The Apex Predator Diet, In Glorious Detail Part 1

In the event that you’re not one of the readers hanging on my every word or who is new to the blog, this spinoff originally started with the Evolution Of My Diet series, which starts here.  In it, I outlined the diet I’m currently following, which I’ve called the Apex Predator Diet due to the fact that it consists of little more than that which an apex predator would eat, supplemented with protein shakes because I’m much more inclined to hedge my bets with a protein sparing modified fast than place my faith in the clinically unsupported yet theoretically sound Intermittent Fasting approach.  The following blogs will expand upon what I’ve previously explained, give greater detail for why this diet kicks more ass than Gina Carano in Haywire.

An Overview of the Apex Predator Diet
The Apex Predator Diet is a at its core a cyclical ketogenic diet, not unlike those I’ve supported in the past.  On this diet, you’ll be keto dieting on 30 grams of carbohydrates or less per day for 5-6 days a week (or more, depending on your bodyfat levels).  During the non-carb days, you’ll be consuming 1-2 meals of fatty, preferably bone-in meat per day, supplemented by 5-7 low carbohydrate protein shakes.  The other day or two are referred to as “Rampage” days, during which time you’ll replenish your glycogen stores and satisfy your desire to wreck pizza and cookies.

The reasoning behind this methodology of dieting is that I found protein-sparing modified fasts like the Velocity Diet gave me just enough energy to put in a workout that would embarrass an undergraduate girl trying to drop her freshman 15 before going to the beach for cock over the summer- I was truncating my workouts horribly and thinking about nothing more than fucking killing myself out of shame.  Thus, I did some research and discovered those diets are really only suited to the morbidly obese and people who suck at lifting weights, rather than people trying to be so fucking superhuman they make Superman seem like a shiftless, limp-dicked, weaksauce layabout by comparison.  As such, I experimented with a variety of evening meals and finally settled upon beef ribs and bone in steaks, which are eminently satisfying, calorically dense, and restorative in ways you cannot possibly imagine.

This diet, though similar to many you’ve likely seen, is vastly superior (if you’re training hard 4+ times a week) to existing frameworks for a couple of reasons.

1. My macronutrient percentages are different.  Conventional wisdom on CKDs is that 65-75% of your calories should come from fat.  Fuck all that.  According to my biggest fan on Earth, Lyle McDonald, “when subjects are told to limit carbohydrate intake but to consume “unlimited” quantities of protein and fat, they automatically limit caloric intake and consume between 1400 and 2100 calories.”(Ketogenic Diet 101).  I don’t give a fuck who you are, that shit is not going to support heavy training.  Not only is that a caloric intake suitable only to the Olson twins and 19th Century hunger artists, but at the macros suggested by the gurus, you’re not getting nearly enough protein, either.  2100-1470=630/4=157.5 grams of protein.  My protein shakes have more calories in them than that, for fuck’s sake, and I mix them in water.  The Predator Diet is much higher calorie (3000+), most days, with 50-60% of your calories coming from protein and the remainder from fat.
2. I cycle calories.  For those of you who are not already incredibly lean, calorie cycling kicks in to keep your metabolism humming.  I’ve not seen another CKD or TKD diet that tinkers with calories in this way to accelerate fatloss.
3. It’s fucking easy.  One of the things I see people constantly blabbering on about with the IF diet is how easy it is to not eat for half the day.  I guarantee you it takes no more time to make a shake than it does to make a cup of coffee, and those fuckers must be chugging coffee if they’re not eating.  As such, their argument’s as fucking stupid as the Predator Diet is anabolic.
4. It’s anabolic.  Though you’re operating in a caloric deficit for the majority of the day, you’re getting a constant influx of protein to stave off muscle catabolism, and the high fat meats at the end of the day provide saturated fat and cholesterol, both of which boost testosterone levels, which in turn increase aggression, which in turn makes you tear shit up in the gym, making your system even more anabolic.  Basically, you become a perpetual-motion machine of badassery.
5. You’re not insane with hunger at all times.  When hungry, “people tend to conserve energy rather than expend it.”(Russell 148)  That’s definitively not a good thing if you’re training hard, especially if you’re dieting for a competition and/or training twice a day.  I used this diet to cut for two meets and ended up on the underside of 7% bodyfat, making my water cut easier, increasing my strength to weight ratio, and allowing me to look fucking amazing while lifting big weights.  
6. You have planned, insane, gluttonous cheat meals.  These serve a variety of purposes, and they match the occasional gorge of a predator nicely.

Because I realize experimentation is scary, and I’ve already done plenty of experimenting, I’ve got four basic permutations of this diet- Fat Fuck; Not Too Fucking Fat, But Not Too Fucking Lean; Lean As Shit; and Whiny Bitch.  The first three are fairly self- explanatory, and will be broken out by bodyfat percentage (see the chart below).  The last is because I get a lot of emails from people whining about pre-and post-workout carbs.  They’re of the opinion that they’re indispensable, though I would dispute that opinion.  For those ladies out there who absolutely must have your carbs or you will turn into a raging ball of hormone-fueled fury, laying waste to everything in your path as you make for the counter at Auntie Annie’s in the mall, this should suit your purposes nicely as well.

Components of the Apex Predator Diet

Before we get into the finer points of the diet, let’s cover a couple of basics- food and supplement choices.  The reason why I’ve christened this diet the Apex Predator Diet is due to the awesome food choices you’ll be making.  Nowhere will you find bland, tasteless, rubbery bullshit like chicken breasts and steamed broccoli.  Fuck it- on this diet, you won’t even need utensils, most of the time, because your food should come with a built-in handle- bone.  Bone is an integral part of meat, and ripping an animal’s flesh off its bones with your teeth is a primal, visceral, ethereal act that stands in stark defiance to modern life and harkens to a time when men were men and women appreciated real men, in addition to being tougher than most of the “men” you see waddling their sloppy asses around the mall these days.  As such, it would stand to reason that if we want to regain that former glory, strength, and aggressive awesomeness we had in times past, we should eat like our forebears.

For those of you who are staring, incredulous, at that statement, consider the following:
“The connection between flesh and bone is primordial and fundamental.  Yet today, bones have fallen out of favor.  We are all familiar with the expression, ‘The nearer the bone the sweeter the meat,’ but we demand everything precut and prepackaged, and that is, increasingly, all we can buy.  Our world is full of recipes for boneless, skinless (and often tastless pieces of meat, chicken, and fish, and we can scarcely recognize whole fish or birds.  We have become so obsessed with ease of preparation and speed that we have lost touch with the visceral appeal of cooking with- and eating- bones.” (20  McLagan)

“There is a universal understanding that bones and meat are inseparable.  Yiddish: Bones without meat are possible, meat without bones is not possible.  Hebrew: There is no such thing as boneless meat.  Greek: Meat is sold with bones. Norwegian: He who buys the meat has to take the bone with it.  English:  Bones bring meat to town.  He who eats the meat let him eat the bones.  You buy the land you buy the stones: you buy the meat you buy the bones.”(119 Bones)

Eating boneless meat is thus not only effete, ridiculous, artificial, and offensive to the soul of the slaughtered animal, but it’s fucking stupid.  Bone in meat tastes better and is healthier, as cooking it in that fashion “enables the bone nutrients to infuse into the meat, imparting wonderful flavors”(Shanahan) in addition to added nutrients.  After you’ve cooked it that way, you eat it with your hands, as your primal ancestors did, using the bones as the handles for bearing meat to your mouth as they were fucking intended.  Eating becomes more satisfying because you’re restoring the tactile sense in your hands to the process of eating.  As such, it becomes a richer, more natural, more intimate experience and produces greater satiety as a result.  As one probably hot hippie put it, “eating with your hands gives you a deeper sense of your food, because you are bringing more sense receptors to the table. Temperature and texture become more profound when you can feel them on your fingers first, and the experience of consumption is extended even longer for a more pleasurable process.”(Urban)

Worries about a mess on your hands?  Buy some fucking Wet Wipes and be glad you have fewer dishes to do.

Additionally, you’re going to be consuming a shitload of low-carb, blended source protein shakes, multivitamins, EFAs, and fatburners, and will try to mix in some offal if at all possible.  I’ll get into all of that good shit in the next installment, however, leaving you with the fact that offal tastes fucking awful, so I generally just take a shitload of multis.

Sources:
McDonald, Lyle.  Ketogenic Diet.
McLagan, Jennifer.  Bones: Recipes, History, and Lore.  New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2010.
Russell, Sharmen Apt.  Hunger: An Unnatural History.  New York: Basic Books, 2005.