I am a believer in pushing the body hard for short periods of time. Now this may be counter intuitive to what many others think. I have always found that the body grows in short bursts, and that the most dramatic fat loss comes in the first few weeks of a diet.
So, with this in mind, I have come up with a re-composition program that's outlined below.
The Plan - Overview
2 weeks of very intensive dieting followed by a full day of carbing up in order to re-obtain normal fluid levels in the body. A gaining phase is followed after this shortcutting program. It is important to note that this plan is NOT FOR COMPETIVE BODYBUILDERS. This plan is for guys who want to gain size year round while keeping their body fat in check and have the mental strength to not care if they feel small at times.
Also, even though this can easily be used by the drug using bodybuilder, I find this works best with the natural (or very close to it) athletes. This is because these athletes cannot take very strong fat burners, and they do not have the muscle maintaining drugs that allow for the negative effects of chronic deprivations of food that lasts months upon months.
Fat Loss Phase
Protein fasting is not a new concept; in fact, it is quite the opposite. The fact still remains that properly following this diet will work at the quickest of any diet in existence. Yes; complete fasting would work even faster, but there will be a loss of lean tissue. Eventually the body will begin to strip down its own muscle as a diet progresses, but the fact that this diet only lasts two weeks does not allow for a lot of lean tissue to be lost as this process takes far longer than 14 days. This is assuming, of course, you’re not overtraining and/or performing high intensity cardio.
-The macronutrient break down for this diet is insanely simple. It includes 1.5 grams of complete protein per pound of body weight; so for a 200lb person this would work out at 300 grams per day. Any animal source of protein will do as long as the fat content is very low. Examples include: chicken/turkey breast, egg whites, whey protein powder, white fish.
-Carbohydrates will be very limited. You can eat green vegetables with every meal. Choices include: broccoli, spinach, asparagus, brussel sprouts, kale. Some people struggle with such plain foods, and in those cases, you’re allowed up to 10 grams of carbohydrate per meal from which a tomato based sauce can be made. This sauce can be heavily spiced and should certainly be far more enjoyable to eat than plain protein.
- The only direct fat should come from one salmon meal each day. Use wild salmon, and do not eat the skin. If you dislike salmon, take a tablespoon of fish oil instead.
During this diet phase, training should be limited; you should view it as a time to deload and give your muscles a rest from the heavy lifting that you will be doing in the next phase. The maximum number of workouts you should perform is 3 per week.
For each body part work up to 1-3 heavy sets, but do not go to or beyond failure. You will not grow muscle during this period, and maintaining muscle tissue takes very little work. Cardio should not be performed. Just make sure you’re on your feet for at least 8 hours per day. This might be an issue for the people who work in an office environment. For an office worker, you can perform one hour of brisk walking each day to make up for the lack of standing during the day.
This diet will cause a huge calorie deficient. Since the body is not used to dieting at this stage, it will not be resistant to the process and will release lipids for energy usage with ease. After these initial two weeks, don’t be surprised if you’re 15-20lb lighter with a fat loss of 5-6 lbs at the least. The rest will be water that is lost due to glycogen store depletion. The water will be regained during the carb up day.
Keep in mind you will not feel like Mr. Massive during this period, so wear an extra layer or two if you feel self conscious of being small due to it. Trust me; when it is over you will be pleased!
Muscle Gain Phase
After these two weeks you will have the carb up day. Eat unlimited quantities of carbohydrate and lean proteins but keep your overall fat intake for the day at 50 grams at the very most on this day. Water intake needs to be higher than normal; an extra 50% water intake to your usual intake will suffice. On the morning of the day prior to carbing up, you can go and do a full body pump workout to help facilitate the carb uptake by the muscles, but honestly it is not really needed.
The day after the carb up you will be looking bigger and much leaner than you did two weeks ago. Now is time to go into the mass building phase. During the mass building phase I want you to eat freely, but I want you to choose foods from the right sources and to control your carbohydrate intake.
-Protein doesn’t really need to be at a set number. Simply eat protein with every meal. There is very little chance of any bodybuilder under eating protein.
- Fat intake should be high but from the right sources: avocado, nuts (all varieties except peanuts), fatty cuts of beef and lamb, regular butter, fatty fish, whole eggs, olive oil. These are all perfect foods to eat during this stage.
- Carbohydrates should be eaten for taste alone besides around workouts. This means if you have a big steak and really prefer to have it with some oven fries, eat the oven fries. Just add enough carbs into your meals so you can enjoy that meal to the max. Prior to training ingest a carb meal if and only if it helps your performance. For some people it will; for others it will make them sluggish. Experiment and find what works best for you.
During your workout have a shake that among other things contains some carbohydrate source; my personal choice is to use Vitargo, but truth be told, for most people any simple sugar (bar corn syrup) is fine to have during this period. How much carbohydrate you intake depends on how large your training volume is. If you train with low volume and have the workout done within 45 minutes like I do 20-30 grams will suffice. If you love to train for 2 hours straight, you can use more. Again, play with the amount.
After the workout, have a carb rich meal, but be sure to limit fat for that meal. Don’t count the carbohydrates; just eat until you’re full. A personal favorite post workout meal of mine is fat free sweet and sour sauce, a lot of white rice and chicken.
The number of meals you have will vary depending on your activity for that specific day and how hungry you feel. At an average, five meals will be about right.
Now as far as “cheat food” goes, I never schedule cheat meals because usually there is little need for them.
If you want a burger and fries then have a burger but make it at home using leaner than normal ground beef, high quality cheese, a whole meal bun and some oven fries. Try to avoid processed garbage foods and make the cheat foods at home. Can you eat things like cheesecake? Certainly; eat it freely. Just realize that the more of it you eat, the sooner you will have to go into a dieting phase. It’s not rocket science, and you don’t have to become a food monk. Just avoid overeating. A slice or two of pizza will do no harm, but eating an entire large pizza will cause a fat gain no matter how you look at it. Most bodybuilders have a mental obsession with food; either its 100% clean or it is all out garbage. They focus on the garbage food all week, and they binge on junk when they finally allow themselves to eat it. We don’t want this to be the case.
How you train during this period is completely up to you, but you should always strive to progress with total poundage moved and time under tension. In others words, more reps and/or more weight!
You will know when it is time to go back into a dieting phase since one of two things will happen:
1: Your strength will stall, and you will feel burned out. Instead of trying to eat more which will just make you fat, go and do an extreme diet phase and start again.
2: You will look in the mirror and decide it is time to diet again.
Tips for Extra Fat Loss
For those that are consistently trying to lose fat, I would have a maintaining period that should last 3 weeks instead of a gaining period. During the maintaining stage, you’re allowed to eat lean protein freely. You should choose protein sources that are low in fat unless it’s fatty fish which can be eaten once or twice per day. Add additional fat from avocados, whole eggs and a handful of nuts each day. Carbohydrates should not be consumed prior or during workouts, but your post workout meal can be a carbohydrate rich meal that is also high in protein yet low in fat. Eat until your full at this meal, but do not overeat. You don’t need to measure every meal since you should be learning how to eat freely while not gaining additional body fat. After 3 weeks of eating like this you will be ready to do another 2 weeks of extreme dieting.
Conclusion
This article has talked about the fact that the body likes to lose body fat for short periods of time. There is no reason for the recreational trainer to get enormously fat and then need to diet for a long period of time. Whenever you diet you’re in a catabolic state, so the goal is to try and limit that as much as possible. After a diet, you have a chance to get some rebound gains since the body will be very receptive to the increase in calories.
At the same time, the body doesn’t want to progressively add muscle for many months with no end. Eventually strength gains will stall, and the body fat gains compared to the muscular gains will become unfavorable for a lean physique. Once progress slows in the gaining phase, you can go straight into a mini diet to clean the body up and increase its receptiveness to both the food and training stimulus once again. If you’re sick of doing the traditional 16 week gaining phase followed by a 16 week dieting phase, give this a try. You will more than likely be pleasantly surprised.
