Plague of Strength

Moving on, I’ve received a shitload of questions in the comments, on message boards, and in emails, so I felt it was high time to answer them for everyone in a lengthy fucking discourse outlining every last scintilla of whatever I end up calling this diet.  Hilariously, I’ve seen the “broscience” tag bandied about one more, in spite of what I consider to be an overindulgence in citations on my part.  I’ve never once seen anyone cite their diet more heavily than I, but for those motherfuckers who’ve continued to talk shit, prepare for an onslaught of citations the likes of which you’ve only seen in the on-line texts from which you stole all of your high school essays.

Q:  Is there any truth or science behind [“once you get into the single digits (or middle double digits for chicks) you’ll find that your metabolism resembles the Israeli Killdozer- it crushes damn near anything in its path provided you have someone competent behind the wheel]? I’ve never been under 11% as far as I can remember, so I have zero personal experience to draw from and I haven’t been able to find any sources that confirm this. Figured this would be a good spot to ask since there are some BBer’s here that have definitely gotten into single digit BF%. Thanks.

It seems to matter whether you are naturally lean or not.
A:  First, the author of that post cited the wrong bit by McDonald.  In the Ultimate Diet 2, McDonald addresses the overfeeding/fat gain deal when discussing P-ratio, which is the amount of protein lost or spared during dieting.  In fat people, it’s typically a shit show, which is one of the reasons I recommend such high protein levels.  In any event, it’s people with a poor P-ratio that have the most trouble losing fat as they get leaner, and who respond less well to overfeeding.  While I’ll agree that at the extreme end of that poor p-ratio and genetic fuckedness, that’s likely true, but I don’t think it applies to the vast majority of people on Earth, and I hardly think that much of my readership is genetically predisposed toward extreme adiposity- I’m hardly Richard Simmons.  Additionally, the problem with fat gain during overfeeding is due to insulin sensitivity, which is resolved by getting and staying lean, and is helped a great deal by following a ketogenic diet.  As such, fear of gaining fat on a Rampage is probably misguided.

My reasoning behind the Rampage is actually a bit different than what I posted in the above quote.  To be honest, I’m always looking for reasons to put the Killdozer into the blog, so I might have muddled my message a bit in an effort to shoehorn in that Killdozer pic.  The main reason I place so much emphasis on the Rampage is actually because as you get leaner, and the longer you diet, you experience metabolic slowdown.  A rapid influx of food causes your body to react strongly, and ramps your metabolism back up.  This is why you sweat like a slave during a Rampage- your BAT (brown adipose tissue) activates and you basically turn into a furnace.  This rebound was the basis for Duchaine’s, McDonald’s, and Warren Willey diets, all of which were based on Michael Zumpano’s Rebound Training.  My methodology differs from their due to the fact that there appears to be fairly compelling science stating that glycogen supercompensation works a bit like a crack high- every time you experience it, it’s a little less awesome.  I’d rather save the true anabolic rebounds for meets and the like, so just do a violent refeed and reap the benefits.

As for the original post above, it seems the poster didn’t actually read the study McDonald cited in his treatise on NEAT.  The study, for those of you who are interested, compared Caucasians with Pima Indians.  This was not a comparison of people who are naturally lean versus those who tend toward fatness- it was a comparison of two ethnicities, one of which is known for conquering the modern world and dominating at strength sports, and the other which is known for making trinkets, having Type 2 diabetes, and for drinking themselves to death.  The Pima Indians are genetic anomalies who’ve become so due to the fact that their traditional diet is one of feast and famine.  Additionally, they’re an extremely insular community that marries within their own group, thus reinforcing their ethnic genetic predispositions.(DeMouy)  With the introduction of the  modern “waddle up to the trough at Sizzler and eat until you pass out in your own vomit and turn up that song because I love the way Billy Ray Cyrus pronounces ‘heart’”, Pima Indians are some of the fattest people in the Western hemisphere and are about as healthy as you’d expect a community filled miniature brown Jabba the Huts.

If you’re not following me, this means that unless you’re a indian (casinos, not slurpees) or of that sort of descent (I’m looking at you, people whose ancestors were raped repeatedly by Spaniards), you’re likely not one of the people to whom Lyle McDonald refers to as a spendthrift type.  Thus, you needn’t really worry about whether or not you’re a “spendthrift (big increase with overfeeding/small decrease with dieting)” or a “thrifty (small increase with overfeeding/big decrease with dieting” (McDonald)  Instead of worrying about whether or not your genetics are going to get in the way of your fat loss, take the important point away from that paper- lean people are lean in large part due to the fact that they’re not shiftless fucking layabouts.  Instead, they’re constantly in motion.  If you think about the people you know who can “eat anything”, you’ll likely recall they’re the same annoying motherfucker appears to have a palsy because they’ve always got one leg or the other shaking like a a lone American girl on a deserted beach in Aruba.  Because they’re always in motion, they have a much higher NEAT than the average person, which means they get to eat more without getting fat.

Random shit to increase your NEAT levels (and therefore get lean more quickly):

• Move somewhere warm- NEAT doubles in the summer compared to the winter months.(Levine 2004)
• Move around as much as humanly possible- take the stairs, use a printer on the other side of the office rather than the one in your department, jiggle your fucking leg all day long like that annoying asshole in accounting, and stand up while you play video games.  Basically, stand rather than sit and sit rather than lay down.
• Do your cardio with added resistance, like a weighted vest or carrying dumbbells, Heavyhands-style.  Doing so will double your energy expenditure.  this is especially important as you lose weight, as your NEAT will drop as you get lighter.(Weigel)
• Chew gum.  This is a favorite suggestion of one author, who noted that it actually does cause a substantial increase in NEAT.(Wilson)
• Do what I do- read while you walk.  though that sucks for taking notes, I will go for long walks and read while I do so all the time.  It’s fun as hell, because you’re outside, getting sun, enjoying a book, and amazing everyone around you with what is to them a fucking magic trick.  If it’s something on which you need to take notes, simply dog-ear the pages on which you need to take them and take the notes afterward- your retention rates will go through the roof since you’ll essential read the important shit twice.

Q:”Too much protein damages your kidneys.”(More of a statement, really, made by someone who has no fucking clue what they’re talking about)
A: This is wholly, completely, and patently incorrect.  For healthy people, your internal organs adapt to your diet in the same way that your muscles adapt to increased training levels, and suffer no ill effects whatsoever in the transition.(Skov)  Once you get your protein levels through the fucking roof, keeping them there doesn’t adversely affect you either.(Knight)  Additionally, high protein diets are associated with higher B-12, B-6, and folate levels, and better lipid profiles.(Knight)  Frankly, I think the entire idea that there can be “too much” protein in your diet is about as sensible as Shaquille O’Neal’s foray into rap.  Americans in particular are historically a nation of meat eaters, and we were eating 178 pounds of meat per person a year in the 19th Century and eight times as much meat as bread in the 18th… which is a tremendous amount considering the fact that refrigeration had not yet been invented.(Taubes 11)

Even if the human condition had deteriorated markedly in the last couple of hundred years, your lifestyle has bestowed upon you far greater ability to absorb the protein you consume than the average person, as resistance exercise confers greater protein synthesis.  The theory behind this, called the “Energetical Theory” of muscular hypertrophy, suggests that when “the mass of proteins catabolized by resistive exercise exceeds the mass of proteins newly synthesized… between training session, protein synthesis is increased.  The uptake of amino acids from the blood into the muscles is above resting values.  This repeated process of enhanced degradation and synthesis of contractile proteins may result in super-compensation of protein.”(Bernadot 33, Zatsiorsky 8)  Due to this phenomenon, it seems ridiculous that the human body would be adversely affected by high dietary intake of protein.  Were humans subject to a hard limit on their protein intake, we’d be unable to heal properly when burned, or to recover from the types of incredibly hard labor that were common as iPhones in a Starbucks today.  Should you be concerned that a diet heavy in protein shakes like this one would cause your system some undue stress, fear not- science has our backs once again.  “During food restriction, protein anabolism is favored when the delivery of amino acids is evenly distributed throughout the day”(Mosoni) and greater frequency of feedings increases the amount of protein you absorb.(Cohn)  So, we know that your body will adapt to high protein levels, and that the more frequently you eat protein, the easier it’ll be to absorb.

But where are the benefits for a heavy lifter, you might ask?  For starters, an intake of greater than 1 gram per pound of bodyweight, in addition to being comically easy to consume, results in a positive nitrogen and negative fat balance.(Forslund)  Even larger amounts (>1.5grams/lb. of bodyweight) will stimulate significant muscle growth, and the unused protein will be oxidized and excreted, wholly without deleterious side effects, by healthy kidneys.(Fern)  This diet, being somewhat lower in fat and higher in protein than the typical ketogenic diet, will obviously result in some glucogenesis, which is for some reason strikes in a bunch of you terror not unlike that which small children used to reserve for the bogeyman and Michael Jackson.  Glucogenesis, or the process by which the body converts protein to energy to replace lost muscle glycogen, occurs irrespective of the type of diet one follows.  5-15% of the amino acids you consume are going to be used as fuel in weight training, and endurance sports utilize an even greater percentage to repair the extensive damage caused by whatever shenanigans in which they happen to be engaging.(Bernadot 31)  In short, more protein is good, and a shitload more protein is a even fucking better.  Thus, according to both common sense and a meta-analysis, the following is true: Unless you’re suffering from renal failure, you can eat protein to your heart’s content, and anyone who says otherwise is a liar spouting hippie bullshit, and is possibly a communist.(Martin)

If you’re worried about kidney stones, you’re either a woman, a 70 year old man, or you’re fucking retarded.  Kidney stones are caused by dehydration or disease, not your protein intake.(NKUDIC)  In other words, quit yet bitchin’ and drink more fucking water, and if you’re a chick, take a fucking leak after you someone smashes the fucking granny out of you- untreated UTIs lead to kidney stones.

That, motherfuckers, is called dropping knowledge.

Q:  What about fiber?
A:  It’s not like you’re worried about getting enough fiber when you’re on the see-food diet eating white bread and fried chicken.  If that answer is unsatisfying to you, I can expound a bit.  Dietary fiber is hardly as necessary as some make it out to be.  From some accounts, you’d think that fiber is the very essence of life, and that we’d all die  with ten pounds of impacted feces in our colons just like John Wayne.  Well, he didn’t and neither are you.  Fiber becomes necessary when one’s diet consists of naught but protein.  From the accounts of the awesomely cannibalistic soccer-playing motherfuckers involved in the plane crash in Chile in 1972, it was related that their diet of low-fat human flesh caused severe constipation followed by bouts of equally severe diarrhea.  Some guys actually went over 30 days without shitting, due to the fact that they were reticent to eat the fat from the bodies.(Travis-Henikoff 50)  They soon discovered that the introduction of fat into their diets immediately relieved their digestion problems, and resolved to include fat in all of their meals from then on.  Arctic explorers also discovered this around the same time they discovered that you can get hyper-vitaminosis from eating polar bear liver, and then began emulating the diet of the Inuit so as to include far more fat in their diets.  In other words, you needn’t be preoccupied with fiber.  Should you want it, take it.  It won’t negatively affect your ketosis.

Q:  Oh, diet check me: 4-6 protein shakes a day and 2 meat-only meals. One small meal, one larger. I eat boiled eggs, chicken, fish, nuts and jerky. I’m in Israel, so decent chow isn’t always available. Use what ya got.
A:  First off, that’s really not what I’m recommending at all- it’s paleo dieting supplemented with a lot of shakes.  There’s certainly nothing wrong with that, but I’m willing to bet that you’re not getting enough calories.  I’d add another food meal and just keep an eye on your carbs.  You can’t really utilize my diet scheme with that list of foods due to the fact that they’re not nutrient-dense enough.  It’d suck if you tried to break from cover and just fucking collapsed because you’re half-starved (he’s a “contractor”), so I’d definitely focus on eating your face off when you do eat real food.  Additionally, it probably wouldn’t hurt to pick up a book like the Paleo Solution just to bone up on the finer points of the paleo diet.

Q: Anyways, just wanted to shoot a quick email about the Predator diet for fat fucks (as I am at 22% bf – shameful I know). Most of my training is 90%+ of 1RM for singles, doubles and trebles. My total is 935 (beginner’s total I know but up 100 pounds in a few months) and I want to hit at least 1100 by the end of 2012. Essentially, will the Predator diet allow me to increase my maximums or is it unrealistic to get to 1100 this year while dropping some bodyfat? I’m about 211 and would like to hit 195-200 with 15-18% bf in the next 6 months or so. Nothing drastic but it would be progress.
A:  The whole point of this diet is to drop fat while getting stronger.  As such, you should be in good stead.  Your workout sounds like it’s pretty metabolically intense, but you can up the ante by increasing the pace of your workouts.  In an effort to chase big weights, you might start dragging out your rest periods.  Don’t.  You’ll increase your work  capacity and metabolism much more quickly if you keep your rests to a minute or less.  Jump setting will help even more with fat loss.  Thus, pick two movements and do them together- for instance, do a low rep set of squats followed within 30 seconds by overhead press.  That will wind the shit out of you, so you might have to drop your weights a bit, but you’ll benefit in the long run.  Additionally, you’re weak enough that there’s really nowhere to go but up, so increase the pace and get the fucking fat off.

On another note, I get a lot of emails with line similar to your bit about your bodyfat being shameful.  If you were unwilling to do shit about it other than bitch, you would be a sorry motherfucker.  Given that you’re in the gym breaking your ass and following one of the stricter diets most people will ever try, keep your fucking chin up.

Q:  I’ve recently decided to go keto and try your Predator diet. I do have one question:
Basics;
Lift 5x a week. Cardio and or Combat Sambo classes the other 2.
Weigh in at 175lbs, at (estimated and I’m erring on the heavy side) 14-15% bodyfat.
6’1″, 35 years old.
BMI = 23.1
BMR= 1845.35
1845.35 x 1.725 = 3,182 k/cal
So, on the Predator diet, should I take 3,182 and -500 from that, for a total of 2,682 k/cal per day? I’m keeping my carbs at 30 and lower.

A:  As I’ve said in the past, I really don’t put any faith into those BMR calculators at all.  They’re bad science, in my opinion, because they’re based on averages and hope.  I don’t place much faith in unfounded faith and know for a certainty that there’s no such thing as an actual “average” person.  There are boring people, but even they aren’t biochemically or physiologically average.  Thus, I recommend that people initially base their diets on protein, then fine tune them with experimentation.  I’ve personally noticed that the same caloric intake from year to year does entirely different things to my body, due to factors ranging from my age to (much more importantly), my NEAT levels.  I’ve mentioned this in the past, but figure it bears mentioning again- the same diet may not work for you twice at the beginning and the end of a decade.

Another side note- BMI is a ridiculous tool for lifters.  It’s utterly meaningless for people like us, as well- burly fuckers who like to pick things up and put them down, due to the fact that our physiques should put us in the obese section of that scale.  I know I’m off-the-charts obese for my height by that standard, which is preposterous.

Moving along, you should be eating at least 350 grams of protein per day.  That means you should be eating roughly 2800 calories, just as a baseline (350×4 calories per gram x 2 because it’s 50% of your calories).  It’s far easier to place yourself in  caloric deficit by increasing your activity (as I mentioned above), so I’d do that rather than drop your calories.  I’ve found that I’m eating a hell of a lot more calories on this diet than I would otherwise, so be prepared to eat truly astonishing amounts of food while you lean out.

Q:  Half way through my workout I start smelling acetone/ ammonia. Why do I have shit like that pumping through my veins, and should I be worried?
A:  That’s the smell of ketosis.  “This is a fairly common report on very low-carbohydrate/ketogenic diet (defined, once again, as any diet containing less than 100 grams of carbohydrate per day), a report of a fairly strong ammonia smell in the sweat during exercise. As I discuss in detail in my first book The Ketogenic Diet this ammonia is produced due to the ultimate breakdown of ATP to ADP to AMP and ammonia.
This appears to occur more readily when muscle glycogen is depleted (as occurs with the combination of of a very low-carbohydrate intake along with training) and may be part of the increased protein requirements that have been known to occur with endurance training (this is discussed in detail in The Protein Book). I would mention that it appears that this ‘protein breakdown’ is not actually coming from the breakdown of skeletal muscle itself; rather it’s from the breakdown of BCAA (branched-chain amino acids) within the free amino acid pool.  So is this ok? So long as dietary protein intake is sufficient, I don’t see this as being any real problem. The effect is slight in terms of the absolute amount of protein being broken down (in terms of grams) and so long as protein intake is sufficient, there shouldn’t be any detrimental effect other than the smell.” (McDonald, Ammonia)

Q:  Obviously someone would be in the gym during this diet, does it matter how many days a week or which days as far as matching up with the caloric cycling?
A:  I don’t really match my training to the diet. I’ve found that sort of thing never quite works out. I recommend training at a bare minimum 4x a week, heavy as shit. I typically train no fewer than 5 times a week, and am usually in the gym 7-10 times a week. 20 mins in the morning, and 45-75 minutes in the evening three days a week, then one 1-2 hr workout and two 30 minute workouts per week.  I basically live in the gym or the bookstore, which is completely incomprehensible for most people and impossible for many more.  Bare minimum, I’d say spend, at the very least 4 hours lifting per week.  That’s not “in the gym” time- I mean four hours of actual fucking lifting.  Bullshitting by the water fountain while you check out some broad’s ass is fun, but it’s not putting pounds on your total.

Q:  Any recommendations on “Predator for Broke College Students”? I work two shitty jobs that don’t pay nearly enough for all the meat, protein powder, and stimulants to pull this off as it should be done. I’m also tied to a meal plan on which I can only get food which gives me the shits and makes me want to curl up in bed and never move again, so I’m loath to make use of campus food for evening meals.
A:  You can definitely pull this off with cheap protein powder and ground chuck, which wouldn’t quite be in the spirit of the diet, but you can follow the macros pretty easily.  You could also add in something like turkey breakfast sausage for an earlier, lower calorie meal.  Figure two lbs of ground chuck at $3/lb for dinner and you’re looking at about $170 a month in meat, plus a couple of bags of Matrix 5.0, and you’re out the door for $300 a month.  You bar tab’s more than that a month, guaranteed.

Q:  Just to clarify – these are all for cutting, right?
A:  They’re to get you lean and keep you lean as you get stronger. I’ve been doing this for the better part of a year and keep setting new PRs, all while I’ve got veins sticking out on my abs.

Q:  Any thoughts on using homemade jerky as a substitute for the Protein shakes?

     –A:  That’s the most ridiculously expensive but delicious idea ever. It might be simpler to infuse your protein shakes with gold flakes.
     –Q:  Fortunately not for me, I usually have a decent supply of (free) venison to work with so it is just the investment of buying a food dehydrator and learning the correct process.
A:  Then you are a lucky motherfucker.  You’ll get far more satiety out of jerky than shakes, so you should be in even better stead.  Just ensure you’re not eating jerky made with sugar.

Q:  I Rampage (or overeat, or overfeed, or stuff my face or whatever) on Friday nights (which is an off day for me).  Once, way back in the day, you recommended never to cheat on off days, but recently, I believe I read you saying that it doesn’t matter quite that much if you’re training hard and dieting honestly
—-Incidentally, on Saturday mornings after the Rampage, I feel awesome in the gym.  By Monday, when I’m back to no carbs, I have nothing in the tank on Monday night’s lift, and don’t feel normal in the gym until about Wednesday, when I’m a few days in.  Is this a normal response?
A:  Given that you look like Serpico and you’re named after one of the apostles, I’m going to go out on a limb and guess you’re one meatball hoagie away from heading to Neptune’s for an evening of fist-pumping and English-raping.  As such, you’ve probably subsisted on a high carb diet for years.  Dan Duchaine and Lyle McDonald both recommended an interim phase for you greasy wop bastards, wherein you follow what amounts to a Zone Diet.  I personally have been low-carbing it for so long I never needed that kind of a transition, and I just sucked it up when i initially made the plunge.  Trying a 40% carbs, 30% protein, 30% fat diet for a month or two might ease the transition for you.  Like I said, however, I’ve not tried that, and I’m generally loathe to enthusiastically recommend shit I have never tried.  Thus, while I’m inclined to simply tell you to suck it the fuck up, you might want to try their recommendation.

Now, go forth and hang an epic intellectual beating on motherfuckers.

Sources:
     Bernadot, Dan.  Advanced Sports Nutrition,  Champaign: Human Kinteics, 2006.
     Cohn C, Joseph D, Ben L, Oler A.  Feeding frequency and protein metabolism.  Am J Phys 1963 205: 71-78.
     DeMouy, Jane.  Pima Indians: Pathfinders for Health.  http://diabetes.niddk.nih.gov/dm/pubs/pima/pathfind/pathfind.htm
     Donahoo WT, Levine JA, Melanson EL.  Variability in energy expenditure and its components.  Curr Opin Clin Nut Metab Care 2004 7:599-605.
     Fern IEB, Bielinski RN, Schutz Y.  Effects of exaggerated amino acid and protein supply in man.  Experientia 1991 47:168-172.
     Forslund AH, El-Koury AE, Olsson RM.  Effect of protein intake and physical activity on 24-h pattern and rate of macronutrient utilizaiton.  Am J Phys 1999 276:E964-E976.
     Knight EL, Stampfer MJ, Hankinson SE, Spiegelman D, Curhan GC. The Impact of Protein Intake on Renal Function Decline in Women with Normal Renal Function or Mild Renal Insufficiency.  Ann Intern Med March 18, 2003 138:460-467.
     Lanningham-Foster L, Nysse LJ, Levine JA. Labor saved, calories lost: the energetic impact of domestic labor-saving devices.Obes Res 2003; 11: 1178–81.
     Levine JA, Ebhardt NL, Jensen MD.  Role of non-exercise activity thermogenesis in resistance of fat gain in humans.  Science 1999 283: 212-214.
     Levine JA.  Non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT).  Best Pract Res Clin Endocrinol Metab. 2002 Dec;16(4):679-702.
     Martin WF, Armstrong LE, Rodriguez NR.  Dietary protein intake and renal function.  Nutr Metab (Lond). 2005 Sep 20;2:25.
     McDonald, Lyle.  Role of Nonexercise Activity Thermogenesis in Resistance to Fat Gain in Humans – Research Review.  http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/research-review/role-of-nonexercise-activity-thermogenesis-in-resistance-to-fat-gain-in-humans-research-review.html
     McDonald, Lyle.  Ammonia Smell During Exercise on Ketogenic Diet – Q&A.  http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/fat-loss/ammonia-smell-during-exercise-on-ketogenic-diet-qa.html
     McDonald, Lyle.  Ultimate Diet 2.0.
     Mosoni L, Patpureau P.  Type and timing of protein feeding to optimize anabolism.  Curr Opin Clin Nut Metab 2003 6:3 301-306.
     NKUDIC.  Kidney Stones in Adults.  National Kidney & Urologic Diseases Information Clearinghouse.  http://kidney.niddk.nih.gov/kudiseases/pubs/stonesadults/
     Noakes M, Keogh JB, Foster JR, Clifton PM.  Effect of an energy-restricted, high-protein, low-fat diet relative to a conventional high-carbohydrate, low-fat diet on weight loss, body composition, nutritional status, and markers of cardiovascular health in obese women.  Am J Clin Nutr 2005 81: 6 1298-1306.
     Skov AR, Toubro S, Bülow J, Krabbe K, Parving HH, Astrup A.  Changes in renal function during weight loss induced by high vs low-protein low-fat diets in overweight subjects.  International Journal of Obesity and Related Metabolic Disorders : J Int Obesity 1999, 23(11):1170-7.
     Taubes, Gary.  Good Calories, Bad Calories.
     Travis-Henikoff, Carole.  Dinner With A Cannibal.  Santa Monica:  Santo Monica Press, 2008.
     Weigel DS, Brunzell JD.  Assessment of energy expenditure in ambulatory reduced obese subjects by the techniques of weight stabilization and exogenous weight replacement.  Int J Obes 1990 14, Suppl 1:59-81.
     Wilson, Jacob.  Non exercise activity thermogenesis. http://www.abcbodybuilding.com/neat.pdf
     Zatsiorsky, Vladimir.  Intensity of Strength Training Facts and Theory:  Russian and Eastern Approach.  Biomechanics Lab at the Penn State University , University Parks, PA and Central Institute of Physical Culture- Moscow, Russia.