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Feast, Famine, And Ferocity Diet, Part 2- Welcome To The Suck
The story of a phoenix rising from the ashes is iconic and timeless. It’s an archetype that transcends time and place and speaks to the indomitability of the human spirit. Be it humanity’s seeming inborn tendency to root for the underdog, or the dominant American/Western appreciation for the rags-to-riches, pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps, polar-opposite-of-Donald-Trump motherfuckers who spit in the face of adversity and dominate the opposition because they simply refuse to fucking lose, these stories dominate the modern zeitgeist. This is the reason the Rocky series seem to be endless in spite of the fact that Clubber Lang or Ivan Drago would have quite literally killed that little man in the ring and worn his skin to their birthday parties, why the films of the 1980’s were so obsessed with horrible rags-to-riches stories like Brewster’s Millions and that cinematic nightmare Arthur were popular in spite of their dogshit plots and Dudley Moore, and why tales of redemption and rebirth are some of the oldest and most beloved stories ever recorded.
Rising from the ashes, digging yourself out of the rubble and emerging from the previous conflagration like V in V for Vendetta is as intrinsically motivational thing as one can accomplish, and the inspiration it provides serves to drive you to even greater heights. Too often, we become complacent, trapped in a mindset that the status quo is good enough, convinced we have chosen the most prudent, effective, and correct path, adopting a mindset that disallows consideration of alternatives. Stagnation and plateaus then plague our training and stymie our physique and strength goals, yet we tinker and tweak when what we really need is a firestorm to purify our minds and bodies. To scorch the fat off our soul. A cataclysm from which we can be born anew, and from which we can regain our predatory glow.
Rebirth after destruction is the natural order of things- maggots grow into flies eating rotting flesh, new growth forms in the ashes of forest fires, and new nations are formed from the rubble of the old. Hell, the French even refer to orgasms as “the little death,” bring new life, ostensibly, from each load dropped. Just as Taiwan grew out of the ashes of China’s post-monarchic socio-political disaster, the United States Constitution was penned after the dissolution of the Articles of Confederation and a near civil war, Robert Downey Jr’s rebirthed career after passing out in his neighbor’s kid’s bed, and Five Finger Death Punch grew out of the death of a couple (and in the case of Motograter, far better bands), lifters can also destroy and rebuild themselves anew.
- 4-6 protein shakes per day, evenly spaced, in water, totaling 1 gram/lb of bodyweight a day. No meal replacements- keep your carbs as close to zero as possible.
- 2 weeks if lean / leanish, 4 weeks if chubby / fat
- Stimulant-based thermogenic (containing caffeine and yohimbine HCl if possible, like Cannibal Inferno). You can also go old school and combine caffeine, yohimbine HCL, aspirin and ephedrine yourself. I don’t get too crazy dosing it out- when I do that I just take a couple No Doz with a Bronk Aid, 5mg of Yohimbine HCL, and an aspirin- do the research yourself and see what you tolerate, because those stims hit people differently.
- A thyroid-based fatburner will obviously help as well. You can either go all in and get T3 and albuterol on a peptides site online, or if you want to avoid the internet stigma of “eat clen, tren hard,” you can grab some Cannibal Claw, which is about 75% as effective as the aforementioned stack. The thyroid stuff is less important than the stimulants, though, because you need the energy, so if it is a one-or-the-other proposition, go with stims.
- Nutrition repartitioning agents / blood sugar management supplements. I’ve tried everything from Cannibal Claw to Predator to handfuls of cinnamon and vanadyl sulfate caps, and they seem to help speed fat loss, but they’re not 100% essential like the stims are.
“Overfeeding: In experiments of at least 3-weeks’ duration, the weight gain of thin people comprises 60-70% lean tissues, whereas in the obese it is 30-40%. Underfeeding: In humans, there is an inverse curvilinear relationship between initial body fat content and the proportion of weight loss consisting of lean tissue” (Forbes).
As chicks hold higher body fat percentages naturally, the probability they’ll gain a greater amount of fat while bulking than a guy is pretty high. So again, dropping some fat before starting the bulk makes sense. The second sentence in that study is also important, because it essentially states that people carrying more body fat will lose less fat when dieting than leaner people. As Metallica said, it’s sad but true,
Having trained in this kind of caloric deficit quite a bit, I can tell you firsthand that you will likely not be putting up PRs during this period. You will likely feel drained, lethargic, shaky, and weak, and that is not the state in which most of us put up record numbers. Though that sucks, remember you are not a fucking slave to your stomach. Your mind controls your body, not the other way around. That said, training with your usual poundages likely isn’t going to happen, but keeping your training weights close to what they usually would be if you were stuffing your face and increasing your volume will put you in prime position to crush weights when you start eating like you’re at an old school Roman bacchanalian feast.
- this is designed to deplete glycogen during a fast,
- the point of my training style is that it isn’t dogmatic and remains fluid. In spite of that shit, I still get people telling me that my own training style “isn’t Chaos and Pain,” because reading comprehension is fucking lacking in schools these days, apparently.
Front Squat / Back Squat Death Set– use 50% of your work weight for a single AMRAP set
Leg Curl– 3 x 25. 90 second rest.
Calf Raise– 5 x 5. 90 second rest.
Unilateral Concentration Curls (with wrist twist at the bottom)- 5 x 20. 60 second rest
Pullups– Same as the dips on Day 3.
Calf Raise– 5 x 25. 90 second rest.
A Word in Regards to Cardio
I’ve made no bones about the fact that I fucking despise cardio. I don’t think it’s entirely necessary for getting super lean or for general fitness, but it isn’t going to hurt to do some. Weighted steady state cardio is an excellent choice if you feel like doing some extra training and want to drop fat faster, as are sprints. Honestly, any extra training you do is going to speed fat loss, so feel free to throw it in.
By the way, there is some evidence out there that the aerobic exercise will induce hypertrophy (Konopka), which actually supports a theory I have regarding the use of a couple of specific exercises to develop maximal strength (which is the basis of a book I’m in the process of writing). As such, you would probably do well to include some cardio in your routine.
So there you have the Famine part of the Feast, Famine, and Ferocity Diet. Coming up next, I’ll detail the fun part- the Feast, and the program that goes with turning you into a musclebound warlord of the weight room. Also in the hopper are articles about another 1950s era bodybuilder, a good, old fashioned Chaos and Pain rant, and part twoof the Berserker or Zen Monk series (about which I had completely forgotten). Like I said, I’ve got a ton of new shit to drop on you people.
Sources:
Konopka AR, Harber MP. Skeletal Muscle Hypertrophy after Aerobic Exercise Training. Exerc Sport Sci Rev. 2014 Apr; 42(2): 53–61.
Ravasia D, Ravasia K, Sabowitz B. Protein Sparing Modified Fast Favors Loss of DXA-VAT and Preservation of Lean Body Mass. J Clin Dens. 2014 Jul;17(3):399
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16 responses to “Feast, Famine, And Ferocity Diet, Part 2- Welcome To The Suck”
Lol, that russian famine pic is brutal.
The Russians don't do anything horrible by halves- the more horrible it is, the more effort they apply.
I'm familiar with the ABCDE diet. I've never tried it but my doctor recommended to me a few years back to raise my testosterone naturally. It's been shown to do that.
I'm going to try that weighted steady cardio vest shopping. Maybe you could be a doll and add a few new recipes to the next installment. Anyways thanks Jamie and welcome back.
Hahaha. You are really dying for some recipes, eh? Lemme see if I have anything partially written I can pop up in a hurry.
That's great, gonna try that but…what about ABS?
I don't program abs. They're abs, lol. It gets no easier than than training them.
Fabius Bile is one bad motherfucker. Good to see you back at the helm Jamie.
That he is, and thanks, man!
I found that the deficit and surpluses of the original Akerfeldt ABCDE approach to be too extreme and just ended up spinning my wheels – and I remember very few had any great success with it. Google "ABCDE results" and you will see what I mean. I also didn’t have any particularly great success with Lyle McD’s UD2.0, which was a similar approach (3.5 days of PSMF, carbload for 36hrs, then maintenance/surplus for the remaining 2 days of the full cycle).
And I think the reason is that here is a theoretical limit (although this will obviously vary if you use stimulants, and also initial bf% as you mention here) of how fast you can mobilize fat, estimated in research at 30kcals per lbs of available bodyfat (minus essential fat of 3%) so a guy at 200lbs with 13% bodyfat should be doing a (200*0,10*30)=600kcals/day deficit.
Gaining muscle is also harder as you get more advanced, so that could be the reason why only the guys with high bodyfat levels and intermediate lifter status responded well to it – they were actually able to lose fat and not muscle during the deficit, and then gain muscle without as much fat gain during the surplus.
But hey, there’s a masochist in all of us, so some PSMF+depletion work can be fun here and there.
Looking forward to see the Feast part 🙂
Interesting. My issue with Akerfeldt's method is that his recommendation for the low cal section weren't PSMF (obviously) and that his bulking period was too short. As such, there was no time to adjust your training to make gains.
As to the theoretical limit on fat loss, supplements are my method for circumventing that. Basically, I am all for using every method at your disposal. Additionally, the old adage is 2lbs of bodyfat a week, which you can ramp up a bit with supplements, and so if you're working hard and dieting correctly you should maintain your muscle mass and lose fat, then gain muscle and fat in the following cycle. As such, your net bf% will drop even if your total poundage of fat remains the same as when you started. Get where I'm going? All you have to do is maintain your total fat poundage from day one through six weeks and you will lower your bodyfat percentage because of the muscle you've gained.
Looks fun. I'll give this a try in January with some bodyweight training so I can avoid the New Years Crowd.
Make sure you get enough sleep whwn attemtping this. I'm reading "why we sleep" by matthew walker and came across this:
let’s say that you choose to go on a strict, low-calorie diet for two weeks in the hopes of losing fat and looking more trim and toned as a consequence. That’s precisely what researchers did to a group of overweight men and women who stayed in a medical center for an entire fortnight. However, one group of individuals were given just five and a half hours’ time in bed, while the other group were offered eight and a half hours’ time in bed. Although weight loss occurred under both conditions, the type of weight loss came from very different sources. When given just five and a half hours of sleep opportunity, more than 70 percent of the pounds lost came from lean body mass—muscle, not fat. Switch to the group offered eight and a half hours’ time in bed each night and a far more desirable outcome was observed, with well over 50 percent of weight loss coming from fat while preserving muscle.
Hey Jamie, if someone looking for a fat burner/stimulant wouldn't have access to ephedrine but had access to pretty much anything that could be bought in a pharmacy or for animals, with or without prescriptions, is there anything that you'd recomend them to look for? You know, not as a recomendation, of course, but only for research purposes!
Clenbuterol, albuterol, and cytomel (T3). Those are the bodybuilding standbys. You could also add equipoise to retain more muscle in the famine periods and gain more in the feast, which would end up with lower overall bodyfat %.
In about 2 weeks I’m going to attempt the 2 week famine and then see if I need/can take another 2 weeks from there. At the moment I don’t really know much about the stimulants. I’ll obviously research a tonne before buying anything but will this have success if I just use caffeine for energy during the famine period? Or is it more a good/better/best type scenario. Living in Aus if that makes a difference to available supps.
Yeah, you’ll be fine just using caffeine. The success lies mostly in the diet- the stimulants just make the entire thing far less unpleasant.