Tough
stuff right?

Eat this baseline level of food for a little while and see how
your body responds. If you lose weight you know that you
need to eat more. If you gain you know you need to eat less.
If nothing happens, you have the world at your finger tips.

On anabolic days
Finding the “ideal” intake on anabolic days involves probing
the extremes. You need to eat enough so that it results in
changes in body composition the following day. This might
take some time, so be patient.

You have to find a lower level and an upper level. The lower
level is the amount of food you can eat while waking up the
next day without change. The upper level is the amount of
food you can eat while waking up the next day feeling kind of
“bigger.” Don’t worry. It’s just water retention, and you
shouldn’t really feel “fat.”

Don’t be afraid to experiment. It might be scary to sack up

and eat 2000 calories worth of rice in addition to everything
else you tank, but that’s the name of the game. You have to
probe the upper limit.

This will leave you with a “break-even” amount and an

“upper limit” amount. On the majority of your training days,
you have to at least break even. If you pound down a bunch

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 of food and wake up the next day feeling ultra-lean, you need
to eat more. It’s that simple.

Everything else is chaotic. But you want to find an upper

level of food that makes your muscles feel fuller the next
day. Not a fat fuller. But an “I’m pretty jacked right now”
fuller.

On rest days
Catabolic day experimentation works in tandem with
anabolic day experimentation. But now you’re looking for a
“lower limit” amount and a “break-even” amount. If you’ve
ever lost fat in the past, you know your lower limit.

You’re looking for an amount that has you waking up the

next day feeling ripped and jacked. If you ever feel or look
depleted, you’re below the lower limit. If you’re struggling
with energy in the weight room, you’re also likely below your
lower limit.

The break-even limit is the amount that has you waking up

the next day relatively unchanged.

Keeping a level head

These daily changes are very subtle, and they take a while to
get used to. Remember, this is a lifestyle not a short-term
strategy. All is not lost if you take a month or two and
experiment with things if it sets you up for years of success.

Since you don’t gain muscle or lose fat in one day, hinging
everything on daily feelings can be misleading. They guide

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 things, but they shouldn’t rule things. It’s easy to let this
daily evaluation get to your head. Soon you’ll freak out every
day.

“Oh my gosh, my lower left abdominal muscle isn’t showing!”

Calm down. You can’t freak out like that on the short-term
scale, otherwise you’re going to crash diet and drop calories
absurdly low.

To safeguard from this (even I succumb to it at times), I

created a philosophy: never be two weeks away. At any given
time, you don’t want to go beyond a body composition that
would take more than two weeks to get back to solid base
range.

So if you’re looking to gain muscle, increase calories on

anabolic days consistently over a week or two. If you reach
an upper limit of food you feel like you can eat, and you still
aren’t gaining weight, bump calories up on catabolic days
too.

Keep going if the mirror shows positive things. After a few

weeks, you might notice that your abdominal definition isn’t
exactly what it used to be even though it’s still there. So, you
can then take a week or two and roll back calorie levels until
you’re back at the lower range of your solid base. (Drop
calories from catabolic days and gauge progress before
dropping them on training days.)

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 So in light of wanting to waiver between 10-11% body fat,
never get two weeks away from 10-11ish% body fat. So you
can have weeks that err on the side of muscle gain, but never
extend beyond being two weeks of work away from dropping
down to the solid base. This keeps things in check.

The most practical way to measure

So if you’re one of the people that can’t handle the reality of
chaos and want something more tangible for tracking
purposes, here’s what you do.

Every week, once per week, take pictures of yourself.

Preferably you’d get front and side views of your front and
back (entire body, too; not just upper). Take them under the
same lighting conditions and under the same “pre-day”
conditions.

By “pre-day” conditions, I mean that you don’t want to

compare pictures where the day before you were high carb
and ate a ton of food and pictures where the day before you
were low carb and ate less food.

(Ideally, you’d take your pictures coming off of a lower

carbohydrate day so you wouldn’t have as much bloat, which
reflects a “truer” physique.)

With these pictures, you’re looking at one thing: where is

your body fat standing? If, over the course of two-three-four
weeks you notice you’re gaining body fat, you know you’re
overdoing your anabolic days (most likely, if you’re truly
playing by my catabolic day rules).

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 On the flip side, if you’re maintaining leanness, the big
question is this: are you feeling good and making
progress in the gym?

If so, then you’re on the right track. Your body will likely
take care of business in the long run.

If you notice yourself getting smaller muscularly week to

week (or hitting a giant wall in the gym), then you know you
probably need to eat more.

It’s really really tough to gauge muscle gain on a week to

week basis, so don’t try. Save trying to gauge muscle
progress for more of a month to month basis. Keep the week
to week at body fat.

Making it simple
The goal is to have a ballpark guess amount of food that
gives you that full, jacked feeling the day after anabolic days
(not necessarily fat), and one that gives you that lean, jacked
feeling the day after catabolic days (not necessarily
emaciated). Then, bounce back and forth between the two.

This sounds good, but it lacks substance. What does it mean?

Where are the examples? What should you eat?

The more we muck around and change variables, the

tougher any diet becomes. An underrated nutritional
commodity is sustainability. Sustainability is more
important than precision.

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 That’s why I like operating from a “base” of food. This “base”
is eaten just about daily. High energy. Low energy. Low
carb. High carb. Doesn’t matter.

When you operate from a base of food, you reduce the

moving parts. The base ensures you’re hitting certain
numbers you need to hit. Then it’s all about adjusting the
one or two pieces that need adjusted.

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 CHAPTER EIGHT
key points
Instead of being confined by calorie intake, we rotate
energy consumption based on biofeedback—based
upon what the mirror tells us.

Because we rely on the visual measure, we have to be

lean enough to observe changes. This level of leanness is
something I call the solid base.

Beyond the visual benefits, being at the solid base

with experience strength training is an ideal spot for
better partitioning.

Carbohydrates make us retain water. You don’t get fat

overnight.

The gist of zigging and zagging is about eating enough

to have slight visual feedback and then eating less to
return to “normal.”

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 NINE
NUKING NUMBERS

N
umbers make things complicated. The less we use
the better. That’s why I categorize foods instead of
counting calories or examining macronutrient
breakdown.

Food categorization makes carbohydrate cycling super easy.

Calculating out each specific macronutrient on food labels is
like freaking out after dropping a penny down a drain. Don’t
obsess over small things. Losing a penny won’t make you
poor. Don’t obsess over the five-or-so grams of protein in
oatmeal. Just focus on dense protein sources. Let the penny
fall down the drain, as long as you still have the $200 in your
pocket.

Most people fail because of these tiny calculations.

Information overload is at an all time high thanks to the
internet. We need simplicity. And there’s no simplicity in
eating oatmeal for protein.

A lot of foods plop nicely into one of the three macronutrient

categories: proteins, fats, or carbohydrates. And when they

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 plop into two different categories, it almost always
corresponds with carbohydrate cycling principles.

Here are some examples:

• Chicken – predominantly protein

• Potatoes – predominantly carbohydrate
• Fruit – predominantly carbohydrate
• Most cheese – a mix of proteins and fats
• Eggs – a mix of proteins and fats
• Low fat yogurt – a mix of carbohydrates and proteins

Sure, there might be some carbohydrates in full-fat cottage

cheese. But don’t sweat the pennies. Here’s a more
comprehensive categorization:

Starchy Carbohydrates Fats Proteins

Oatmeal Oils Chicken

Beans Nuts Lean Fish

Rice Avocado Lean Red

Meat
Quinoa Fish Oil
Unflavored,
unsweetend
Potatoes Flax Seed protein
supplements
Fruits

Vegetables

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 Carbohydrates & Fat & Carbohydrates &

Protein Protein Fat & Protein

Fat Free Red Meat Full Fat

Plain, Plain,
Unflavored Unflavored
Yogurt Poultry Yogurt

Fat Free Milk Fattier Full Fat Milk

Fish

Fat Free
Cottage Cheese
Cheese
Eggs

(This list isn’t all encompassing and is rather American-

centric. But I’m from America and not cultured enough to
experience the cuisine around the world. Do I get bonus
points for honesty?)

If you eat foods not on this list, categorize them the same
way. Check out the nutrition facts on the package. See what
the dominant macronutrient is. You can also look foods up
online.

Greek yogurt, for instance, has a slightly better protein to

carbohydrate ratio than traditional yogurt, so you have more
leeway. Always be sure to check up on nutrition facts, even if
the foods are relatively similar.

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 Carbohydrate cycling
Categorizing foods makes diet organization easier and
calculations moot.

Anabolic Days
• High starchy carbohydrate intake
• Medium-high protein intake
• Lower fat intake

Stick to foods in the carbohydrate, protein, or

carbohydrate+protein categories

Catabolic Days
• Low starchy carbohydrate intake (infinite non-starchy
veggies)
• High protein intake
• Medium-high fat intake

Stick to foods in the fats, protein, or fats+protein categories.

Including goodies that contain carbohydrates+fats+proteins

is at your discretion and depends on how strictly you want to
approach things. The goal isn’t to be an absolute martyr and
stick to these guidelines 100%.

I think it’s best to have a little leeway on each day. For

instance, on little/no-carbohydrate days I have a banana
with some homemade protein pudding. On high
carbohydrate days, I’m known to put some cheese on my rice.
There’s a difference between allowing these small things to

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 keep you on track and going overboard. One banana isn’t the
same as a vat of rice. A bit of cheese isn’t the same as a
gallon of oil or an entire package of pistachios. There has to
be a point that allows you to stick to the guidelines as best
as possible but also allows for you to actually enjoy your
food.

Three more categories

This system can be broken into three more categories based
on partitioning. Ironically enough (or not ironically
enough, depending on how you look at it), these categories
mesh very well with carbohydrate cycling. The three
categories are neutrals, exclusives, and tweeners.

Neutral foods can be eaten whenever and wherever because

of their favorable relationship with partitioning.

Exclusives alter the bodily processes that effect

partitioning. They can’t be eaten as freely as neutral foods.
It’s best to eat them at the right times and with
complimentary nutrients.

Tweeners are technically exclusives with a little more

leeway, but this branch category makes the system easier to
use.

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 Neutrals
Neutral foods are well partitioned and can be eaten any time
on any day. Lean protein foods are partitioned well. White
meat chicken, turkey, tuna, lean meat, lean fish. (The key to
all of this being lean.) All of these things get the green light
at any meal. Leafy, green, cruciferous, and non-starchy
vegetables are neutral. They have a low caloric load
compared to their food volume. Thin-skinned berries also
sneak their way in as long as they are eaten in moderation.

Just about anyone can eat a host of lean protein and leafy
green vegetables and lose weight. This is particularly why
“paleo-esque” diets work well for people looking to lose fat.
Protein isn’t readily stored as fat, lean protein is rather
filling, and green vegetables are disgustingly low in calories
for their volume. (We’ll get into the digestive cost of food
later which plays a role here.

Neutrals
• White chicken and turkey or other lean meat
• Lean fish
• Protein supplements without sugar
• Most fibrous/cruciferous vegetables, Thin Skinned
Berries in moderation (blue berries, raspberries,
boysenberries)

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 Exclusives
Exclusive foods are fat-dense or carbohydrate-dense foods
best reserved for their specific “high” day.

Exclusives

Starchy carbs Fats

• Oatmeal • Pork
• Beans • Fattier cheese
• Barley • Fattier fish
• Rice • Fattier red meat
• Quinoa • Oils
• Potatoes • Nuts
• Fruits • Avocado
• Low-fat dairy • Eggs

Tweeners
Tweeners have a mixed macronutrient distribution. They
can be eaten on either high carbohydrate or low
carbohydrate days depending on how strict you want to be.

Eggs are a great example of a tweener. Some people (like

myself) eat them daily because they are a cheap source of
protein even though they contain some fat. Remember that
both days have some wiggle room.

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 Six eggs have as much fat as two tablespoons of olive oil. You
have to eat a boatload of eggs to hit a noteworthy fat intake.
It’s much easier to “overdo” the olive oil. That’s why eggs are
a tweener and oil is an exclusive. (I generally recommend
getting most of your fats from whole foods instead of oils
anyway.)

Tweeners have a home, but can float neutral as no day

completely excludes a specific macronutrient. Strive to
eliminate tweeners if you’re looking to lean down or are on
the high end of the body fat range for clean bulking. Have
full fat cottage cheese on low carbohydrate days. Drink skim
milk and eat fat free yogurt on high carbohydrate days. (If
you’re into dairy, that is.)

Tweeners
• Full fat Milk
• Plain, Unflavored Yogurt
• Eggs
• Cottage cheese

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 Eliminating the complexity
The complexity of carbohydrate cycling isn’t so complex
anymore. The idea of eating “more” or “less” on specific days
is now a matter of “more” or “less” of certain foods. Now it’s
much more of an “eat this, not that” experience.

Anabolic Days
• High starchy carbohydrate intake
• Medium-high protein intake
• Lower fat intake

Stick to neutral and carbohydrate exclusive foods. Tweeners

at your discretion.

Catabolic Days
• Low carbohydrate intake (infinite non-stachy veggie
consumption)
• High protein intake
• Medium-high fat intake

Stick to neutral and fat exclusive foods. Tweeners at your

discretion.

Further eliminating complexity

One day my mentor put everything in perspective. He said
that the simplest way to eat to fuel muscle gains is to eat one
pound of meat, drink three protein shakes, and down six
eggs every day. He also mentioned to “fill in the rest with
whatever.”

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 I blew him off of course.

“Six eggs? Three protein shakes? One pound of meat?

Absurd.”

But whenever I started following this oh-so complicated

recommendation, I started making good progress.

These three things: one pound of meat, six eggs, and three
protein shakes (each shake consisting of 20-25 grams of
protein via plain, unflavored, unsweetened whey protein in
water) are going to be referred to as the Chaos Core.

The Chaos Core, untouched, works for me because I’m

around 190-210 pounds (depending on the season). So to
adjust based on your body weight . . .

a ~200 pound male’s chaos core would look like...

• One pound of meat (around 0.45 kg)

• Six eggs
• Three scoops of whey protein (all told 60-75 grams of
protein)

a ~150 pound male’s chaos core would look like...

• One pound of meat (around 0.45 kg)

• Three eggs
• Two scoops of whey protein (40-50 grams of protein)

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 for Most females, the chaos core looks like...

• Half pound of meat (around 0.22 kg)

• Three eggs
• One or two 70cc scoops (20-50 grams of protein)

What the CC affords

“Meat” and “eggs” are a bit ambiguous here. There are
different meats and different sized eggs. But let’s assume
lean white chicken breast and “large” eggs.

One Pound of Chicken ~ 480 calories, 100 grams of protein

Six Large Eggs ~ 540 calories, 36 grams of protein, 40 grams

of fat

Three Scoops Whey ~ 350 calories, 75 grams of protein

Totals:

• 1370 calories
• 215 grams of protein
• 40 grams of fat

This is on the high end of the general protein range and

anabolic-day fat range, but it works as long as you’re already
at your solid base.

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 Eating Chaos Core-style gets us close enough to the earlier
numbers. Setting up a “base” diet like this makes
calculations moot given our understanding of carbohydrate
cycling.

On anabolic days
On anabolic days, eat the Chaos Core and add carbohydrate
exclusive and neutral foods at your discretion.

Tank twelve sweet potatoes? Having no residual effects in

the mirror the next morning? Down more carbohydrate
exclusives on your next anabolic day.

Likewise, if tanking twelve sweet potatoes does make you

feel fuller and jacked overnight, you know you’re eating
“enough.” And if it creates another chub roll within one
week, you know you’re probably eating “too much.” No
numbers needed. It’s simply a matter of “another potato,” or
“another cup of rice,” or “another bowl of oats.”

Use any lean meat as a substitute for chicken on anabolic

days (turkey, elk). The Chaos Core is one pound of meat. The
meat is arbitrary as long as it adheres to carbohydrate
cycling principles. Fish works too. Tuna, tilapia, and similar
lean fish are good substitutes on training days.

Don’t be afraid to bend tweeners or add in neutral foods

either. Have some low-fat cottage cheese with frozen blue
berries. Throw some broccoli, green beans, and cayenne
pepper in with your rice. Have fun. Be creative.

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 On catabolic days
Since catabolic days have more “fat leeway,” you have
further meat freedom. Steak, ground chuck, salmon, and
other fattier meats and fish are good choices.

The rules don’t change: down the pound, eat the eggs, pound
the protein. Fill gaps with fat exclusives and neutral foods.
Stick to vegetables for your carbohydrate intake, and don’t
be afraid to add protein dominated fat-based tweeners. Make
a spinach salad and top with a few walnuts, a few hardboiled
eggs, and some full fat cottage cheese.

On whey . . .
I recommend a higher consumption of whey protein because
it’s cheap. Ori Hofmekler is high on whey because he says it
triggers the exact pathway needed for muscle building. If
that’s true, cool. That might be one of the reasons this whole
gig is successful, but I have no personal high on whey
protein. It’s just a cost effective way to get enough of the
macronutrient we need. I see it as ground up powdered
chicken breast, myself.

I do, however, recommend going no sweetener, no flavoring.

That’s just my take, savvy? I make protein pudding. You can
find the long version of how to make it here. You can find the
short version of how to make it here. Protein + water +
cinnamon + nutmeg + banana = heaven to me. Maybe you’ll
find it as enjoyable as I do.

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 On eggs . . .
A few things to know about eggs. First, they won’t kill you.
Unless you have some kind of previous heart or
cardiovascular disorder, eggs are one of the healthiest things
you can eat. Read this if you’re feeling iffy.

Second, eggs have the potential to cause a food allergy. This

isn’t something a lot of people get, but some people are at
risk. This is where your doctor is your friend. Allergies
usually pop up when you go from 0 to 60. If you aren’t used
to eating eggs and start eating six out of nowhere, you might
find yourself at an increased risk. Increase consumption
slowly.

If you’re at risk for an egg allergy, you can rotate between

eggs and cottage cheese. Aim for a similar 500 calories
worth. You can also rotate between how you cook eggs
(hardboiled, etc.). This will help with allergies too.

Third, eggs confuse people with carbohydrate cycling rules. I

used to tell people to avoid eating all six eggs with the most
carbohydrate dense meal. But after experimentation I don’t
think it’s necessary. For a long time, I ate six eggs on high
carbohydrate days with my carbohydrate dense meal (as I
only eat one meal per day).

One of the benefits of creating a “core” of food is that you can

eat it every day, but as of late, I’ve been ditching the eggs on
anabolic days because I’ve grown to be a little less lax with
fats elsewhere. I usually throw some cheese on my rice or
potatoes and maybe use sour cream here and there. So I’m

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 not eating eggs because I’m getting fat elsewhere, not
because I think a little bit of fat on high carbohydrate days
will wreck the house. I’ll show you how I set up my days
soon, but I think you should try both ways.

I will say that if you’re in it to lose fat (not yet solid) and
following the cycling principles, I suggest replacing the eggs
with one cup of cottage cheese on anabolic days. Rest days,
keep the eggs.

What the core does

Using the example above, you can see that the core of food
that’s been created essentially creates the following
categories.

Anabolic
• Protein source A: lean meat
• Protein source B: protein powder
• Protein source C: eggs

Translation: protein with a bit of fat

Catabolic
• Protein source A: fattier meat
• Protein source B: protein powder
• Protein source C: eggs

Translation: protein with a bit more fat

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 I don’t want you to get caught up in eating the same thing
every day if you don’t want to, which is why this is all about
learning how to make good substitutions. Say you cook a
fattier meat and it’s an anabolic day. What happens? Do you
cry to the heavens? No. Just ditch the eggs.

Say it’s a catabolic say and tilapia is on the menu—a fish

with little fat. What do you do? Curse the sky? No. Maybe
you throw some cheese on your eggs, have a handful of
almonds, and breathe. It'll all be okay.

These categories simply help you keep track of the bigger

picture instead of the fine details, and that’s what it’s all
about. So when you see me say that when I’m inclined to
dowse my rice in cheddar cheese and top it with hot sauce
and a dab of sour cream (and I am oh-so inclined), I probably
won’t eat my eggs that day.

The days
All of the rules we’ve made so far boil down to having the
following days. The goal is to set up a framework that
requires little thinking, and here’s how I go about setting
mine up.

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 Catabolic / fat loss
(-) (-) (=)
Starchless Starchless Starchless
and strict: and under: and even:
• one pound of meat • six eggs • six eggs
• protein pudding + • one pound of meat • one pound of meat
banana • protein pudding + • protein pudding +
• as many non- banana banana (or two)
starchy vegetables • as many non- • as many non-
as I can wrap my starchy vegetables starchy vegetables
head around as I need to feel as I need
full • more fats (bacon,
cheese, meat,
Adding anything else avocado, nuts)
into the mix is at your
discretion. For me it’s
Allow more leeway
usually a bit of cheese
eating other fats. It’s
on the eggs. Since we
not something I try to
can have more protein
plan. Sometimes it just
on (-) days feel free to
happens. There are
have more if you feel
times, however, where
like you need it.
if I’m feeling extremely
run down and a (-) day
is supposed to show
up, I’ll know to eat
more and make it a
higher calorie (=)
meal.

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 Anabolic / muscle gain
(+) Starchy (+) Starchy Notes:
and and fat: Based upon years of
starchier: • one pound of meat work, I know round
• one pound of meat • protein pudding + about how many
• protein pudding + banana starchy
banana • either six eggs or carbohydrates I’ll
• as many non- bit of other fats need on these days.
starchy vegetables (maybe if I use If you’re just
as I can wrap my cheese or sour starting, you’ll have
head around cream) to experiment with
• as many starchy • as many non- increasing or
carbs as I can wrap starchy vegetables decreasing intake
my head around as I can wrap my based upon what
head around the mirror tells you
• as many starchy after these days.
carbs as I can wrap
my head around A future note: As
you can see, I’ve yet
to master the
starchy (=) days and
this goes back to the
bloating
conundrum. The
conclusion gives
suggestions.

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 Use these categories loosely
Keeping with the theme, think category. Do you have to eat a
banana every day? After you try the protein pudding, you
might want to. (I know I do.) But you can go with practically
any other fruit you want in that slot.

Use the recommendations for the Core based on your

bodyweight, but don’t be afraid to mix things up. I have a
hunter that gets me boatloads of deer meat at an insanely
cheap price. Suffice to say, most of my meat during the
winter is deer. That’s fine because it’s not about being
married to any specific foods right now.

Special situations and considerations

I’m going to give you two other days that are bound to come
up, both based around the idea of having a “cheat” day.

Cheat days are days when you can go ahead and indulge in
any of your cravings, but I’m not a huge fan of cheat days. I’d
much rather you’d go with one cheat meal per week. Just
take one meal and relax and eat something you might not
otherwise eat. I’d prefer it not be deep fried to death or
coated in hydrogenated oils, but if that’s something you feel
like you need, then so be it.

One of these meals per week is fine, and is something I’d

consider to be a starchy cheat meal.

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 Special situations
(+) Cheat: (-) Vegetables and
• Eat anything you want for one drunkenness:
meal on one day • as many non-starchy vegetables
as I can wrap my head around
If you drink alcohol one day per week, • alcohol
go ahead and do it on this cheat day.
I’d prefer you allow this indulgence in
What often destroys you from an
one meal, as doing it over an entire
alcohol standpoint isn’t always the
day tends to kill progress.
alcohol (although it can), but rather
that you typically eat slop when
If you end up drinking more than one
you’re drinking. Exercising this sort
day per week, then here’s a
of method requires some will power,
suggestion.
so keep that in mind.

Alcohol and any energy-dense food

If the thought of nothing but
(carbohydrates or fats) don’t mix well
vegetables scares you, then you can
for body composition purposes. On
add lean protein in on these days.
weekends that you might be drinking
Keep in mind, without carbohydrates
back to back, consider making one
in your stomach and without fat
day an “all vegetables” day.
coating your intestines, you’ll
probably get drunk a lot faster than
Remember how we talked about
you normally do.
protein and cycling intake? Well
dropping intake to the floor on a
Not saying this is the best way to deal
sporadic occasion is, I think, a
with the situation, but—hey—it
strategy you can make use of.
works.

If you’re looking to mitigate damage

done from drinking, then stick to non-
starchy vegetables.

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 Finding your intake
Take not of the red bullets from the templates above. Those
are the variables that change on any given day—it’s the
wildcard. The non-starchy vegetables are typically the
wildcard for hunger. I mentioned before that I don’t think
you should worry about overdoing them, but rather worry
about underdoing them.

Settling into an ideal intake is as simple as eating a stable

quantity of food, and then eating either more or less of the
wildcard depending on the results.

If you lose weight after two weeks, you’re on the right path if
your goal is weight loss. If your goal was weight gain, you’d
eat more of the wildcard on each specific day. More
carbohydrates on high carbohydrate day. More fats on low
carbohydrate day.

(I generally only recommend increasing fats on low-

carbohydrate “catabolic” days if you’re really struggling to
eat enough (low appetite) on high-carb training days. And if
this is you, there might even be a better way to go about
things.

Given that replenishing energy stores is a priority, and

glucose is the primary energy source for high intensity muscle
contractions, you need ample starchy carbs. If you’re failing
to eat them on anabolic days from a low appetite, you might
be better off ditching carbohydrate cycling and sticking to
calorie cycling.

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 On the other end, if you’re eating plenty on high-carbohydrate
days—and giving your body enough carbohydrates—and still
not gaining weight, then it’s a good idea to up the fat intake
on rest days.)

A little experimentation goes a long way in figuring a rough

level of food you need to eat.

• If you’re losing weight, you know you need to eat more if

you want to gain weight. But you know what it takes to
lose weight.
• If you’re gaining weight, you know you need to eat less if
you want to lose weight. But you know a roundabout level
of what it takes to gain weight.
• If your weight is stagnant, you know that it’s simply
about “eating more” to gain weight and “eating less” to
lose weight.

Just how much more and how much less of said foods you
need varies from person to person. This is the individual
nature of metabolic rate. A widely accepted rule is 500
calories above maintenance for gaining and 500 below for
losing.

But it’s almost always best to ditch the numbers and get a
little crude. Just go for the extra handful of nuts. The extra
slab of meat. The extra sweet potato. Don’t become a slave to
math. Unless, of course, you want to.

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 Numbers for the needy
Counting calories and doing calculations sucks. Let’s whine
together in hopes that a magic fairy grants us the power to
be ripped, jacked, strong, and gives us the ability to eat
infinite Pop-Tarts.

Knowing specific numbers isn’t necessary. I don’t count

calories anymore. I did in 2006 for about six months. That
was enough of that. If you want numbers, you’ll get ‘em here.

The wildcard
The chaos within a clean bulk allows for leeway in just how
much or how little we eat on any given day. For simplicity,
only one variable can be up for change. Twist too many
knobs, and you’ll lose your mind.

We got a lot of high, low, and decent markers floating within

the structure. It’s time to give those descriptors some frame
of reference for those that feel a little squeamish going at
this blind.

On anabolic days, fat and protein intake

is set. Carbohydrate intake is up for
chaos.

On catabolic days, carbohydrate and

protein intake is set. Fat intake is up for
chaos.

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 Overall metabolic rate
Overall metabolic rate hints at how many calories are
needed to maintain weight. Don’t confuse it with basal
metabolic rate (BMR). BMR estimates calories needed
assuming nothing but bed rest. Hopefully you’re a bit more
active than that.

I prefer using the following super-sophisticated calculation

for overall metabolic rate:

(body weight) x (12-15) = overall metabolic rate

Use 12 if you work a sedentary job. Use 13-14 if you’re

slightly active during the day. Use 15 if you’re really active.
(Being really active is more than lifting weights for an hour
for exercise. This is for those that are on their feet eight
hours every day doing some physical labor.)

It’s always better to err on the side of less to start. It’s not
meant to be an ultimate predictor either. You will self adjust
your intake a little later on anyway.

To give you some perspective, the crude recommendation for

weight loss is BW (in pounds) multiplied by 12.

If you want them...

Setting up this structure takes numbers out of the equation.
And that’s been the goal since day one. So take the numbers
below to heart. But use them as a general guide. Good luck.

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 Goal % above or below % above or below
maintenance on maintenance on
catabolic days anabolic days

Beginner Fat Loss -20% 0%

Advanced Fat Loss -30% 0%
Hardcore Fat Loss, -20% to -30 % -10% to -20 %
No Regard for
Muscle
Return from fat 0% 0%
loss phase
(to “reset” things
and settle into a
baseline quantity
for maintenance)
Gaining Muscle -10% to 0% +10% to +30%

Losing Fat -20% to -10% 0% to +10%

Recomposition -20% +20%
Recomposition -20% to -30% +10%
More Fat Loss
Recomposition -10% to -20% +20% to +30%
More Muscle

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 Anabolic Days Catabolic Days
(3-4 Days / Week ) (3-4 Days / Week)

Optimized for Building Muscle Optimized for fat loss

More calories Less calories

High starchy carbohydrate Decent fat intake

intake

Controlled fat intake Keep carbs to minimum

Decent protein intake Decent to high protein intake

Metabolic rate: bw x 12-15+ Metabolic rate: bw x 10-15

Protein: 1 x BW Protein: 1 x BW +

Fat: <0.3 g per lb Fat: ?

Carbohydrate: ? Carbohydrate: <100g

PRIMARILY Neutral and carb PRIMARILY Neutral and fat

exclusive foods exclusive foods

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 TEN
The switch

T
he only thing left in this puzzle is solidifying when
to eat. You’re going to eat most of your energy in a
1-8 hour window.

• You’re either going to scavenge, portion control, or fast

for part of the day.
• The other part of the day, you’re going to underfeed or
overfeed.

• On the days you eat less, keep starchy carbohydrates to

a minimum.
• On the days you eat more, you should be plentiful with
carbohydrates and mindful (but not super anal) about
fats.

All of that brings us to this question: how and when to

capture the wind from day to day. When are anabolic days
best used? Catabolic? And how should your days look? How
does it all fit in with training?

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 There are two ways to capture the wind from day to day.

• Same day as training

• Opposite day of training

Most people typically recommend same day. Me? I’m not

very typical, but before we go there, let’s talk about stress.
(Yes, again.)

The psychological stress

You might think we’ve talked all there is to talk about stress
with training stress and the various types of nutritional
stress. But there’s one stress that’s perhaps most important
that we haven’t got to yet: psychological stress.

Most of us downplay stress more than we probably should.

According to Robert Sapolsky, most of us living in a
Westernized culture will probably die of some stress-related
disease. But the type of stress Sapolsky talks about isn’t
nutritional or training stress, but rather psychological
stress, and this is the idea of stress most of us have when we
hear the word stress itself. The commute to work. The fight
with the significant other. The bills.

Life.

In most situations, nutritional stress just happens. Your

body deals with it, and everything is fine. But what’s not fine
is when the nutritional stress begins to tear at you
psychologically. When getting into the world of underfeeding
and fasting, it might be something you are a little uneasy

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 about. Trust me, I was too. If I hadn’t broken my foot and
wasn’t able to cook, I probably would have melted down. But
that wasn’t the case because I didn’t have any other choice.

There are two ways to look at hunger.* One is that it’s evil
and eating your insides away. Another is that it’s a positive
thing that’s actually helping you to your goal. Your
perception matters. No “diet” works when you’re stressed out
psychologically.

*I’m talking small hunger pangs. For most of us, all of our hunger is
“small” hunger. When you go without food for 16+ hours then you
can start to say your hunger pangs are a little more significant.

If you’re ever uneasy, you need to work your way into things.
I’m throwing an entire world in your face that took me three
years to adapt to. You might finish this book in one week!
Respect this and know that it’s a process.

I mentioned that fasting makes you hard. (It took me three

edits to realize that the previous sentence could be taken
sexually. I left it in because I’m self published and can do
things like that.) It makes you numb to hunger. It might
actually make you thrive with hunger. This is important to
mention because if it fails to do this over time, you’re
probably on the wrong path.

For me, when I couldn’t cook because of my broken foot, I

had no reason to complain. My girlfriend took care of me. I
woke up to a pot of coffee and reality: I was going to be
hungry, I wasn’t used to it, but I couldn’t do anything about
it.

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 The template we’re going to work up to? Like, the top dog?

One meal per day.

But we aren’t going to jump into it, and I overtly state that
it’s not for everyone. Respect sequence here, but also respect
who you are. The scavenge and portion control methods are
in place to help those that aren’t suited to absolute longer
duration fasting because not everyone is. Don’t force
something upon yourself that you aren’t ready for, and don’t
make quick judgments.

The first time I moved to one meal per day I hated it. I
jumped into it too quickly and had nothing but negative
things to say. Fast forward one year, now I only eat one meal
per day and have for the last year.

It’s important to respect sequence, so that’s what we will do.

We start with the easier fasting templates and work our way
down from there.

If you ever find yourself stressed out about this, then you
might best off taking a step back and settling into one of the
templates that isn’t psychologically stressful. Settle into that
one like nobody’s business, and then take a leap beyond your
comfort zone when you’re more mentally prepared for it.

When to flip the switch

We’ve talked about a few different strategies on when to flip
the switch between any sort of underfed catabolic window to
a more plentiful fed anabolic window. Earlier I said that the

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 soonest would be 30-60 minutes post training. I also said
that few things can be done in 24 hours that can’t be easily
undone.

Same day flip switch

The most common way to flip the switch is to orient high
calorie, high carbohydrate “anabolic” days on top of training
days.

• Train = anabolic day.

• Rest = catabolic day.

That defines our day to day boundaries, but there’s also the
switch within the day. Some people say that the best time to
flip the switch is the first meal that comes after training, as
that’s when your muscles are most receptive to nutrient
uptake.

The problem with this strategy is that sometimes people

train really early in the AM and if you’re adhering to any
sort of underfed stress window (ie: fasting), then having a
gigantic meal at 8AM right after your training session kills
the general zigzag because you’re neglecting one of the z’s
unless you underfeed via scavenging or portion control for
the rest of the day, and that’s not what many enjoy.

In Martin Berkhan’s Leangains template, to combat this, he

usually recommends sipping on 10-15 grams of branched
chain amino acids (BCAAs) from the time of post training to
the first meal at 12PM, and he usually recommends that this
first meal is to be the highest calorie, highest carbohydrate

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 meal. Although there is no shortage of Leangains success
stories, having the biggest meal at lunch is do-able, but
rather inconveniencing if you have a traditional job.

Thick soup
As you can see, we’re starting to swim in a thick soup here
because the idea of zigging and zagging hinges on going
through two kinds of stress and the nutritional stress is
unfortunately dictated by time-length and training stress is
dictated by feasibility. Since we all live different lives, a
universal prescription is tough to write.

Or is it?

One of the more universal ideas is that most people have

more time and ability to prepare dinner than any other
meal. I know this isn’t always the case 100% of the time, but
it’s the case a lot of the time. Most of us have some sort of
cultural backing to this, and it extends beyond this time
period too. Remember back to talks of Ori Hofmekler and
having a larger PM feeding because it coincides with our
natural biorhythms. Night time = sleepy = parasympathetic
= bigger feeding.

But the caveat here is that some people train late at night
and the idea of having some sort of huge feeding right before
bed isn’t the greatest of ideas. In order to push on, let’s talk
about the second strategy.

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 Oppo day flip switch
Remember that our body is a stress machine. It’s built to
adapt to the rigors we place upon it, and we ebb and flow
between times of energy output and undergoing stress and
energy consumption and recovering from stress.

Most people want to flip the switch the same day, to topple
the catabolic breakdown of training atop the anabolic build
up of nutrition. Many people want to do this as fast as
possible to prevent unnecessary catabolic breakdown, but
remember: that’s the entire reason why you train!

There’s nothing wrong with getting broken down, as that’s

the trigger for building back up. Of course, we also need
to consider the inverted-U, but there’s no reason that
the flip can’t be switched on the opposite day of
training.

When you do this you have days of stress and breakdown

and days of recovery and buildup, which can bode well for
training, too. Chapter 11 covers glycogen, training lethargy,
and running on empty, which can be summarized as:
sometimes with fasting and carbohydrate cycling, you’re
going to feel like poop on training days.

. . . unless you take the rest day and use it to fill up the
tank. You’ll likely mosey into your training day feeling
fresher.

Even with this, we’re still going from underfeed to overfeed

everyday, so let’s talk about this timing a little more.

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 Some acceptable
By all accounts of conventional wisdom, capturing the wind
on days opposite of training is an absurd concept. Your
muscles will waste away! they say. There are a few
principles that we accept that go against mainstream
wisdom in order to make this happen.

First, the idea of a one hour magic post-workout

window is bunk. Your body is rebuilding on a much
broader scale, and the overall tone of the day is a better focal
point.

Second, you don’t need a boatload of starchy

carbohydrates to kick-start the recovery process. In
fact, protein is the most important macronutrient to get in
the hours after training.

Implications?

If you’re combining a day of training with a day of

underfeeding, you won’t die if you forgo carbohydrates. Get
your training in, get your protein in, get your vegetables in,
and you’re ready to roll.

Remember the chart? And how protein can creep a

little higher on catabolic days? Ho ho ho!

Keep in mind I only say this knowing that the day that
follows will advance the replenishment by including some
carbohydrates. Don’t freak out about short-term stress
as long as you have the long-term handled.

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 Right or wrong, better or worse
I wouldn’t say that either one of these tactics is right or
wrong, better or worse. It all depends on where you are, your
tolerance to hunger, and even some things below the
superficial surface. If you have thyroid or blood sugar issues,
then the world of training and nutritional stress and
combining the two is a really slippery slope.

Given everything we’ve talked about, I’m going to outline

some templates for you below that will cover the way I’d go
about this, depending on when it’s possible to train. But first,
let’s talk about getting into fasting.

The timing windows

The most common implementation of fasting is via the main
Leangains template: first meal at 12PM, last meal at 8PM.
This was also something mentioned in Ori Hofmekler’s The
Warrior Diet in that if you’re having trouble “fasting,” the
first step is to focus on the time from wakeup until noon.

Leangains also sneaks another meal in the middle of that

timeframe, which ends in three meals per day. And so it’s
safe to generalize this as the most basic implementation of
fasting, and it will be our backbone of sorts. If you choose
another time frame, simply adjust the numbers in your
mind.

With this, you can extend your first feeding beyond 12PM,
which then increases the duration of the fast and nutritional
stress. So with me, I often eat one meal at around 5PMish,

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 but it all started with Leangains and three meals. I then
split the middle meal into the first and last feedings, which
gave me two meals; the first meal was at 12PM and the
second was at 7-8PM. After that, I bridged the gap and just
had one big meal at 5PM.

I tell you this so you can how something like this can evolve
over time as your hunger and tolerance to bigger meals
increases. The first big hurdle is managing wake-up to 12PM
though. Moving beyond that though involves just about the
same strategies, so let’s talk about easing into this.

How to dive into fasting

The best way to forget about hunger is to literally put
yourself in a position to forget about hunger. Keep active
during your fasting window and put yourself in a situation
where you can’t eat. Sleep in if you have to.

Before I truly began intermittent fasting, I was student-

teaching under a teacher that didn’t eat lunch. So I got used
to eating a big breakfast, having nothing but an apple for
lunch, coming home and lifting, and then having a bigger
dinner. I didn’t have a choice. Not exactly intermittent
fasting, but I was forced to alter my eating patterns around
my schedule.

So if there’s a way — if even for a day — you can force

yourself to go without eating during your fasting window,
you’ll see that it’s not so bad. It makes future fasts easier.

If you’re struggling, follow this progression.

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 1. Scavenging + portion control
Have smaller set-in-stone meal times, but feel free to snack
in between feedings on the right kind of foods. You’re
probably used to this, as this is the way most people
naturally eat with all of the junk food available. The
adjustment is switching to raw vegetables for snacks.

With the base template, you have a set in stone lunch. Use
scavenging from wakeup until lunch. When you do this,
you’re really not fasting all that much, but that’s alright. It’s
a necessary step.

2. Portion control
Once you get used to scavenging and portion control
together, ditch the scavenging. This forces you to go without
food until your meal, but at the same time you have the
comfort of a meal to look forward to.

Into longer fasts

The above two steps move you into being able to do a smaller
fast (until 12PM, usually). But what about longer duration
fasts?

3. Scavenging
The next step is to eliminate the lunch meal. Going into this
cold turkey can be a bit daunting, so enter back into the
scavenging world and eating when hunger strikes you the
most. You’ll be used to fasting at this point, but the duration
is what will be toughest.

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 4. Fasting
Even at this last tier, don’t be afraid to scavenge when
necessary. Most days I can do just fine without food, but I
never restrict myself from raw vegetables if I feel like I need
them at anytime during the fast.

Most days I don’t need to eat anything throughout the day,

but if I do I’m not hesitant to grab a few vegetables and
snack.

In this same line, schedule a ton of things to do. The day of

my first ever 24+ hour fast went like this: I slept in, golfed,
and then went to batting practice. It was 7:00PM before I
even thought about food.

Coffees, teas, and no calorie chewing gums can also blunt

hunger. (As can chewing on ice cubes, but this isn’t exactly
dentist approved.)

The best way to break into 24-hour fasts has nothing to do

with coffees, teas, cheat meals, or any “special” modality. No,
the best way is to simply adjust your feeding schedule.

The wrong way to handle a 24 hour fast is to have your last

meal at 8:00PM the night prior. This means you have to
survive all morning, all afternoon, and into the evening
without food. That’s a long day, and one of the mistakes I
made going into longer-duration fasts. (And one of the
reasons my one meal is at 5PM rather than 8PM.)

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 I find it best to have your main meal around 5PMish. You
will spend more waking hours full. Eating at 8:00PM means
sleeping on a full stomach. Sleeping on a full stomach wastes
waking hours of satiety. By moving the meal to 5:00PM,
hunger is moot for the rest of the day and the fast is broken
earlier the following day.

One or two
Now that we’ve got all that settled, we’re going to move into
the implementation. For the most part, I’m not married to
one philosophy. I think many can work, and so I’m going to
give you a few scenarios, all of which revolve around having
either one or two meals per day.

Carbs might come sooner rather than later. Capturing the

wind might happen on the same day as training does or the
opposite day. The important part is that I’m going to tell you
why so that you can eventually guide yourself based upon
how your body feels.

TWO MEAL PHILOSOPHY

We start with some two meal philosophy. With two meals,
keep one as your starch intense meal. With this meal, have
some lean protein. Your other meal will be proteins and any
other sources of fat that trickle in.

Using the Chaos Core, this ends up being a relatively simple

split. Using a 12PM meal and a 7PM meal, your day ends up
being split like the table on the following page.

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 ANABOLIC DAYS
• 12PM – Eggs, 1/3 meat + veggies
• 7PM – Starchy carbs + lean meats + veggies + whey

CATABOLIC DAYS
• 12PM – Eggs, 1/3 meat + veggies
• 7PM – 2/3 meat + veggies + whey

These meals have the potential to be flipped if needed, but

that all depends on the training windows we will set up and
cover soon.

ONE MEAL PHILOSOPHY

It should go without saying that the one meal philosophy is
sandwiching together the two meals above into one meal,
preferably around 5-6PM. It’s just my experience that
waiting longer to eat (unless you’re scavenging), when only
eating one meal per day, doesn’t end well.

+LEFTOVERS
On both of the above templates, you’re at the mercy of your
own hunger. If you’re struggling to eat enough, you might
want to make use of “leftover” meals.

On the one meal per day scheme, for example, you might
cook your grand feast and eat at 6PM. Maybe you can only
eat 2/3 of it though. So two or so hours later, at 8PM, you
then can finish the full meal.

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 Likewise, if two meals isn’t enough, I recommend + leftovers,
too. Keep in mind though, I recommend starchy carb
feedings condensed into a 4ish hour window, so if you’re one
of the people that can’t eat all of your carbs in one meal,
ditch any lunch time starch.

Scavenge + one meal

Those that might have a later dinner time (I think 5-6PM is
cutoff) are best scavenging with the non-starchy foods from
noontime on.

Classifying the days

Below runs through how to handle anabolic days based on
when you train. There are options for one meal or two meals,
and also when to capture the wind based on when you train.

The rules for catabolic days follow the examples for specific
training times.

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 EARLY AM
TRAINING
Most practical strategy: capture the wind on the same day.
Train fasted, have a light lunch, eat most of your calories in
one or two dinners.

The biggest concern people have about morning training

with this scenario is about post-workout nutrition. Since the
first meal doesn’t come until 12PM (if you’re eating two
meals), is your body going to eat itself into oblivion? The
answer to this, as you know, is a resounding no.

The only real need to freak out over post-workout nutrition

in this example is if you physically need to on account of low
blood sugar or something similar. Having said that, however,
most people will struggle to go all day and all afternoon
without something in their stomach after training early.
Therefore, I think the most practical strategy is to train
early, have a small noontime lunch, and then capture the
wind at dinner.

It’s best to capture the wind on the same day when you train
early, simply because if you don’t you’re looking at going 24+
hours without restocking yourself. That’s a bit too long for
comfort . . . however it also means you’re going to be going
into training sessions 24+ hours without a stockpile of
carbohydrate fuel.

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 It’s just my experience that, training in the morning, you are
much better off when it comes to low liver glycogen and the
likes. That problem doesn’t usually hit until longer into a
fast. Even though you haven’t eaten carbohydrates, you still
ate a larger dinner the day before training. That’s usually
enough—this is why I like having a larger night time
feeding.

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 MORNING, TWO MEALS
Wake Up - Train @ 7AM

• Optional: black coffee or unsweetened tea before training

12:00PM – Meal One:

• 1/3 whey protein, 1/3 meat

• Non-starchy veggies
• Optional: handful of fruit
• Optional: 2-3 eggs

5:30PM – Meal Two:

• Remaining lean meat

• Remaining eggs (if none eaten in first meal, eat all here)
• Handful of fruit (if none eaten in first meal)
• Remaining whey protein
• More non-starchy veggies
• As many starchy carbohydrates that…
o You feel like eating based upon what the mirror tells you
o You feel like you need based upon training intensity
o You feel like you need based upon recovery
o You can shove down the chute if you give yourself the green
light

7:30PM – + Leftovers

• Anything unfinished from the above meal

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 MORNING, ONE MEAL
Wake Up - Train @ 7AM

• Optional: black coffee or unsweetened tea before training

12:00PM to 5:00PM – Scavenge

• Optional: handful of fruit, 1/3 whey protein, 1/3 meat, non-

starchy veggies, 2-3 eggs
• Let hunger guide you, eat only when necessary

6:00PM – Meal One:

• Remaining lean meat

• Remaining eggs (if none eaten in before, eat all here)
• Handful of fruit (if none eaten in scavenge)
• Remaining whey protein
• More non-starchy veggies
• As many starchy carbohydrates that…
o You feel like eating based upon what the mirror tells you
o You feel like you need based upon training intensity
o You feel like you need based upon recovery
o You can shove down the chute if you give yourself the green
light

8:00PM – + Leftovers

• Anything unfinished from the above meal

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 LATE AM EARLY
PM TRAINING
Most practical strategy: You have the flexibility for just about
anything.

Being able to train around the noontime hour gives you the
greatest flexibility. It’s usually right at the low glycogen
cutoff point, so you don’t have to worry about that. It also
means you can fast throughout the entire morning without
worrying about dealing with post workout nutrition
throughout the entire day as you would if you trained in the
early AM.

You also train closer to your dinner hour. Of course, that

depends on when you eat dinner. If you eat dinner closer to
5-6PM, then you don’t have to worry about much. If you eat
closer to 7-8PM then a scavenge or small feeding is likely in
order.

Capturing the wind is at your fingertips, too. If you feel like

you’re losing some energy in the gym, then you can do the
opposite day capture. Like I mentioned before though, this
usually isn’t as big of an issue for those that get to the gym
before noon. If you train in the early PM, like 2-3PM, I
highly recommend capturing wind on the opposite day
though.

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 (X)
MIDDAY,
CAPTURING
WIND ON THE
SAME DAY

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 (X) MIDDAY, TWO MEALS
Wake up @ 7AM

• Optional: black coffee or unsweetened tea throughout the morning

Train @ 10:30AM

1:00PM – Meal One:

• 1/3 whey protein, 1/3 meat

• Non-starchy veggies
• Optional: handful of fruit
• Optional: 2-3 eggs

6:00PM – Meal Two:

• Remaining lean meat

• Remaining eggs (if none eaten in first meal, eat all here)
• Handful of fruit (if none eaten in first meal)
• Remaining whey protein
• More non-starchy veggies
• As many starchy carbohydrates that…
o You feel like eating based upon what the mirror tells you
o You feel like you need based upon training intensity
o You feel like you need based upon recovery
o You can shove down the chute if you give yourself the green light

7:30PM – + Leftovers

• Anything unfinished from the above meal

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 (X) MIDDAY, ONE MEAL
Wake up @ 7AM

• Optional: black coffee or unsweetened tea throughout the morning

Train @ 10:30AM

1:00PM – 5:00PM – Scavenge (optional)

• Optional: handful of fruit, 1/3 whey protein, 1/3 meat, non-starchy

veggies, 2-3 eggs

6:00PM – Meal One:

• Remaining lean meat

• Remaining eggs (if none eaten in before, eat all here)
• Handful of fruit (if none eaten in scavenge)
• Remaining whey protein
• More non-starchy veggies
• As many starchy carbohydrates that…
o You feel like eating based upon what the mirror tells you
o You feel like you need based upon training intensity
o You feel like you need based upon recovery
o You can shove down the chute if you give yourself the green light

8:00PM – + Leftovers

• Anything unfinished from the above meal

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 (Y)
MIDDAY,
CAPTURING
WIND ON THE
OPPOSITE
DAY

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 (Y1)MIDDAY TWO MEALS
TRAINING DAY
Wake up @ 7AM

• Optional: black coffee or unsweetened tea throughout the morning

Train @ 10:30AM

1:00PM – Meal One:

• 1/3 whey protein, 1/3 meat

• Non-starchy veggies
• Optional: handful of fruit
• Optional: 2-3 eggs

6:00PM – Meal Two:

• Remaining meat
• Remaining eggs (if none eaten in first meal, eat all here)
• Handful of fruit (if none eaten in first meal)
• Remaining whey protein
• More non-starchy veggies

7:30PM – + Leftovers

• Anything unfinished from the above meal

Don’t forget: the purpose of this day is to be

nutritionally stressed and catabolic.

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 (Y2)MIDDAY, TWO MEALS
Rest day following training DAY
Wake up @ 7AM

• Optional: black coffee or unsweetened tea throughout the morning

1:00PM – Meal One:

• 1/3 whey protein, 1/3 meat

• Non-starchy veggies
• Optional: handful of fruit
• Optional: 2-3 eggs

6:00PM – Meal Two:

• Remaining lean meat

• Remaining eggs (if none eaten in first meal, eat all here)
• Handful of fruit (if none eaten in first meal)
• Remaining whey protein
• More non-starchy veggies
• As many starchy carbohydrates that…
o You feel like eating based upon what the mirror tells you
o You feel like you need based upon training intensity
o You feel like you need based upon recovery
o You can shove down the chute if you give yourself the green light

7:30PM – + Leftovers

• Anything unfinished from the above meal

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 (Y1)MIDDAY, ONE MEAL
TRAINING DAY
Wake up @ 7AM

• Optional: black coffee or unsweetened tea throughout the morning

Train @ 10:30AM

1:00PM – 5:00PM – Scavenge (optional)

• Optional: handful of fruit, 1/3 whey protein, 1/3 meat, non-starchy

veggies, 2-3 eggs

6:00PM – Meal One:

• Remaining lean meat

• Remaining eggs (if none eaten in before, eat all here)
• Handful of fruit (if none eaten in scavenge)
• Remaining whey protein
• More non-starchy veggies

8:00PM – + Leftovers

• Anything unfinished from the above meal

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 (Y2)MIDDAY, ONE MEAL
Rest day following training DAY
Wake up @ 7AM

• Optional: black coffee or unsweetened tea throughout the morning

5:00PM – Meal One:

• All meat
• All eggs
• Handful of fruit
• All whey protein
• Non-starchy veggies
• As many starchy carbohydrates that…
o You feel like eating based upon what the mirror tells you
o You feel like you need based upon training intensity
o You feel like you need based upon recovery
o You can shove down the chute if you give yourself the green light

8:00PM – + Leftovers

• Anything unfinished from the above meal

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 PM TRAINING
Most practical strategy: Much like early PM training, you
have two choices: to lunch or not to lunch. After that,
capturing the wind is in your hands.

As you get into the PM hours, you flirt with low glycogen
levels. Usually around 2-3PM you can walk the line. As you
inch towards 5-6PM, it’s not as easy. As usual, this depends
on you though and your tolerance to hunger and how your
body is functioning. See that? A lot of you and your—things
that I can’t predict.

I think you have two sensible options. If you find that you
have absolutely no energy going into training on an empty
stomach that late, fast until noontime. At noon, have a small
meal with proteins and non-starchy veggies. It should come
at least 3-4 hours before training.

By doing this, you essentially negate part of the purpose of

capturing the wind on opposite days, which is to feel fresh
enough going into your next training session. Nevertheless,
you can still choose to go through the rest of the day
nutritionally stressed and capture the wind on the following
day.

In this situation, I let hunger be the guide. Since you don’t

get to eat dinner until later on in the day, if you can’t eat a
lot that means you’re going to be shoving your face before
bedtime. This may or may not interfere with sleep. If it does,

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 you’re much better off having a more catabolic-oriented
training day, and then filling up on the rest day when you
can eat at a little bit better of an hour.

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 (x)
PM,
CAPTURING
WIND ON THE
SAME DAY

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 (X) PM WITH LUNCH
Wake up @ 7AM

• Optional: black coffee or unsweetened tea throughout the morning

12:00PM – Lunch

• 1/3 whey protein, 1/3 meat

• Non-starchy veggies
• Optional: 2-3 eggs

Train @ 5:00PM

7:00PM – Meal Two:

• Remaining lean meat

• Remaining eggs (if none eaten in first meal, eat all here)
• Handful of fruit
• Remaining whey protein
• More non-starchy veggies
• As many starchy carbohydrates that…
o You feel like eating based upon what the mirror tells you
o You feel like you need based upon training intensity
o You feel like you need based upon recovery
o You can shove down the chute if you give yourself the green light

9:00PM – + Leftovers

• Anything unfinished from the above meal

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 (X) PM WITH SCAVENGE
Wake up @ 7AM

• Optional: black coffee or unsweetened tea throughout the morning

9:00AM – 3:00PM – Scavenge

• Optional: handful of fruit, 1/3 whey protein, 1/3 meat, non-

starchy veggies, 2-3 eggs
• Let hunger guide you, eat only when necessary

Train @ 5:00PM

7:00PM – Meal Two:

• Remaining lean meat

• Remaining eggs (if none eaten in before, eat all here)
• Handful of fruit (if none eaten in scavenge)
• Remaining whey protein
• More non-starchy veggies
• As many starchy carbohydrates that…
o You feel like eating based upon what the mirror tells you
o You feel like you need based upon training intensity
o You feel like you need based upon recovery
o You can shove down the chute if you give yourself the green light

9:00PM – + Leftovers

• Anything unfinished from the above meal

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 (X) PM WITHOUT LUNCH
Wake up @ 7AM

• Optional: black coffee or unsweetened tea throughout the morning

Train @ 5:00PM

7:00PM – Meal One:

• Remaining lean meat

• Remaining eggs (if none eaten in before, eat all here)
• Handful of fruit (if none eaten in scavenge)
• Remaining whey protein
• More non-starchy veggies
• As many starchy carbohydrates that…
o You feel like eating based upon what the mirror tells you
o You feel like you need based upon training intensity
o You feel like you need based upon recovery
o You can shove down the chute if you give yourself the green light

9:00PM – + Leftovers

• Anything unfinished from the above meal

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 LATE PM
TRAINING
Most practical strategy: Get some food in you with a light
lunch or scavenge, capture the wind on the opposite day.

The late PM training slot is probably worst of all. Alas, life is

life and sometimes we have to deal with the situations in
front of us. There are two things to combat with the late PM
training, neither of which should be a surprise.

First, you need some food in you. 2-3PM is the time when
things get dicey for glycogen. You might be able to get away
with 5PM training. But if you train at 8-9-10PM, then you
won’t do well without having anything to eat for the entire
day. In this situation, you can get away with a 2-4PM
“lunch” of sorts and then one post-training meal.

Second, you can’t really pound down a boat load of carbs

before bed and expect to feel good about it. I recommend
capturing the wind on the opposite day because of this when
you can eat dinner at a more reasonable time.

This adjusts your feeding window, which is why I think

you’re best served with the following game plan.

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 LATE PM
TRAINING DAY
Wake up @ 7AM

• Optional: black coffee or unsweetened tea throughout the morning

2:00PM – Lunch

• 1/3 whey protein, 1/3 meat

• Non-starchy veggies
• Optional: 2-3 eggs

Note: you can also scavenge until 5:00PM.

Train @ 8:00PM

10:00PM – Meal Two:

• Remaining lean meat

• Remaining eggs (if none eaten in before, eat all here)
• Handful of fruit
• Remaining whey protein
• More non-starchy veggies

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 LATE PM
Rest day following training DAY
Wake up @ 7AM

• Optional: black coffee or unsweetened tea throughout the morning

5-6:00PM – Meal One:

• All meat
• All eggs
• Handful of fruit
• All whey protein
• Non-starchy veggies
• As many starchy carbohydrates that…
o You feel like eating based upon what the mirror tells you
o You feel like you need based upon training intensity
o You feel like you need based upon recovery
o You can shove down the chute if you give yourself the green light

8:00PM – + Leftovers

• Anything unfinished from the above meal

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 OPPOSITE
DAYS & WTF
I’ll be the first to admit that the examples given above seem
complex. A little too complex for comfort. And I’m the guy
that wrote them!

Look, it’s really not that difficult. You can peruse the
examples above and see a few things that stick out: little
starchy carbs in any meal before training, big starchy carb
meals later at night depending on when you train. You
either combine training stress atop nutritional stress for the
entire day or you have a big carby night time meal and break
the day in half.

We know that catabolic days can even go down on training

days as long as we get enough protein. The minimum is one
gram per pound. The question beyond that though is what do
these days look like?

In general, my anabolic days are rather set. I boil my rice

and eat until I’m content. I do this three or four days per
week. They don’t change much.

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 What varies from week to week, however, is when I decide to
have my anabolic days. Sometimes I know I’m better off with
an anabolic day, but I don’t have it based on biofeedback.

Since my anabolic days don’t change much, what does

change is my catabolic days.

I’m more prone to make a severe dent in my calorie intake

on rest days, and this is sort of a ‘la Eat Stop Eat. This is
why on the chart that I created before (that’s pasted on the
following page) is so important.

The starchless and strict rest day is the most severe cut.
Intake on these days likely doesn’t top 1000, and that’s fine
with me because it just sets up the other anabolic days. I use
these days when I’m feeling most puffy or want to lose
weight quick. Caveat though: I use them also assuming that
I will still have some anabolic days here and there.
Anecdotes with consistent starchless and strict days: my
body does well with them for 1-3 consecutive days. After
that, not so much. If I was going for a longer weight loss
stint, I’d go starchless and under/even more often.

Remember fats are eaten on higher calorie days and some

other catabolic days. Don’t be afraid of short term
deprivation. Really use your body to gauge these days based
upon the table earlier.

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 Catabolic / fat loss
(-) (-) (=)
Starchless Starchless Starchless
and strict: and under: and even:
• one pound of meat • six eggs • six eggs
• protein pudding + • one pound of meat • one pound of meat
banana • protein pudding + • protein pudding +
• as many non- banana banana (or two)
starchy vegetables • as many non- • as many non-
as I can wrap my starchy vegetables starchy vegetables
head around as I need to feel as I need
full • more fats (bacon,
cheese, meat,
Adding anything else avocado, nuts)
into the mix is at your
discretion. For me it’s
Allow more leeway
usually a bit of cheese
eating other fats. It’s
on the eggs. Since we
not something I try to
can have more protein
plan. Sometimes it just
on (-) days feel free to
happens. There are
have more if you feel
times, however, where
like you need it.
if I’m feeling extremely
run down and a (-) day
is supposed to show
up, I’ll know to eat
more and make it a
higher calorie (=)
meal.

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 CATABOLIC DAYS
Wake up @ 7AM

• Optional: black coffee or unsweetened tea throughout the morning

12:00PM – Lunch / OPTIONAL

• 1/3 whey protein, 1/3 meat

• Non-starchy veggies
• Optional: 2-3 eggs

Note: you can also scavenge until 5:00PM.

5-6:00PM – Dinner

• Remaining lean meat (if lunch was eaten)

• Remaining eggs (if lunch was eaten; if not starchless and strict)
• Handful of fruit
• Remaining whey protein
• More non-starchy veggies

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 ELEVEN
CHAOTIC RESULTS

S
o far we talked about manipulating food intake to be
more chaotic in order to capture the wind between
every day and within every day. What this is doing
is embracing the non-linearity of the body.

Now we have to talk about results. We make our food intake

not-so linear because, well, results aren’t linear either.

We measure and count things in units the body doesn’t

understand. The body doesn’t know what one pound of
muscle is, and it doesn’t use these measurements. It’s not
like a hunk of muscle is slowly cultivated in a secret
compartment until it hits the “one-pound mark” and then
gets shuttled to somewhere in your body for aesthetic
appeal.

The body is more unpredictable when looked at finely.

Looked at generally, however, it becomes more predictable. I
call this the microscope and telescope effect. Looking
through a microscope makes predictions difficult. Looking
through a telescope makes predictions easier.

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 You don’t know if you’re going to be stronger tomorrow, or if
you lost weight in the past hour. But if you continue certain
trends over time, certain things tend to happen.

Find a way to get into the gym four days every week, pick up
heavy things, press heavy stuff overhead, squat subjectively
heavy, and I’m pretty sure that you will get somewhat
stronger every year, and I think you would get stronger
every month. But I’m not so sure about getting stronger
every week, and every day is fuzzier yet. You can’t do
microscopic predictions because of chaos.

To clean bulk, you have to have the trend mindset, and you
have to be willing to embrace the ups and downs associated
with the strategy. It’s scary because we’re taught the fastest
way to get from point A to point B is a straight line. But
when you capture the wind, you must go back and forth. It’s
a game of time and longevity.

Trends hint at long-term potential. Fads are one-hit

wonders—they quickly pique interest, but die before anyone
realizes what happened. Nutralooping is more of a trend.
Results really aren’t as noticeable in the short-term. They
increase, sure, but not drastically enough to pop eyeballs.
They are more sustainable because they don’t require big
shifts. Changes are small and subtle, gradually building
momentum.

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 Trends and training
In this world, people don’t like trends. Trends take too much
time to transpire. People want immediate results; they want
the fad. But the fad often fails.

Here’s a good benchmark for results: a “clean” weight gain of

around one pound every month for veterans, and two pounds
every month for beginners. (“Clean” refers to adding muscle
without adding fat.) So a hypothetical eight week, eight
pound (gaining one pound per week) “traditional” bulk won’t
always end with a four pound muscle gain (base on the
assumption that weight gained is split 50/50 between muscle
and fat). According to the standard, two pounds of muscle is
a more realistic estimate dropping the muscle-to-fat gain
ratio below 50/50.

Adding muscle at a clip of one pound per month means that

it will take a few months—if not longer—before visible
progress is had. Following this logic, you can expect to gain
twelve pounds of muscle in one year (more if you’re
inexperienced). That’s all. Twelve pounds. Break that down
into the sections of your body. Between the upper leg, lower
leg, upper arm, forearm, shoulders, pecs, abs, and all of the
intricate sections of the back, you’re looking at little
noticeable gain across the entire frame after the clothes go
over the naked body. (The naked body will probably look a
lot better though.)

But if you add up a second year. And then a third year.

Suddenly you have close to 40 pounds of solid, dry, lean
muscle on your frame. Honestly, knowing this, at some

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 point, even twelve pounds per year becomes farfetched. If
you could gain twelve pounds of dry muscle per every
training year, you’d add 100 pounds of solid muscle to your
body in eight years of training. That means I’d be a 280 block
of granite muscle by now, but it doesn’t happen that way. We
do have limits, and as we approach them, our gains slow
even more. (We’re not here to talk about limitations,
however, and most of us shouldn’t even consider the
implications of this.)

Most people opt for the fad and try gaining all forty pounds
in one year. It never works, of course. If you do the
traditional bulk-and-cut (trying to gain more than the one
pound per month), you’ll probably end up at the same finish
line when it’s all said and done, compared to someone that
clean bulked effectively. The difference is that you moved
mountains to get there, created filled fat cells (bad news for
partitioning and the flinch), and hated life during cutting.

The body is motivated by survival. If it’s forced to its

extremes, it will either adapt or die. Train too heavy, too
many consecutive days and you’ll get injured. This is your
body’s way of saying: “I can’t keep up given the
circumstances. I can’t adapt.”

Nothing about training your body is fast. In fact,

when it comes to the human body, only bad
things happen quickly.

-Coach Stevo

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 It is a lifestyle, not a cycle
The clean bulk isn’t really something you stop doing. It isn’t
something that has a timetable. It’s a lifestyle.

There are a lot of training programs designed for “bulking.”

Eight-or-so week stints that include higher volume exercise
and demanding training strategies that assume you’re going
to be eating above what’s necessary to recover and survive.

If you want to go on these short-term stints with programs

designed to add as much muscle as possible in a short time
frame, then you have to do a traditional bulk. You can’t clean
bulk your way through them.

The philosophy here is a long-term play, so your

training program also has to be a long-term play. If
you go on a program that’s going to push you to the
brink of your existence (the Smolov squat routine, for
instance), you won’t last long clean bulking. Training
and nutrition aren’t mutually exclusive. They must
complement one another.

Drafting
We can do our best to embrace the non-linearity of the body,
but even then—even with a plan like this—we’re all still
banking on some kind of linear gains. If I say the expected
rate of muscle gain is one pound of muscle per month, then
at the end of the year you expect to be twelve pounds heavier
gaining one pound per month. Put that on a graph, and it’d
be a nice uphill line.

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 The strategy outlined here has given me those numbers, in
some way. I fluctuate between 205 and 210 pounds now. Two
years ago (when I first hopped into this stuff) I was 193.
That seems pretty standard, but what’s missing here is that
it wasn’t a “one pound per month” thing.

You can go back to the original pictures and see that I tend
to regress some months. In July, for instance, I was really
small. As I write this, I’m smaller than I was one month ago.

We’ve talked about the inverted-U, and I think that abiding

by the short-term window is acceptable most times in order
to maximize progress. But as the same time, only having
days of stress isn’t really all that “dangerous.” We talked
about catabolism stimulating anabolism, but how much can
the body really “freak out” in a short time-span?

In my opinion, it can freak out enough to make use of the

loops effective. But I also think it’s worthwhile to spend
some time where your main focus isn’t muscle gain and
when you dial back your anabolism. In fact, if you don’t do
this yourself, your body will probably do it for you.

In the July pictures, the leaning down was purposeful. Now

though? It’s as if my body is making me smaller. The goal of
capturing the wind on a daily basis is based upon catabolism
stimulating anabolism, but that’s also true in reverse and on
a macroscopic level: anabolism stimulates catabolism.

You won’t get infinitely muscular, just as you won’t wither

away into nothingness. The body works nice and linearly

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 (usually) at the beginning of something novel until it hits a
certain point of discomfort. At that point of discomfort, it
wants to rebound in the other direction. Muscle gain is a
slave to the mighty feedback loop.

So right now, I’m coming off one of the best training periods
of my life. I looked the best, I felt good. Everything was
right. Now though? Nothing has changed and yet my
performance is a bit down. I look smaller.

I could blame myself here and then increase training volume

and try to slam my head against the wall, but that would be
me blatantly disrespecting what my body is telling me,
which is: slow down. I’ve done all I’m comfortable doing in
that direction for now.

And honestly, my body tells me this almost every year at

this time because of my “seasons.” Most athletes naturally
wax and wane between times of sport-intensive practice and
times of intensive off-the-field training. Most guys that play
American football aren’t gaining muscle during the season,
nor are they trying to. They might still be strength training,
but their priority goes with the field work. As the season
goes on, most guys get torn down more and more and more.
At the end of the season, they’re probably at their “weakest”
from a weight-room standpoint.

The offseason hits, they go back to training, and then they

explode muscularly because of how much they’ve been torn
down. Most American football players really only have a few
months of work within them as far as strength training is

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 concerned, but that’s actually somewhat beneficial because
they move back in forth between concentrations.

With someone pursuing muscle 24/7, they’re body gets

“uncomfortable” with that pursuit. And sadly when this
happens, most don’t respect or pay attention to the signals,
they push themselves or try to change things up to reignite,
but they end up just hurting themselves with injury or
hitting and even bigger cliff. Taking a down week every four
weeks is nice (which is what most people do via “deloading”),
but it’s still not macro enough to capture the whole picture.

Don’t be surprised if your best gains are followed by periods

of mayhem. Most importantly, don’t shoot yourself in the foot
trying to relive the glory days. Accept your body changing
and know when to adjust.

Letting your muscle go bye bye

Knowing this, I think it’s a good idea for everyone to build
in one or two “non-muscle” pursuits every year. That’s not to
say you stop training, but rather you stop eating and
training for strict muscle purposes.

I like to save this for a time when being really lean is most
applicable or acceptable. For most, this would be summer. So
during the summer, I do a lot more athletic things and I’m
out and about with tricking. I don’t really eat as much and
some of my weight room volume tapers down.

But isn’t this bringing us back to bulking and cutting and

hating muscle rotting away?

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 In a sense, kind of. But there’s no bulking. There’s no
extending beyond a comfortable body fat level. There’s no
rewiring the flinch towards body fat. That’s something we
don’t do—unless you want to go ahead and do that in light of
a holiday or some kind of month of laxity, but that’s not built
in.

As for the cutting and muscle-wasting, both yes and no. Once
you get used to capturing the wind, you’ll be very efficient
with knowing what you need to do to lose fat. When you
want to adjust to go through a month of lower intake, you’re
playing a much slower card than you would as if you were
“cutting.” And this doesn’t even involve any extra cardio or
anything, rather simply modifying nutrition to give more of a
fat loss ethos.

When you do this, your strength won’t suffer much and

you’re simply going to boost your anabolic potential on the
other end. It’s a world’s difference than going on a crash diet
and adding a bunch of cardio or other kind of training in
attempt to burn calories.

This is where, I suppose, you could bring the inverted-U

back into play. At some point there’s going to be a cliff in
which muscle lost (or apparently lost) is going to take longer
to get back—or require more effort than was wasted during
the process of trying to potentiate the loop. But that simply
hasn’t been my experience with things.

You can also try to make use of this on a finer scale. One of
the tactics I mentioned is pushing your body weight up over

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 the course of some weeks (never be more than two weeks
away) and then bringing it back down. Perhaps even below
where you were before. This means that you might actually
apparently lose some muscle mass in future months when
leaning down low, but it will quickly rebound when you push
things back up. The deprivation is too short.

Remember: the body isn’t linear. Forcing linear gains isn’t

going to get you anywhere. These little “dips” and times of
depletion and deprivation (nature of chaos) help upregulate
muscle building when you rebound.

You can think of it like drafting in car racing. You stay

behind for a little because you’re going to eventually shotgun
forward. Or not drinking caffeine for a month. What happens
when you start taking it again? You don’t need much to get
you going.

So don’t be afraid to dial back your training, protein, and

calorie intake further than usual for a little bit. This gives
your body time to “reset” and de-familiarize itself with
things. Don’t worry, it will come back.

Tissue loss vs. glycogen loss

Just like you rarely get fat overnight from binging on
carbohydrates, you rarely lose muscle overnight from
underfeeding. With feeling fatter, it’s almost always an issue
of hydration and fluid retention. With feelings of losing
muscle overnight, it’s the same.

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 Your visible muscle comes from a combination of a low body
fat and a big muscle. There are two big pieces to said “big”
muscles, one being the actual muscle fibers, the other is the
fluid element of the muscle with glycogen and all of those
liquid goodies inside the sarcoplasm.

You may have heard of myofibrillar hypertrophy and

sarcoplasmic hypertrophy before. These are two different
adaptations that can happen from training.

• Myofibrillar = growth of the fibers.

• Sarcoplasmic = growth of the fluid.

The type of adaptation that goes down most depends on

training style. You’d be hard pressed to see improvements in
one area without the other, and it’s often misguided to try to
avoid one or the other, but that’s a topic for another day. The
adaptations usually come in tandem, but err to one side
based upon what adaptations are needed most.

• More fibers = more tension.

• More fluid = mitigating the burn.

When you train for the pump, your muscles get engorged
with fluid. You also use more glycogen for fuel. To better
adapt to this, your ability to hold onto fluid increases =
sarcoplasmic hypertrophy. It's the sick Super-Saiyan pump.

All in all, myofibrillar hypertrophy will be the dominating

factor in muscle size. Sarcoplasmic has less of a contribution,
but it’s what gives the muscles a certain “pop” about them.

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 This is why bodybuilders pump themselves up backstage
before a contest.

Often times, when trying to capture the wind on a weekly or

monthly basis, people feel as if their muscles wither away.
Most times, however, what they see in the mirror aren’t
necessarily smaller muscles but muscles with less “pump.”

Fluid elements are subject to more variability than the

actual muscle fibers themselves, and are most sensitive to
day-to-day nutrition. If you avoid carbohydrates (the
preferential glycogen filler upper) for one week, you
may feel dilapidated, but you probably haven’t lost
any actual muscle fiber tissue. What’s going on is that
your fluid stores aren’t as plentiful.

The good news is that this is very temporary and easy to

overcome by returning to a normal diet.

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 TWELVE
THE GOKU EFFECT

T
he Goku Effect is so aptly named such because
about one year ago I shifted to eating a bunch of
white rice in the name of bettering my muscle
gains and performance. Before we get that specific, though,
we’re going to look at things from afar.

The Goku Effect is all about the idea of certain foods being
better than others for your body and goals. This brings about
the discussion of “clean” and “unclean” foods, which is a
rabbit hole if I ever saw one. Hang in there for now. We’re
going to take it from the top and try to smooth all of this
over.

The story of the human body

Put on your evolutionary goggles and let’s go back in time.
Way back in time. In Daniel Lieberman’s book, The Story of
the Human Body, he talks about how food has changed as we
have evolved. In the grand scheme of animal survival, one
thing has remained consistent: we need nutrients and
energy to live.

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 Lieberman tracks how human eating patterns might have
changed over the years. He mentions that some primates eat
for hours, gnawing on relatively low-energy plant matter to
get enough energy to live. Imagine that. Half of your day is
spent chewing on tree bark in order to keep your biological
clock ticking.

Luckily, humans have progressed from those days. We’ve

“invented” ways to make nutrients easier to come by; fire
being one of those wonderful inventions. But really, without
fire and being out in the wild, your food choices are slim.

There are the things that grow from trees and out of the
ground. This could be fruits, vegetables, and nuts. Meat isn’t
even really an option without tools to kill the animal (which
weren’t always around).

Beyond these currently palatable things, you’re looking at

lots of hard-to-eat things. Save for fruits and vegetables, it’s
really tough to pick out any one thing that would actually be
easy to assimilate in nature. Seriously. Go to a supermarket
and count the number of things that:

• You can pick up and eat without preparation

• You can actually find in nature

You’re looking at raw meat, fruits, and vegetables. Even

things like nuts are usually processed to some degree before
showing up on the shelves. Legumes like cashews are even
poisonous off the tree.

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 And even then, most vegetables have such a low caloric load
we go back to the chewing all day conundrum. Take a head
of cabbage, a raw potato, a raw ginger root and your jaws got
some work ahead of them. Lieberman mentions that the
earliest forms of humans, based on teeth shape, likely
survived on fruits. Fruits are not only tastier, but also easier
to eat most times compared to raw vegetables. They also
have more energy per volume in a lot of instances.

Even then: most fruits we know of in this age aren’t quite

the same fruits humans ate back in the day. Shiny and
sweet fruits sell, so man makes sure those things happen.
According to Lieberman, most fruit we would have survived
on would have been about as sweet as carrots.

Modern humans and food

When you look beyond fruits and vegetables, you’re lucky to
call to mind grains like bread and rice and wheat, dairy like
yogurt and milk, and meats like chicken and beef.
Unfortunately, these things weren’t all that plentiful or
possible. Cracking open a grain of wheat with your teeth is
no easy task, nor is chomping down a raw potato. Eating raw
meat is often asking for disease.

Over the years, we’ve developed ways to get more energy

from things we previously couldn’t with technology. Fire, for
instance, was a technology. Most cooking processes make
food easier to digest. For instance, you get twice as much
caloric load by eating a cooked potato versus a raw potato.

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 We’ve even found a way to make wheat edible, as the way it
is in its purest form would likely crack our teeth. Milk and
dairy, too, come about with technology.

Over time, it seems that we just keep on developing more

and more ways to deliver more and more energy for less
work by processing foods.

With every generational step in food, it’s almost as is we’re

making foods more and more pre-digested before they
actually even enter our mouth. That’s all “cooking” does,
really. Sometimes it’s actually of benefit, too. Lycopene, one
of the phytochemicals found in tomatoes, is actually better
absorbed in our bodies if the food it’s found within is cooked
a bit. A lot of nutrients are, actually.

Because foods (as we now know them, most times) are easier
to digest, they end up raising our blood sugar levels quicker.
This is rationale of the Glycemic Load—how fast a food
raises blood sugar.

Much like going from raw potato to cooked potato, we go

from

• a nearly inedible wheat grain to

• a wheat grain that’s milled or rolled a little easier to
digest to
• a wheat grain that’s transformed into flour to
• a wheat grain where the hard-to-digest “grain” is taken
out

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 With every one of these generational steps in processing, the
original food usually becomes less pure—the vitamins and
nutrients are usually already extracted. Human hands are
doing what the human digestive tract used to do.

This is why a lot of people these days recommend stepping

back in the processing sequence as much as possible: there’s
no reason to down nutrient-void white flour when you can
down nutrient rich whole grains.

At least, that’s the story they tell.

Calories and foods

This is where a debate usually flares up. Some people say a
calorie is simply a calorie, and that one gram of
carbohydrate is one gram of carbohydrate. There was a man
that lost weight eating Twinkies, after all.

But let’s take the simple element of digesting food into

picture. Digesting food has an energy cost itself. Most place
it around 10% of your overall metabolic rate, so consider an
intake of 2000 calories. Now 10% is 200 calories, but say
you’re eating easily digesting foods. Maybe that drops to 5%.
Now compare that to eating not-as-pre-digested foods.
Maybe that number hikes up to 15%. It might not seem like
much, but it could be an extra +-100 calories over time.

An entire new book could be written on the subject of

calories and what they all mean, but suffice to say that
certain foods carry benefit as well as baggage.

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 Something like broccoli carries little baggage and a lot of
benefit. It has tons of vitamins and nutrients and little
caloric load, and that’s about all you can say about it.

As put by a respectable nutrition company in Precision

Nutrition, “Fruits and vegetables’ vibrant colors tell the
story of their “super powers”. You see, it’s their
“phytonutrients”, or plant nutrients, that help us fight
disease and stay stronger for longer.”

Something like white meat chicken is usually in this same

category. Little caloric load, tons of protein, some vitamins
and nutrients, and that’s about all. But tables turn quickly,
and here’s an example: according to Ori Hofmekler a lot of
low quality meat has saturated fat that’s bioactive, and that
is more prone to be stored as body fat. How? Why? Because it
comes from cows that are fed junk and treated like junk.
They’re like typical westernized humans in their stress
levels, and when you combine all of these things, you get fats
that go running right to the fat cells, good for nothing else.

I don’t know how in I am on this, but I do know that Dr.

Robert Sapolsky, a notable biologist, has written about fat
cells serving purposes beyond excess energy storage, and
mitigating the stress response was one of them. This comes
from Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers, but has huge implications
for fat loss. Yes, your body fat helps calm you down when
you’re stressed. In other words, dropping calories might help
you lose more weight if you’re stuck. This also explains a bit
about starvation mode and stubborn body fat. The moment
your caloric-energy deficit stops working might be the point

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 where your remaining body fat serves purposes beyond
backup energy.

So in this case, yeah, pork might have some benefit. There’s

protein there. Probably some other good things, too. But
then there might also be some baggage if the pork you’re
eating was raised sloppily.

The cooking and processing positives?

So with this world we now live in, we have access to quick-
digesting foods that keep us alive, with which we turn to our
primitive ancestors and say, “U mad bro?”

The problem is that most of these processed things come

with inflammatory-allergenic-bad baggage. Yeah the energy
is nice, but most forms of processing ruin nutrient quality.

In a sense, we’re now working with rocket fuel. As things

become easier and easier to digest, we get much more energy
per capita. To boot, most of what these things are made out
of might not agree with our body’s best. Ergo: rocket fuel.
These nutrient plenty foods have boatloads of energy
potential, but they also have crazy emissions.

What’s even more dangerous here is that, as technology

increases, we’re prone to eat these things even if we
otherwise wouldn’t. Chemicals such as MSG make foods that
might not be the most appealing become tremendously so—
addictive, almost.

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 We have a few things to consider
First, we have to recognize that we’re a wee-bit different
than most people. We’re out there purposely depleting
glycogen, which means we need to cater to this need. We
won’t have the same rules as someone sedentary.

Second, we also need vitamins and minerals to go along with

our caloric load.

Third, we need to mitigate damage on the back end. If a food

is going to cause inflammation and essentially damage us
further, then it’s also going to be taking away from energy,
resources, and adaptation potential that could otherwise be
“spent” on building, repairing, and keeping up with our
consistent breakdown from training.

Knowing this, we can then say that some foods are probably
better than others. This is where the dichotomy between
“clean” and “unclean” foods come into play, but I urge you to
always think context.

It’s an error to peg all sorts of problems on one specific food

or component. You often hear people say things like sugar is
the bad guy. Although it’s probably not the good guy, it’s
probably not the lone gunman. How devastating it can be
depends on the overall composition of not only the rest of
your nutrition intake, but also your lifestyle and training
habits.

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 On the verge of adult-onset diabetes? Alright, a slice of cake
probably isn’t in your best interest. On the verge of dying
from starvation? Eat the whole cake.

It’s very difficult to label any food as “bad,” save for probably
trans fats. (Look for the word hydrogenated on labels.
Doesn’t matter if it’s partial or full, just avoid that word.) It
all depends on the context of the body you’re working with.
And since we’re working with context, things aren’t black
and white.

Getting to know YOUR body

Most times, finding out what’s best is going to be finding out
what agrees with your body. The reality is that some people
are lactose intolerant, and others aren’t. We can’t say that
milk is bad, really. We can only say that milk is better or
worse for someone given the context.

A lot of food baggage depends on how your body responds to

it. There’s lactose intolerance with dairy, and gluten
intolerance with wheat. Keep in mind that allergies and
problems don’t always manifest in the “vomit or poop your
brains out” kind of way. There’s a sliding scale, and here’s a
tale of my own to explain this.

When I first started to really see good gains, it was a time

when I switched to eating two meals per day and eating
almost exclusively oats as a carbohydrate source. Before
that, it was a lot of whole wheat pasta.

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 With the huge oat consumption, I’d have some . . . err . . .
gastric problems. Not anything big, just some farting. I was
years into dating my girlfriend, so I had some leeway there.
All else was well with my body.

But then I met a man named Nate Miyaki. He was nice

enough to go on a call with me. And why not? We’re
practically the same person. He used to do capoeria. I do
tricking. We both lift. We both have long hair. The
resemblance is uncanny.

Nate told me about carbohydrates, and how they’re likely

needed in a higher quantity in those of us that are out there
voluntarily depleting our glycogen stores because—no
surprise here—carbohydrates usually do the dirty work
replenishing glycogen.

As mentioned, I was all about oats. I loved them and still do.
In fact, they made the whole biofeedback gig rather easy. I
got bloated after I ate them, and so I always knew when I
ate “enough.” Suffice to say, without oats I don’t know if I
would have ever developed the philosophy you’re reading
now!

Now, I ate oats because I had a remedial understanding of

carbohydrates. I knew that refined flours had the nutrients
taken out of them and that the more “whole” (less processed)
the grain was, the less true this was.

Alongside this was the glycemic load factor, knowing that

the more processed a carbohydrate is, the higher glycemic

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 load it likely has which then has ties with insulin and thus
gaining or losing body fat—at least, that’s how the popular
story goes

The cherry on top, I guess you could say, was the fiber factor.
As you probably know, fiber is some healthy stuff. Dietary
fiber is good for your body and insoluble fiber helps you poop.
And it helps you poop because your body can’t digest it. It
adds “bulk” to your stool—it keeps you clean and functioning
well.

But according to Nate, there were a couple of things wrong

here.

First, in a lot of people the “hard to digest” part of wheat in

the bran and germ is more baggage than benefit. According
to Loren Cordain, bran is actually sort of an anti-nutrient
because it makes other nutrients harder to digest. They may
also damage the gastrointestinal and immune system.

Second, the purpose of eating carbohydrates is simply to

replenish glycogen. All of the health benefits most people
seek out in grains with fiber and nutrients are gained much
easier by looking towards fruits and vegetables, which are a
much more plentiful source of those things per load.

Both of these things means that carbohydrate selection is

probably best resolved by picking something that’s going to
preferentially refill glycogen with as little back-end baggage
as possible.

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 Nate’s recommendation?

Rice and root vegetables.

This was a tough shift for me because I was used to the “low
glycemic index” and whole grain thunder. (See, that works
because thunder's powerful, but also because whole grains
make me fart.) And yet Nate was telling me to switch to
white rice and white potatoes? They weren’t fibrous whole
grains, and they also top the charts of the glycemic scale. In
fact, a heuristic that’s often thrown around with
carbohydrates: if it’s white, don’t eat it. And yet, there it
was: white rice and white potatoes.

But I listened, and I’m glad I did. Not only am I bloat free,
but reintroducing these foods has also opened me up to
meals that I wouldn’t have otherwise eaten out of “fear.”

Of course, these sources of carbohydrates are higher in their

glycemic load . . . but that’s the point. The glycemic load is all
about how quickly blood glucose rises after eating certain
foods, and we want to spike blood sugar when the time is
right to deliver an ideal anabolic effect assuming the rest of
our nutrition is on point.

To boot, these sources mitigate the back-end baggage. They

aren’t inflammatory or as finicky as wheat is for a lot of
people.

Remember, we are not average people.

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 This all depends on your ability to make good use of it. As we
talked about earlier, your body has to have some sort of
programming that preferentially shunts nutrients and
energy to muscles. This all starts with training and breaking
ourselves down. Someone sedentary looking for general
health won’t exactly play by the same rules.

A funny anecdote from Kirksman who owns LiftHard.com:

The food that’s eaten is usually high protein,

medium fat and loads of rice. I’m unsure why they
say starch is super good for recovery but it’s
somewhere along the lines of rice increases a
hormone (I’m assuming insulin) and helps
recovery. Insulin isn’t a Mandarin words we use
often in Malaysia and I was the only English
speaking person there, so it was hard to get a
translation. Finally, they described it as;

“A gate that opens only after hard training, but

that gate requires rice (carbs) to open. Once it’s
open, the meats (protein and fat) can enter and
start the repair process with the rice giving these
meats the energy to work“

It sounded ridiculous the first time I tried

translating it directly to English in my head that
I laughed for days thinking about it. I still do
actually.

But yes, the idea is to eat plenty of meats. Full

good quality meats. None of those GMO shit here.
And NO soya milk. Tofu yes, cuz it’s density of
estrogen isn’t as high as soya milk and you can’t
consume that much tofu without feeling sick. Lots

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 of veggies and fruits. If you don’t want rice, eat
more fruits. If you don’t like fruits, you’re a
retard cuz fruits are awesomely sweet.

What do I mean by a lot? No we don’t have

macros, but if your plate isn’t covered in meat, go
back to the canteen and get more of it. In general,
about 500GMS of meat per serving should be
enough to keep an athlete relatively full. Opt for
more if you need to.

(In this quote, he’s talking about what most Olympic

weightlifters eat.) Kirksman has also said that gymnasts
usually don’t play by the same rules. If I remember correctly,
he said Chinese gymnasts aren’t as lax or as free with
carbohydrate intake, which is simply to say that there is
always going to be variance based upon the context and the
goal at hand.

We’ve been using the macronutrients generally as in

carbohydrates, proteins, and fats. But this neglects the idea
that some sources of each are likely better than others for
us. There’s a difference between someone on the verge of
being metabolically damaged and someone at their solid base
that knows their way around a barbell.

But what about potatoes, bro?

The idea of “whole wheat” or “whole grains” being less-than-

ideal opens up a can of worms because it’s against what most
people hear in the media, but the fact is that in order to talk
about carbohydrates at all, you have to first decide if you
need carbohydrates. Most people that aren’t voluntarily

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 depleting glycogen via training probably don’t need many,
and they certainly don’t need carbohydrates that are going to
greatly affect blood glucose levels.

Since we are depleting our stores, we have more wiggle

room, which means this bucket of starchy things is up for
your own experimentation, as some people also have trouble
digesting potatoes. (Usually best remedied by eliminating
the skin, from what I know.)

And I’m sure you have a friend of a friend of a friend that

eats breads and pastas and is ripped and jacked. (We all do.)
The important part is finding out what works best for you. If
you’ve been gaining well on pasta and bread, don’t let me
mess that up for you. If anything, I want you to teach me a
little something about gaining muscle without getting fat
while including those foods.

This isn’t about preaching some kind of ideal, but rather

sharing what I’ve found to work well. Don’t let anyone tell
you what agrees best with your body because there is always
variance. In an effort to find some kind of “optimal,” I think
that little experiments are worth the effort—especially if you
aren’t making good progress.

Keep in mind that your digestive track is also adaptable.

When you routinely eat foods, you have more of the digestive
cultures needed to handle certain foods. This is why when
some people go paleo and then come back to any sort of
wheat or grain product their stomach feels like it’s in
shambles. It’s the same for someone that goes from eating no

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 vegetables to a bunch of vegetables. Any sort of huge fiber
load (or novel load) on the digestive system can be a bit
tough. Try not to make snap judgments based upon one
feeding, especially if it’s a novel food.

THE CARBOHYDRATE BUCKET

Since we’re out and about, regularly draining our glycogen
levels, sticking solely to phytochemically superior fruits and
vegetables is tough, as they don’t carry the energetic load we
often need. That’s why it’s probably best to make use of them
as much as possible, but also rely on this sort of middle tier
where we have energy-nutrient-rich foods without a lot of
emissions.

I’ve since been convinced that most starchy carbohydrate

intake should serve the glycogen king. In other words,
choosing carbohydrate sources based on fiber or nutrient
content might not be the best thing to do. Let fruits and
vegetables take care of that, especially because a lot of
people show bad blood towards wheat. But also keep in mind
that some don’t, and some can tolerate it. (Like me, but I
choose not to eat it right now.)

In recent years, you’ve probably noticed a boom in gluten

obsession. Some people are probably quick to label
themselves gluten intolerant, but most people can eat
gluten; it’s just a matter of how good it makes you feel and
how much you eat. As with a lot of allergies, the dose
determines the response. If your body doesn’t exactly agree
with wheat (bloating, gas), that probably means it’s not

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 leaving your body in the most ideal state, so it’s up to you to
browse around.

I think the most important part about the carbohydrate

bucket is then finding something that limits damage on the
back end . . . for you. As of right now, that’s rice and root
vegetables for me. That’s not to say I’d never eat oats again
in my life. Something like white rice might not have as many
nutrients as some kinds of potatoes, but it’s good because it’s
not necessarily “damaging” otherwise.

If you show no aversion to wheat, you might be able to get by

in the oat, wild rice, barley, wheat berries, quinoa,
amaranth, and millet space. This is the “whole-grain” zone
in probably their least processed state that’s also edible.
Maybe play around with beans somewhere, too.

A great thing about that whole-grain posse is that they

usually make you feel fuller, which is great when trying to
lose weight. When trying to condense feedings and have
bigger meals though? Maybe not.

This isn’t to say eating more processed grains and gluten

will kill you. Pasta and bread shouldn’t be staples, in my
opinion, but when I had my greatest weight loss period I was
eating a slice of bread per day. As with most everything, it
hinges on context.

Fruits, bad?
Recently some have come out and said all fruits are the devil
and that they prevent fat loss and yaddah yaddah yaddah.

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 The reason being that fructose (which is the sugar in fruits)
is different than glucose (the sugar found in other foods like
potatoes).

The cliffnotes version of this: Fructose differs from glucose in

that glucose can be metabolized by different cells where as
fructose can only be metabolized by the liver. The liver can
only do so much, and can’t handle a lot of fructose at once,
and whenever there is too much to handle it converts excess
fructose to fat.

I think fruits are wonderful, but I don’t think you should go

buck wild eating them. One or two “pieces” or “servings” per
day is fine.

THE PROTEIN BUCKET

In an attempt to avoid any bioactive meat, I think pork
should be on the lowest list of “good” when it comes to
protein sources.

To give you some ease, I’ve never eaten organic. I’m not
really recommending that, but I do think it might be
something to look into. I also think grass-fed meat is
probably worth the investment because of the whole
bioactive dealio. Not enough people have bought my book for
me to do this regularly, but if I had the money, I probably
would.

I think that most of your protein sources should be leaner.

Chicken, white meat turkey; and plain, unflavored protein
work well. I eat red meat, too. Maybe 1-3 times per week.

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 Sometimes through ground meat, sometimes through roasts.
One of my favorite things to eat is a roast cooked in some dry
red wine with carrots and onions.

Also consider finding a friend that hunts deer. I have one

that killed me a deer and for $60 I got +$1000 worth of
ground meat, steaks, chops, and roasts. It lasts months.
Crazy.

Fish and eggs are good, too. Just be mindful of the type of
fish and any sort of mercury concentration the fish may
have. I know this is something that die-hard tuna eaters
wonder about.

THE FAT BUCKET

Fats are important, but I think most people get their fats the
wrong way. Oils are nice, but aren’t the best for high-heat
cooking. Supplement oils are often rancid and do more harm
than good.

Get your fats from a quality grass-fed butter (cook in this),

nuts, seeds, avocados, coconuts, or any “whole” food rather
than processed oil. Eggs are also a great source of fat. If you
need to use an oil, consider coconut.

Just as our primary fuel type in carbohydrates have options

with high emissions, so do fats. Once again, processing rears
its head. It takes a lot of work to get oils from food secluded
in the bottles for your nice and easy pouring. Most, times it
comes with baggage.

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 THE DAIRY BUCKET
This is an experiment waiting to happen. I have nothing
against dairy, and I think something like cottage cheese is
awesome. I eat a lot of cheese, actually. Who doesn’t like
cheese? Cheddar. Feta. Gouda. I think yogurt is good too,
provided you are eating plain yogurt without the sweetener
junk.

But milk and more lactose-based dairy is best left to your

own experimentation. Even cheese is, despite its
awesomeness. Just like wheat, some people don’t do well
with dairy. Some people can't have dairy without throwing
up or pooping violently. Other can eat the stuff and feel
“OK,” but not be at an ideal state. Others can eat the stuff
with zero problem.

What if you can’t eat like Goku?

Everyone knows Goku’s appetite was huge. Since we’re
talking about condensing meals and having bigger feedings,
we have to talk satiety. Some people with small appetites
won’t be able to condense their meals and eat enough to
build muscle. For them, intermittent fasting might not be
ideal, but it might be worth it to play around with the satiety
index.

This also might be why rice might have been so darn

effective: you can eat a lot of it without feeling full. The
satiety index measures just that: feeling full. You can chow
down on bunches of rice compared to potatoes.

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 Fullness Factors for Common Foods
Food FF
Bean sprouts 4.6
Watermelon 4.5
Grapefruit 4.0
Carrots 3.8
Oranges 3.5
Fish, broiled 3.4
Chicken breast, roasted 3.3
Apples 3.3
Sirloin steak, broiled 3.2
Oatmeal 3.0
Popcorn 2.9
Baked potato 2.5
Lowfat yogurt 2.5 More filling
Banana 2.5 per Calorie
Macaroni and cheese 2.5
Brown rice 2.3 Less filling
Spaghetti 2.2 per Calorie
White rice 2.1
Pizza 2.1
Peanuts 2.0
Ice cream 1.8
White bread 1.8
Raisins 1.6
Snickers Bar 1.5
Honey 1.4
Sugar (sucrose) 1.3
Glucose 1.3
Potato chips 1.2
Butter 0.5

Source: http://nutritiondata.self.com/topics/fullness-factor

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 Although not universal, you can see how the foods become
less satiating at processing increases. Rocket fuel. You can
look into it more if you want to know how to feel a bit fuller
or even less full if you have trouble eating enough foods.

But remember, it’s not always about feeling full. It’s about
giving your body what it need and making sure damage on
the back end is minimized.

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 Thirteen
Fasting and athletes

S
o now that we have this idea of training in an
underfed or fasted state, and the reality of it being
perhaps a positive thing, we have to talk about fuel.
For simplicity, think of three primary fuel sources within
your body:

• Muscle glycogen
• Liver glycogen
• Fat

The glycogen stored in muscle is trapped within the muscle,

only to be used for muscle contractions. When it comes to
fueling the brain, liver glycogen is generally the go-to. You’re
almost always churning through liver glycogen because your
brain is always on.

When you fast for a decent period of time (maybe 16+ hours),
your liver glycogen gets low. This, more often than not, leads
to a brain fog, which makes you feel physically unable to do
much of anything. You might even have diminished
motivation. Just theorizing here, but it’s probably the point
in which body fat is now in charge of fueling the brain and
you might be going through some moments of ketosis.

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 The best glycogen fuel comes from carbohydrates. Without
enough carbohydrates (either very low carbohydrate diet or
fasting), the body starts breaking down fat and turning it
into glucose. This is nutritional ketosis.

Ketosis sounds wonderful, doesn’t it? The body is using body

fat, after all. But this might do funky things elsewhere, as
the body isn’t too fond of nutritional ketosis. It’d rather make
use of the more effective carbohydrate-glycogen relationship.
So what happens? The body locks up cells (makes them
insulin resistant) around the body in favor of shuttling
carbohydrates to be used for brain fuel. In other words: say
bye bye to any future muscle ambitions.

Good? Bad? To be honest, I don’t know. There are so many

things that come into this picture, one of which is that it all
depends on the length of your low-no carbohydrate stint.
Some say that it’s hell when you first start moving into
ketosis, but then your body adapts and becomes more
efficient than ever—something often called the metabolic
shift, which is when fat is able to be used at higher and
higher exercise intensity. This actually preserves glycogen
stores which theoretically makes for much better
performance. Going back to our earlier runner example,
using fat for fuel at a higher intensity means you’re going to
go a lot longer and faster before bonking out.

Talking about the metabolic shift could be a book in itself, so

all I can tell you is that what I’m showing you has done
nothing but lead me to my most successful muscle building

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 time period of my life. Remember the 24-hour rule: nothing
done in 24 hours can’t be easily undone.

You might hit a time when liver glycogen gets low. But it’s
only a time. We cycle carbohydrates, so you’re always going
to be throwing coal into the furnace here and there.
Furthermore, my experience has shown that low liver
glycogen really doesn’t affect performance as much as you’d
think it would once you get into the gym and get moving.
Once you start churning through the sympathetic response,
your body realizes the need for energy and does the job it
needs to do.

But I will also say that length tends to be an important thing

here. If you ever train when close to E, be mindful of a
draining two hour training session or some kind of training
session that involves anything full-body-glycolytic-esque.
Something like prolonged HIIT or sports (like basketball—
things that intertwine constant movement with elements of
strength or power) practice is different than fresh sprints or
lifting.

Since we aren’t talking sports right now, let’s jump back to

traditional strength training. As I mentioned before, you
probably will feel less-than ideal going into training, but
that’s psychological. You have to learn how to probe
your psychological potholes to reveal underlying
physiology.

All of this is just to say that, yes, fasting might lead to some
feelings of lethargy. Depending on what your day to day

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 responsibilities are, this could be a little troublesome. Since I
write for a living, for instance, doing much of anything after
I hit the cliff is tough, so it’s something I have to plan for.

I encourage you to experiment with training despite this

feeling though, as long as it’s just a tired sort of feeling. If
you think you’re on the verge of passing out, then that’s
something a little more severe than low liver glycogen.

Carbohydrate stress and said E

Given that the brain uses glycogen, and carbohydrates are
the primary glycogen source, here we enter the realm of
macronutrient stress and the hazy feeling previously
mentioned. If you’re going through days of lower
carbohydrate intake, you have a chance of hitting this
feeling often.

I call it the Western funk because this feeling is almost

always combined with being sedentary. If you’re out and
about, from my experience, it doesn’t even come to mind.
This is why I recommend not getting mentally hung up on
this feeling. Instead, get moving.

Why? Because this fog isn’t muscular. Remember, muscle

glycogen can only be used by the muscles. It’s not that you’re
necessarily physically fatigued, it’s just that your brain is
running low on energy. From my end of things—why I think
this fog resolves itself—I think that once you start using
your muscles in a meaningful way, your brain knows it has
to start kicking into gear. The body, being a smart cookie,
then finds the energy the brain needs and all ends well.

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 If you can’t bust past this, it’s best to have a smaller
scavenge-type feeding as far away from training as possible
that still allows you to feel sane. Go with two hours before
training and work backwards from there.

Finding the energy: let your muscles get

eaten
Remember back to talks of energy systems and
carbohydrates—glycogen—being a primary source of fuel
after the phosophocreatine system bunks out. In other
words, if you’re doing meaningful strength training, chances
are you’re going to be using some carbohydrates and
glycogen to fuel your training.

I threw in a little footnote way back about protein being used

efficiently for energy when glycogen stores are bonked and
yet exercise intensity remains high. Although fat is a
plentiful resource, breaking it down for energy is too slow of
a process to make good use of during high intensity training.
The body turns to its protein then because its faster.

But the body wouldn’t do that . . . would it? Get rid of

precious muscle tissue?

According to Ori Hofmekler, the body is surprisingly good at

wasting away muscle tissue in time of need, specifically non-
working muscle tissue. We return to the nervous system
here. If you’re running away from a lion, the last thing you
want to do is eat away your power/speed-generating leg
muscles.

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 There are a few important implications here. First being
that your program is important. The body is smart enough to
preserve working tissue, which is one of the reasons I prefer
my go-to split in the squats-presses vs. pulls split. To this
day, I train as much of my body every time I train to prevent
any unnecessary breakdown. Click here to check out the
training program.

Second being that most people smarter than me say that the
tissue that usually gets broken down is the lower quality
tissue. In other words, your body is almost “cleaning” itself.*
Also, don’t forget about the negative feedback loops.

*The world of autophagy and intermittent fasting is still a baby.

Don’t take this too much to heart.

When you deplete muscle glycogen stores in the name of

meaningful resistance training, they replenish to a higher
level over time to compensate. But don’t forget about the
inverted-U. At some time, the muscle wasting will be more
negative than positive. This is why it’s important to not only
zig, but also zag. Don’t confuse short-term responses with
long-term adaptations.

So don’t fret. The idea of breaking down muscle tissue is

usually met with harsh resistance (get it?). It takes a lot of
time to build the stuff, and yet it gets broken down so
quickly. Is there justice in the world?

Maybe . . . just maybe.

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 Worried about performance
Diving into the topic of low liver glycogen and decreased
performance is a bit scary. Like I said, you might notice a
drop in performance. The big question that comes with this
is how big of a drop you’re willing to tolerate.

Take, for instance, physique training. It might seem like a

great idea to always perform at your maximum, but
physique training is all about convincing the body that
muscle needs built. Part of this is pushing your current
limits of adaptation, but the other part is how it all relates to
the previous sessions. You might train below your capacities
as if you were “carb loaded,” but does that matter? As long as
you’re upping your abilities over time, you’re going to get the
job done. In other words, you might not be performing as
high as you absolutely could, but you’re training better and
better under the same conditions from session to session.

Say you can squat 315 for 10. Now say you play around with
all of this and suddenly find that you can only do 315 for 8.
No worries. That’s stressing your body’s ability given what it
has. It might not be the same as any previous max, but
you’re focusing on the wrong things. You need to think about
the body overcoming stress—your internal physiology. And
even though it’s less than your absolute ability, it’s still
straining and overcoming stress. So then when you keep
training and take it to 315 for 9 and then 10 – 11 – 12, etc.,
you’re still improving—still adapting to stress given a less-
than-optimal energy condition.

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 This is why, from a physique standpoint, most people don’t
concern themselves over maxes. To them it’s all about
getting quality work done. Think of it in terms of what’s
going on internally.

Things change if you’re doing some kind of skilled athletic

training though. For instance, tricking in a depleted state
might be good from a stress standpoint. Deplete the energy
so that it gets better at restoring it over time—that kind of
thing. But since the skill development of every trick depends
on the performance (every rep), it’s probably not the best
idea. In other words, if my jump is suffering, then my
execution of a trick suffers. When execution suffers, you run
the potential of ingraining bad motor patterns for the skill.

As with everything, there’s a tradeoff. With muscle goals,

there is little skill element which means I couldn’t give two
figs about feeling less energetic or any absolute max. What
matters more is that I’m taxing myself physiologically
enough for it to perceive a need to make muscular changes in
the long run. It’s all about getting better over time within
similar contexts.

But sports are a different beast. There’s skill and usually

more energetic drain.

Physique and performance

The evidence for intermittent fasting being useful—or at the
very least, effective—for physique competitors is compelling.
But what if you aren’t a physique competitor? After all,
physique is different than performance.

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 And the reality is that most everyone high on fasting is a
fitness professional, most of which are only concerned about
looking good. But what about those of us that are more than
meets the eye? What about someone like myself, that lifts,
tricks, and plays recreational sports? What about the days
when I lift early and play late? What if your life isn’t
optimized solely for weight-training workouts? And what
about life beyond the barbell?

Fasting for weight-training is all well and good, but we’re

talking about performance here. Can fasters still perform at
a high level?

To do my best at generalizing, I focused on the extremes. For

instance, seeing no performance impairment after a 3.5 day
fast makes it easier to predict shorter duration fast effects.
(And there was a study done that showed just that.)

When it comes to performance and intermittent fasting, we

lucked out. There’s a host of athlete-specific fasting research
thanks to the religious observance of Ramadan.

During Ramadan, participants fast from both food and drink

from sun-up to sun-down, so it’s tremendously hellish
compared to most of our comfy fasting experiments that have
us sipping on coffee and chugging water. (Keep that mind:
these athletes are going without food and drink. It’s safe to
say that they would undoubtedly perform better with some
kind of hydration.)

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 Ramadan to the rescue
No food or drink for hours upon hours? Performance has to
drop. Right? I would think so, too, but this just isn’t the case.
Many studies and stories show athletes of all shapes and
sizes doing just fine without both food and drink. But there
are also some downsides. Here’s a quick rundown:

• Performance, for the most part, is maintained.

• Performance never increased as a result of fasting.
• During Ramadan, few athletes eat enough to match
caloric demands.
• But when body weight is lost, it’s mostly fat, not
muscle mass.
• Huge feasts before bedtime can negatively affect sleep.
• Experienced Ramadan athletes handle the fast better
and have performances to show for it.
• Anticipatory feelings towards a meal can disturb
performance.

Overall feelings
It’s safe to say that performance—for the most part—can be
maintained on an empty stomach. Overall, it seems athletes
with stable mindsets do the best. So craving food and
obsessing over hunger is a path failure.

Anyone that ventures into intermittent fasting knows that it

takes time to get used to new eating patterns. And yet, these
athletes are suddenly thrown into a situation without both
food and drink for 12-or-so hours, so their maintenance of

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 performance markers is impressive. The big take-home
here is that hunger is apparently what you make of it.

More so than specific nutritional demands, the main

consideration for an athlete and fasting is living at the
extremes. A hungry athlete isn’t going to perform well unless
they are mentally conditioned to accept hunger as an
arbitrary feeling. Most people, however, associate hunger
with depletion. But the other side might even be worse—
performing on a full stomach. Big meals increase
parasympathetic nervous system activation. Think of the big
holiday meal sleepy effect. Not good.

Walking the line

The ironic part about intermittent fasting and performance
is that if you’re considering it (or even experimenting with
it), you likely have a better diet than most professional
athletes. (Who usually eat garbage.)

To decide whether or not fasting is for you, and to see how to

arrange it around your activities, first ask yourself if you
thrive or dive on hunger?

If you can manage hunger fine, the Ramadan studies show

that most performance markers can be maintained.

Here are some suggestions:

Have your biggest meal later in the day, after any

strenuous activity. Don’t worry about eating late, but don’t
overly jam calories down your throat before hitting the

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 pillow. It can funk up sleep, so leave a few hours between
your last big meal and sleepy time.

Don’t eat any big meals 6-8 hours before activity.

Small scavenges are best if you’re trying to perform your
best.

If you’re doing anything strenuous for over an hour,

think about getting something small in your stomach
beforehand. Not so close to the activity, but not so far
either. Just make sure it’s small enough to feel “neutral.”
Don’t be starved, don’t be stuffed.

This is more of a personal anecdote, but a heavy dose

of carbohydrates prior to activity never ends well. On
almost every experimental trial, a lot of carbohydrates,
resulted in a crash and burn. So if you lift early and play
late, save the big carbohydrate meal for later (after play).
You’re probably best having some fruits or small portions of
carbs, just don’t go for the downs in between activities.

If you’re having trouble fitting in the calories, be sure

to optimize your “off days” when nothing is planned.
So maybe a few hectic days can’t be as “structured” as you
prefer, and you can’t eat enough and adhere to fasting
principles. Just take the hit. But fill up on the days that
allow for more structure.

If you want to carb cycle, be mindful of what kind of

athlete you are and what your macro demands are.

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 Hunger isn’t going to kill your performance. Every day,
collegiate and professional athletes train at 6AM. The vast
majority don’t eat anything before their training. Most of
them are still half asleep, actually. Save your big meal for
after any practice, games, or activity.

The implications
This section purposefully came after the review of Ramadan
athletes being able to trudge through training successfully.
In case that reality hasn’t yet sunk in, let’s sink it like Davy
Jones.

There are athletes in the NFL that observe Ramadan. These

athletes get up in the early morning and go through two
grueling days without food or drink until sundown.

And yet, here we are debating things on a much smaller

scale. Part of me wants to say, “Suck it up and deal with it,”
but I know everyone is different, so let’s talk about hunger
hormones.

When you’re hungry and breaking yourself down for energy,

you’re actually being slowed down by your body. Your
metabolic rate probably slows and some non-essential
functions are shut off. (You might even get cold, as even body
heat drops to conserve energy.) When you’re full, you’re
actually speeding up. Ever gorge on a holiday meal and fall
asleep only to awake in a mean sweat?

There’s no doubt that being hungry and starving isn’t the

most ideal physical condition. You don’t want to be cold with

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 metabolic shivers. But we also don’t want to be plump,
overfed, and bloated.

What’s ideal for performance? Well, that all depends on how

serious the competition is.

When you train fasted, you’re going to put your body into a
deeper shock and it won’t be as efficient. That’s perfectly fine
and normal though, because it will compensate on the back
end and get better at restocking for the future. When all you
care about are aesthetics, a small hit of performance isn’t
going to do much because it’s all relative to your
performance the day prior. If you always train in the same
state, then it’s moot.

But when you’re an athlete and need to perform at your

highest, things change. Often times, what comes back and
hurts you isn’t so much a lack of energy. Don’t get confused:
those sports drinks really aren’t gushing energy into your
system, nor is that meal before the game doing the majority
of work for your energy. Your body’s energy stores are likely
stocked to some capacity even if that doesn’t happen.
(Although this all depends on length of competition.)

What comes back and interferes with your performance is (a)

subjective feeling, (b) hunger, and (c) liver glycogen.

A lot of people think they need to eat, but might not. There
are some athletes that puke from nerves before some
competitions. Suffice to say, they might not be in ideal
shape, but they make it by because their body isn’t stupid.

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 Most hunger goes away once you start moving, too. In body-
speak, you have bigger fish to fry than satisfying your sweet
tooth when you’re competing—unless, that is, the
competition isn’t all that serious, or you’re competing against
yourself. I know from tricking that a slower-paced, self-
regulated, highly mental activity isn’t as physiologically
arousing as most team sports. It tends to be something
hunger creeps into much more.

But hunger is just that: hunger. It doesn’t say 100% about

how your body is functioning, so let your body decide. If you
begin to notice some trends or decreases in performance, I
think that (a) raw vegetables, (b) fruits, and (c) whey protein
are good things to make use of before any sort of competition
or sports game to give your body enough to get by without
getting into a hugely-fed state.

Marshawn Lynch, running back for the Seattle Seahawks,

munches on skittles. That’d be more along the rocket fuel
side, but I think it’s a great little thing to note: eat light and
eat something that tastes good and juicy (like fruit).

This is, of course, if you’re trying to walk the line between

performance and physique. Anytime you’re 100%
performance, you could stand to be a bit more cautious about
having maybe a portion-controlled meal a few hours before
any sort of competition to make sure you won’t be all that
hungry, and then you can add a safety net of vegetables or
fruit or some kind of whey protein drink at your side to help
you refuel during the match.

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 This all depends on when you train, though. When you
combine natural liver glycogen usage with training—another
glycogen depleter—you’re going to hit E faster, so it depends
on how used your liver glycogen is going into things.
Obviously, the further into a fast you are, the lower it will
be.

In any sort of explosive sporting event, you don’t want to rely

on ketones or drop into nutritional ketosis. It might be fine
for muscle building, but when you’re talking absolute
performance, it’s not good. It’s important for us to keep our
glycogen stores at a respectable level to keep our brain and
nervous system happy and for the overall muscular benefit.

Here are some considerations if you’re feeling lethargic on

training days or experiencing any ketosis-esque (low
glycogen) symptoms:

Make sure you’re eating enough starchy

carbohydrates on training days. Don’t be afraid to eat
carbohydrates.

Include a few pieces of fruit on your low-

carbohydrate days. This will give the glycogen levels a
small boost. Thin-skinned berries are a good choice, but work
with whatever you got.

If you train in the evening or late afternoon, have a

small meal with a piece of fruit 3-5 hours before
training.

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 Orient your training so that you don’t have two
consecutive off days. This is perhaps the most critical on a
carbohydrate cycling template. It’s better to go...train-rest-
train-rest-train-train-rest...than...train-train-rest-train-
train-rest-rest...as those back to back low-carbohydrate days
don’t bode well for restocking and refueling.

If none of the above help, consider dropping

carbohydrate cycling and stick solely to calorie
cycling. For some, the amount of starchy carbs they have
the potential to slam down on training days simply isn’t
enough to cover for the amount of stress they can place upon
their body in the gym.

If you happen to play a recreational sport, then you have a

choice to make. You can realize that Ramadan athletes
probably go through more grueling workouts than you do
and aren’t even allowed water, or you can ditch intermittent
fasting. In truth, I say it depends on your personality. I can
easily grit my teeth and work through things without food
because of experience.

But if you play any kind of sport and you think you need
food, then scavenge your way through things. There’s a
difference between being 100% all in on physique training
and trying to split the difference between performance and
physique. In this situation, you can rarely have your cake
and eat it too. Something will suffer on one end or the other.
It’s your choice to make which one gets preferential
treatment and how much.

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 Fourteen
Take home tips

P
utting on paleo-goggles, you’d probably say that
times of deprivation and excess are totally normally,
and something our body is “designed” to handle. In
a time in which food wasn’t stored in refrigerators and
grocery stores weren’t ten minute car rides away, you’d have
to imagine that the inhabitants of any land were subject to
whatever popped out of the ground or crossed their path on
any given day. Food intake would naturally rotate with the
seasons, and not all seasons (drought) would be ideal for
food.

I’m not a huge paleo fan, so I don’t want you to think we’re
going there. But we’re kind of going there. The reality is that
we aren’t paleo, and we don’t know much about paleo
(certainly not as much as we think we know).

We can’t pretend we don’t have a refrigerator. We can’t

ignore than luscious baked goods are seconds away from our
home. We can’t ignore that family dinners are an important
part of culture. We can’t ignore that cooking takes time, and
some of us don’t have time to take.

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 We can’t ignore that our new lives promote chronic nutrient
intake that doesn’t rotate with the seasons (or the hand of
Mother Nature)—that this is a relatively “new” thing in the
grand scheme of human existence.

Does that mean this whole scheme is “healthier?” Maybe. I

just know that’s it’s worked for me, and it’s helped me grow
muscles I thought I’d never had.

The simplest way to put into practice everything that’s been

said: some days eat more than enough; some days eat less
than needed

I could probably add something about doing your best to

ensure each of these happened on each respective day, too.
It may seem anticlimactic, but it’s completely against what
most people think about trying to put on muscle without
getting fat. The bulk mindset is typically shunned in search
of a magic calorie intake, but that’s not any more helpful. In
fact, the bulk mindset is a must. You have to have days full
of indulgence and overfeeding, but you should also have days
of underfeeding.

This opens up to details, too, of course. If you wanted to be as

macroscopic as possible, you’d stick to those above two bullet
points and not worry about much else—grazing throughout
the day, feasting on meats and more “prep” and things at
night.

Preparation is a big deal for us in today’s age. Preparation is

a pain; if you cook a legitimate breakfast, you probably wake

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 up thirty minutes before you’d otherwise have to wake up.
And then there’s the lunch hour: most of us don’t cook at
work, so we rely on packing a lunch. This is often what leads
to people snacking on junk food. Throwing a hunk of metal
into the vending machine is a lot easier than preparing a
lunch, packaging it in containers, lugging a bag to work,
fighting over refrigerator space, and then being subject to
public scrutiny if you eat moderately healthy.

But the sad truth: most “natural” foods require preparation.

What we see more often than not, is that the amount of

preparation is proportional to the level of feasting. We also
see that meals of intense preparation (big feasts) naturally
include more meat and protein.

Snacking and on-the-go foods are things that grow from the
ground or on trees, and are things that require minimal
preparation.

Dinner is usually the most preparation-and-socialization-

intensive meal of the day. There are exceptions depending on
the kind of life you live. But, in general, the last meal is most
friendly for “having time” to prepare, to sit back, relax, and
pound down some food.

• Preparation = bigger meal = lots of protein = feast

• No preparation = snacking = leaves ‘n eggs = graze

Given “feast-mode” and “graze-mode,” we set up a system

that looks like this:

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 • Graze-mode is happening 24/7
• Feast-mode is secluded to a narrow window, typically
dinner—when you have the most prep time

During graze mode, try to make it without food. If you can’t,

use your backup sources in raw veggies and hardboiled eggs.
Maybe a piece of fruit here and there if needed.

Unsweetened coffee and tea is fine. Otherwise, drink water.

If you need heavy cream in your hot beverage, then you need
it in your beverage. No need to barter with it. If you don’t
need it, don’t use it.

And then from there it’s all about how you decide to capture
the wind.

Feast mode and capturing the wind

Continuing onward, we can then say that for the “feast”
portion, we have a few options:

• Some days eat more. On these days, err to

carbohydrates and protein.
• Some days eat less. On these days, err to fats and
protein.

All systems are go on carbohydrate feast days. If you can

chow down big time, I’d eat one meal until you’re content
(don’t throw up or anything like that), and I wouldn’t worry
about calorie intake in the slightest. If you can’t eat a lot of
food, start with a big dinner. Wolf down as many other
calories as possible in the 2-4 hours after.

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 If you have a small appetite, cook a big dinner and cut it in
half. Eat half at dinner, and the other half 2-4 hours later.
Remember, this meal should contain mostly starchy
carbohydrates and proteins, and should be eaten after a
training session. Make sure you get enough quality proteins.
The general rule: if you’re doubting yourself, you’re not
eating enough.

Given our manipulation of feedback loops, catabolic days can

take a different flavor.

• You can drop super low calories.

• You can drop super low carbohydrates.
• You can even drop super low protein.

Basically, let the catabolic day shake out depending on how

you feel. These are all up for experimentation. Remember:
one day of deprivation will not cause long-term change. I
wouldn’t go low protein all of the time, but it might be worth
experimenting with once every few weeks simply because
depriving the body is going to encourage more efficiency (a
“rebound”).

Capturing the wind

We always have to look at foods in terms of muscular
potential.

• Higher calorie intake gives us the raw materials for

building new tissue
• Higher protein intake gives us the specific raw
material for building new muscle tissue

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 • Higher carbohydrates intake helps us replenish energy
stores from training

That’s a good cocktail for anabolism, but it’s not always

about anabolism. Going chronically high in every domain
(even though best for putting the body into a “growth” mode)
every day will end in body fat gain over the long haul.

Why?

You’re not always muscularly thirsty, and one of the ways to

destroy thirst is to always drink. We want to get to a point
where our muscles want to refuel, and so we have to harness
negative feedback loops.

We can manipulate negative feedback loops to increase how

our body responds to substances. If you wanted to get the
most out of 100mg of caffeine, the smart thing to do is to
avoid the substance so that the body doesn’t take the drug
for granted from frequent exposure.

The overriding premise: doing the same thing day in and day
out disrespects physiology. In other words, there can be
potentially profound effects from neglecting nutrients at
times.

Take two scenarios. In each, you train on Tuesday.

• Scenario #1: You eat 1000 kcalories on Monday. You

eat 3000 kcalories on Tuesday.

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 • Scenario #2: You eat 2000 kcalories on Monday. You
eat 2000 kcalories on Tuesday.

The question is: does not eating anything one day (or eating
very little) effect how the nutrients are used the following
day? Looking at both examples above, you’d infer that you’d
have a higher anabolic response on Tuesday in Scenario #1.
You’d also have to infer that the body would be more
receptive to nutrient intake (thirstier), given the prior day of
deprivation.

(I don’t often recommend eating nothing. I’m just using it for

the sake of example.)

The most important part is the zigzag. Go through times of

breakdown and then times of building up. Don’t obsess too
much over each end, just make sure you’re bobbing and
weaving.

Winding things down

Is our body so stupid that it can only work in one plane on a
daily basis? Weekly basis? Monthly basis? Can’t we shiver
from cold one day, and sweat from heat the next? Can’t we
harness negative feedback loops on a day-to-day basis to
gain muscle without fat?

We don’t truly understand the full complexities of body.

Even the most hardcore scientists don’t. We do a lot of
guessing and there are a lot of recipes out there to bake good
things.

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 Regardless of whether or not the ideas presented here are
100% scientifically accurate, they worked for me. They baked
me a damn good cookie. There were upsides and downsides
during the journey, but I think that’s standard.

One of the questions that I’ve personally wrestled with over

the months it’s taken me to write this is, “How long am I
going to be doing this for?” It’s a blow to the stomach. I eat
one meal per day right now. How long is this going to
continue? Is it possible for it to continue?

Well, firstly, I’m not exactly a pioneer. Former America

football player Herchel Walker is pretty public about only
eating once per day. Sumo wrestlers(!) are also sometimes in
the one meal crowd. Bodybuilding legend Serge Nubret was
another known to eat a lot in one PM sitting, neglecting
breakfast. None of these people are necessarily twigs, either.

Since I’m an Ancient Greek fan boy, I’ll also mention that
most Hellenistic art work showcases some muscular bodies,
and quotes about their eating patterns are sprinkled
throughout this little book.

So to answer that question (how long will this continue?)

right now, I’d have to say: I have no idea. Maybe tomorrow
I’ll decide to eat breakfast again ritualistically after not
doing it for years. I can’t give you an honest answer.

But that doesn’t bother me, because the journey has

taught me a lot.

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 There’s a great quote out there in the Wear Sunscreen essay.
It says something like, “Live in New York once, but leave
before you get hard. Live in California once, but leave before
you get soft.”

I think the majority of us should live in this world of fasting

once just to understand our personal limits and what our
body is capable of.

Research is wonderful, but you shouldn’t let it tell you how

your body will work. Use it as a guidepost, but nothing more.
Probe your own limits. See how your body responds and try
to be objective. Try to understand mind tricks you play on
yourself. Don’t let one week destroy your view on something,
because one week isn’t a long time to get the body to figure
something out.

Go to the beach for a week, sit in the sun every day, and
you’ll be burnt going home. You’d probably conclude that
sitting in the sun is a terrible experience. But if you did
things a little more thoughtfully, you wouldn’t be getting
burnt and you might enjoy the sun and the beach.

Effective ignorance
To conclude, you might be wondering: if this idea of
nutritional stress is so important, how do people not give two
licks about it and still gain muscle?

The first explanation is that some people start lean and

convince their bodies that muscle is a better investment than
fat. These are typical skinny guys that, once they start

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 training, supercharge their muscle’s responsiveness to the
ooey-gooey nutrients because they now need more to
replenish and restore what was damaged and depleted
through training. So for them, it’s primarily about eating
enough, eating the good stuff, and training regularly.

The second explanation is that a lot of people at the forefront

of the field take performance enhancing substances to help
this physiological shift along. It’s a sad reality.

The third explanation is that they simply do traditional

bulking and cutting. I never said it was totally ineffective,
but rather just not for me. But the thing is, when you do
this, you give your fat cells reason to become sensitive again.
And over time (the longer the bulk), generally the results
worsen.

And the fourth explanation is that training itself is enough

to spur progress. Remember, the right kind of training is a
physical stress that tears the body down. It’s a zig. The body
will zag solely from that, and that’s what most people rely
on.

So it’s not that this way is the only way, but keep in mind:
many people don’t gain muscle without getting fat.

By embracing this strategy and fluctuating between

anabolism and catabolism, you do four things. First, you
create feedback loops which heighten ultimate anabolic
spikes which means you can eat more at times and more of
that more goes towards muscle and not fat. Second, you

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 naturally keep the system insulin sensitive in a way
favorable to body composition (instead of turning into a fat
slob). Third, you go through times of catabolism which
means you don’t turn into a fat slob. Fourth, you capture the
wind and perhaps sail faster than you would with the wind
at your back.

To go along with that third bit about bulking or cutting, I

could give a little schtick here about clean bulking being
healthier than turning into Jabba the Hutt once or twice
every year. Many studies show that yo-yo weight gain and
loss isn’t a good thing. If you appreciate the body and all that
it does, you’d see why: bulking and cutting is physiological
mayhem.

One last note

I just wanted to close with one more thought. More so than
specific foods and numbers, I use categories. In the example
diets above, I use “carbohydrates” as opposed to specific
types of carbohydrates like rice, potatoes, pasta, or anything
similar.

This resource isn’t married to one specific philosophy. There

are “paleo” people. There are “low-fat” people. There are
“four hour body” people. There are breakfast people. And
there are many, many more “people” out there, all with their
own beliefs.

There’s nothing wrong with having a belief system, but

results are had on every system—regardless of how
“different” it may be from another. It’s up to your body to

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 decide what works best for you. Notice that I said your body,
not you.

Don’t believe anything without testing it yourself. Some

people eat pasta and build muscle like a champ. Others eat
oats, or drink milk. Maybe you can’t, though. I can’t tell you
from this side of the screen. No one can tell you from this
side of the screen.

Experiment. Do most everything right, first. Eat the Chaos

Core. Carb cycle. Time your nutrient intake. After that, if
you’re still struggling to make progress, then ditch the dairy
or grains for two weeks. Four weeks is even better. I’d even
go as far as six or eight weeks. If you notice drastic
differences in your results, you have your answer. And it’s
real. If something doesn’t work, don’t be afraid to
experiment.

I just have one rule: embrace a little uncertainty.

Find beauty in the chaos

“In all chaos there is a

cosmos, in all disorder
a secret order.”

- Carl Jung

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 RESOURCES
Things used to compile this book

1. Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers by Robert Sapolsky

2. The Story of the Human Body by Daniel Lieberman
3. Maximum Muscle, Minimum Fat by Ori Hofmekler

Thanks...

Martin Berkhan. You have—undeniably—the most

comprehensive intermittent fasting resource online. You
were my guide when I first started. Visit Leangains.

Nate Miykai. I think I’ve mentioned you and Feast Your Fat
Away enough.

Ori Hofmekler. You’re really the godfather of fasting. Your

books, The Warrior Diet and Maximum Muscle, Minimum
deserve more credit.

Brad Pilon. You paved the way for my experimentation with

“longer duration fasting.” I recommend your book, Eat Stop
Eat, to anyone interested in more of the scientific aspect
behind long duration fasting.

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 Two meal Mike, you’re also an underrated source of
information in the fasting world.

Ramadan research
1. The effect of time-of-day and Ramadan fasting on anaerobic performances.

Findings: Before Ramadan, athletes had better night

performances. During Ramadan, peak power dropped at
night, but still matched morning performances. Perceived
feeling of fatigue increased at night.

2. Subjective Perception of Sports Performance, Training, Sleep and Dietary

Patterns of Malaysian Junior Muslim Athletes during Ramadan Intermittent
Fasting.

Findings: Opinions all over the place. Half of participants

said Ramadan had no effect. Over half said they were tired
during the day. Only 40% were able to maintain caloric
intake.

Thoughts: Maybe ones that reported fatigue couldn’t

maintain intake?

3. Effect of Ramadan fasting on body composition and physical performance

in female athletes.

Findings: Most athletes couldn’t consume enough calories,

bodyweight dropped. But there minimal to no drop in
performance. Average deficit around 500 calories.

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 4. Effects of fasting during ramadan month on cognitive function in muslim
athletes.

Findings: Performances requiring sustained rapid responses

decreased in evening. Performances not dependent on speed
stayed the same.

5. Ramadan and Its Effect on Fuel Selection during Exercise and Following
Exercise Training.

Findings: “Separately, a single bout of endurance exercise

places similar metabolic stress on the body as fasting since
the exercising muscle must reduce its use of carbohydrate
and utilize lipid more readily as exercise progresses. Not
surprisingly therefore, adaptations in muscle to repeated
bouts of endurance exercise (endurance training) are similar
to those seen with repeated fasting/refeeding.”

6. Temporal Patterns of Subjective Experiences and Self-Regulation during

Ramadan Fasting among Elite Archers: A Qualitative Analysis.

Findings: “Overall patterns revealed that experiences

associated with physical, emotional, behavioral, and
spiritual dimensions dominated in the first phase of fasting,
while the mental dimension surfaced increasingly in the
latter phase of fasting.”

7. Investigating Two Different Training Time Frames during Ramadan

Fasting.

Findings: No difference in performance. But bodyweight

dropped.

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 8. Effect of Ramadan intermittent fasting on aerobic and anaerobic
performance and perception of fatigue in male elite judo athletes.

Findings: Fasting didn’t affect aerobic and alactic anaerobic

performance. Anaerobic lactic suffered a bit.

9. Effects of Ramadan fasting on 60 min of endurance running performance

in moderately trained men.

Findings: Didn’t affect performance.

10. Effects of Ramadan intermittent fasting on sports performance and

training: a review.

Findings: “Whereas subjective feelings of fatigue and other

mood indicators are often cited as implying additional stress
on the athlete throughout Ramadan, most studies show
these measures may not be reflected in decreases in
performance. The development and early implementation of
sensible eating and sleeping strategies can greatly alleviate
the disruptions to training and competitiveness, thus
allowing the athlete to perform at a high level while
undertaking the religious intermittent fast.”

11. Intermittent fasting improves functional recovery after rat thoracic

contusion spinal cord injury.

Findings: Perhaps intermittent fasting can enhance

recovery?

12. Effects of Ramadan intermittent fasting on middle-distance running

performance in well-trained runners.

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 Findings: “At the end of Ramadan fasting, a decrease in
MVC was observed (-3.2%; P < 0.00001; η, 0.80), associated
with an increase in the time constant of oxygen kinetics
(+51%; P < 0.00007; η, 0.72) and a decrease in performance (-
5%; P < 0.0007; η, 0.51). No effect was observed on running
efficiency or maximal aerobic power.”

13. Effects of Ramadan fasting on physical performance and metabolic,

hormonal, and inflammatory parameters in middle-distance runners.

Findings: Hormones mostly stayed the same through

Ramadan, but there were some sleep disturbances and
increased adrenaline overall.

14. The influence of Ramadan on physical performance measures in young

Muslim footballers.

Findings: Zero performance effects.

15. Precompetition taper and nutritional strategies: special reference to

training during Ramadan intermittent fast.

Findings: Experienced athletes are able to maintain

performance.

16. Effect of Ramadan fasting on some biochemical and haematological

parameters in Tunisian youth soccer players undertaking their usual
training and competition schedule.

Findings: Zero effects.

17. Effect of Ramadan fasting on fuel oxidation during exercise in trained

male rugby players.

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 Findings: Caloric intake reduced. There was more fat used
as a fuel substrate and lower body fat levels found after
Ramadan.

18. Impact of Ramadan on physical performance in professional soccer

players.

Findings: Decreased performance. But what’s interesting is

that players thought there would be.

19. Lipid Profiles of Judo Athletes during Ramadan.

Findings: Reduced body fat levels and able to maintain

training load.

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