From theory to practice
In part one, you learned about the theory and science behind gaining muscle and losing fat at the same time. You learned all the reasons why concurrent muscle growth and fat loss is a challenge and you heard about the "X factors" which create ideal conditions for burning off fat and gaining muscle simultaneously. Some of those factors are under your control, many of them are not.
You also learned the difference between energy balance and energy partitioning and why there’s more to this than calories in versus calories out.
Now I'd like to show you how you can manipulate both energy balance and energy partitioning in your favor, by including serious weight training, judiciously using cardio, fine-tuning your nutrient timing, and cycling your calorie and macronutrient (especially carbohydrate) levels.
This is where concurrent muscle gain and fat loss start to seem possible, at least over a period of weeks and months.
Nutritional periodization and within-day energy balance
Traditionally, nutritionists and fitness professionals have only looked at energy balance in terms of 24 hour periods. At midnight on any given day, you could add up the calories consumed in the previous 24 hours, and compare that to the calories expended. If you expended more than you consumed, you had a deficit for the day.
But it's entirely possible that you were not in a deficit for the entire 24 hours. You might have been in a deficit for most of the day, but had a few hours when you were in a surplus and a highly anabolic state. For example, what if you loaded a large portion of your daily calories before and after your workout, while the rest of your meals were smaller?
Considering calorie utilization hour-by-hour rather than day-by-day is known as within-day energy balance. Some nutritionists, such as Dr. Dan Benardot, have developed algorithms and software that can actually track within-day energy
balance. Calculating your calorie requirements in 24-hour time units is still the ideal method for convenience and practicality reasons.
Although within-day energy balance is difficult to measure and track on a practical level (and is not necessary for our purposes), it’s immensely useful to understand this concept on an intellectual level. When you think of energy balance and nutrient partitioning being perpetual processes rather than a once-a-day accounting process, your perspective on gaining muscle and losing fat changes. So does your
perspective on how and when to provide fuel to your body.
With this new point of view, you realize that you can move into and out of surpluses and deficits throughout the day and hormone levels fluctuate throughout the day.
With this perspective, you understand that if all the other conditions are in place (weight training, recovery, sleep, optimal hormonal environment, etc), it's possible
to gain muscle during a within-day surplus and then lose fat during the rest of the day while in a deficit.
By the day, the change in body composition would not be noticeable. If it could be measured, it would be in ounces or grams. But over a week, the net effect would be a small but significant decrease in fat and increase in muscle. Over a few months, it would appear as full-blown, fully-measurable fat loss with muscle gain.
In essence, we are making a case for the periodization of nutrition, the way athletes periodize their training programs. Nutritional periodization is something that most bodybuilders already do, by alternating cutting programs with building programs, but traditionally, this has only been done on the “macro” level.
Multi-month fat loss or muscle gain phases are macrocycles – the traditional way.
But you can also manipulate your nutrition on a meso and micro level.
Within week (daily) changes in energy and macronutrient intake are mesocycles.
Within day (hourly) changes (post workout nutrition, daily nutrient timing, etc) are microcycles.
Nutritional Periodization
Multi-month primary goal Macrocycle Within-week carb/calorie cycling Mesocycle Within-day nutrient timing Microcycle
When you consider how common it is to have an off-season and an in-season, to focus on post-workout nutrition, and even to use calorie and carb cycling techniques, you can see that many savvy bodybuilders and fitness enthusiasts have already been using nutritional periodization and didn’t even know it! (which explains some of those
“accidental successes” with body-recomposition).
Within-year (monthly) energy balance: the macrocycles
Bodybuilders have traditionally had bulking seasons for gaining muscle, typically lasting 12-16 weeks to as long as 6-12 months (some bodybuilders even skip competing for an entire year to focus on gaining size before they hit the stage again). When they’re satisfied with the muscle they’ve gained, they shift into cutting seasons to get leaner or prepare for competition.
The cutting phases usually last 8 to 16 weeks, but the duration depends on how lean the bodybuilder is at the beginning of the cut phase. In nutritional periodization lingo, these longer phases or seasons, usually multiple months in duration, are called macrocycles.
Using long (multi-month) building (surplus) and cutting (deficit) phases is the classic approach. Long building cycles with a consistent surplus are the fastest and most efficient way to gain muscle.
The problem is that anyone other than a genetically favored (to be lean) ectomorph or pure mesomorph may gain an unacceptable amount of fat along with the muscle.
Then during the cutting phase, you have to strip off all the newly accumulated fat, and hopefully, most of the muscle they gained during the bulking phase is still there.
Clearly, there are some potential downsides to the traditional bulking approach to gain muscle, which has led many bodybuilders to wonder if they could slowly add muscle without adding any fat or even drop a little of fat while gaining muscle (goal
#4).
That leads us to cyclical dieting in shorter blocks of time – mesocycles and microcycles.
Within-week carb/calorie cycling: the mesocycles
Getting lean presents its own set of problems. Prolonged periods of cutting and caloric deficit make it difficult to hang on to lean muscle, not to mention it's no fun to be hungry all the time. One solution is a cyclical (zig zag) approach to fat loss
nutrition instead of a traditional linear approach (straight line low calories all the time).
If your primary goal is fat loss, rather than staying in a calorie deficit all the time, you raise calories and then drop them back down at regular intervals, preferably with some strategic timing involved. Once again, these within-week changes in nutrition are the mesocycles.
For example, on a fat loss program, you would take three days in a caloric deficit, followed by one day at maintenance. This 3:1 method is an approach I’ve been teaching for years.
While not designed as a muscle-building method per se, refeeding for one full day can restore muscle glycogen, increase metabolism-regulating hormones such as leptin, tip your body out of catabolism and provide psychological relief from
prolonged calorie deprivation. As such, this technique helps you stick with your diet better, prevent plateaus and keep fat loss coming.
This approach does assume that you’re already lean or carrying only moderate amounts of excess fat. If you recall the X2 factors, overweight people are less likely to lose muscle in a calorie deficit than lean people and can handle a linear caloric deficit safely for a longer period of time.
In general, anyone with high body fat levels should set a goal to get the fat off as their first priority. Refer to my ebook, Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle for a complete A to Z fat loss program.
As you get leaner, and your body fat reaches the average or lean categories, then I recommend introducing refeeds with the 3:1 cycling method and your goal could shift to recomposition rather than focused fat loss
3:1 Zig zag cycle for fat loss
There are many ways to approach cyclical dieting, but one of the most time-tested is the 3:1 method. In a focused fat loss program, it looks like this:
Mesocycle Duration Calorie Level Energy Status 3 low calorie days 20-30% below TDEE Underfeeding/moderate to
aggressive deficit
1 high calorie day @ TDEE Refeeding/maintanence
* TDEE refers to total daily energy expenditure and it’s the same thing as your maintenance level for caloric intake.
* Refer to the calorie guide in the appendix to determine your TDEE.
3:1 Zig zag cycle for fat loss with muscle gain
Although most people think of carb and calorie cycling as a cutting technique, you can now see that it can be used in both directions.
If we wanted to increase our chances of gaining lean body mass during a fat loss phase, we might follow the same 3:1 schedule, with one small new tweak: a high calorie day that exceeds maintenance needs and goes into a surplus.
This is the core nutrition technique of the “Holy Grail” program when your primary goal is fat loss and you want to gain a small amount of muscle as well:
Mesocycle Duration Calorie Level Energy Status 3 low calorie days 20-30% below TDEE Underfeeding/moderate to
aggressive deficit 1 high calorie day 15-20% above TDEE Overfeeding/surplus
* Endomorph body types will probably want to use the more aggressive deficit on the low days (30% below TDEE) and the more conservative surplus on the high days (15% above TDEE).
Now let's look at what kind of results this might produce. If this 3:1 cyclical or zig zagging pattern of raising calories up and down is carried out over 12 weeks, then 25% of your time is spent in a surplus and 75% of your time is spent in a deficit right?
Isn't it logical that after three months of this, you would see a large fat loss and a small muscle gain at the same time?
3:3 Zig zag cycle (lean muscle gain)
What if your primary goal is gaining muscle, but you don’t want to gain any fat or you would like to actually drop a bit of fat while gaining muscle? Could you still use the cycling technique by increasing the time spent in a surplus? Yes. It might look like this:
Mesocycle Duration Calorie Level Energy Status
3 low calorie days 15-20% below TDEE Underfeeding/conservative deficit
2-3 high calorie days 15-20% above TDEE Overfeeding/surplus
Here, up to 50% of your time is spent in a surplus and 50% in a deficit. With only half your time in a deficit, your amount of fat loss over a 12 week program will be significantly reduced, but that’s ok because your primary goal is not fat loss. When the primary goal is gaining muscle, and you want to be sure the gain is lean, or even lose some fat at the same time, this is a good way to do it.
This cycling technique is different than the fat loss cycle in that the number of surplus days does not exceed the number of deficit days.
This is by design, because prolonged surpluses usually result in some fat gain along with the muscle gain. It is very difficult to gain 100% fat-free tissue when you are in a continuous surplus for a long time. The only people who seem to pull it off are ectomorphs and the occasional ecto-mesomorph.
As you can see, this method of muscle gain is not a quick fix. To the contrary, it’s an approach tailored to the patient person. If slower muscle gain in exchange for some small fat loss with the muscle gain is a trade off you can live with, then give the 3:3 method a try.
Even if you don’t lose a significant amount of fat, this technique is actually very helpful for gaining muscle while keeping the gains as fat-free as possible (especially to the endomorph body types). While not as efficient as the straight-line surplus method, people such as models and actors who want to gain weight, but need to stay sharp, may find this technique appealing.
The Microcycle: Daily Nutrient Timing
To take advantage of the training-induced partitioning effect, you need to provide ample amounts of fuel and nutrients when your body needs and is able to utilize them the most.
Ideally, this would mean consuming a significant breakfast, when your body is metabolically primed to receive the nutrients (after an overnight fast) and one of your larger meals after your strength training session, during the "window of
opportunity" where the potential for a positive partitioning effect is highest. The post workout meal should contain protein and a significant serving of natural carbs.
Basically, when I speak of microcycles, I am simply remaking the argument for nutrient timing, including proper post-workout nutrition and pre-workout nutrition.
Post workout nutrition and nutrient timing made ultra-simple
To a couch potato, nutrient timing isn't all that important. However, training changes things. If you train like an athlete or bodybuilder, then it makes sense to eat like one. The overall concept is simply to provide more fuel and building materials when you need them the most and less when you need them the least.
It's important to have one of your meals immediately after strength training because this is a critical time for muscle growth and recovery. Many experts have devised formulas to calculate exact protein and carbohydrate amounts for your post-workout meal. While not set in stone, the following is a common recommendation as a
minimum:
0.5 grams of carbs per pound of lean bodyweight (1.1g/kg) 0.25 grams of protein per pound of lean bodyweight (.55g/kg)
For body composition improvement, this usually works out to about 30-50 grams of protein and 60-100 grams of carbs for the post workout meal. (For endurance athletes, or any athlete with extremely intense or glycogen depleting workouts, these carb amounts are more like starting points, and can go much higher. For strict fat loss programs, the carbs may be lower, depending on the degree of carb
restriction imposed).
Post workout nutrition doesn't have to be so formulaic, however. In fact, it can't be.
The optimal amounts of protein and carbs can vary depending on energy expenditure during the workout, on total daily energy expenditure and whether the goal is fat loss (hypocaloric), maintenance (isocaloric) or muscle gain (hypercaloric).
5 post workout nutrition strategies to improve muscle growth and enhance recovery
Most people over-complicate the subject of post-workout nutrition. I suggest you keep it as simple as possible – while not dismissing its importance. Essentially, the post workout meal will be the same as your other meals, with a handful of minor adjustments - "the 5 ultra simple guidelines of post workout nutrition."
First, eat soon after your workout. As John Ivy, PhD and Robert Portman, PhD, explained in their book Nutrient Timing, "The 45 minutes immediately following exercise is the metabolic window of opportunity. At no other time during the course of your day can nutrition make such a major difference." Get your first postworkout nutrition intake anytime between the end of your workout (still in the gym) and 30 minutes after your workout.
Second, eat both protein and carbs in the post workout meal. At one time, carbs alone were emphasized as a way to replenish glycogen after a workout, especially in the endurance world. Other people insisted that post-workout protein was more important to rebuild muscle, especially in the strength and bodybuilding world. The science has now shown that glycogen synthesis and protein synthesis are achieved faster when protein and carbs are consumed together.
Third, it's acceptable on your weight training days to make your post-workout feeding one of your larger and higher carb meals. Carbs ingested immediately after training rarely get stored in fat tissue; they are burned or partitioned into muscle glycogen. Even if you're using a reduced carb diet, one of the best times to consume your limited amount of carbs is after intense weight training. This is also a reason why we do not have zero carb days anywhere in this program – if you have no carb allowance at all, you cannot properly re-fuel after training. Carbs eaten after
workouts will replenish glycogen, restore blood sugar, and cause a beneficial insulin spike, which will suppress the catabolic hormone cortisol, and drive amino acids into the muscle cells.
Fourth, the post-workout period is a time when simple and high glycemic (quick absorbing) carbs are acceptable. A whole food example is white potatoes, which are quickly digested due to their high glycemic index. Most commercial post-workout drinks use maltodextrin, dextrose, glucose or a combination of these quickly-digesting carbohydrates. If you're eating frequently throughout the day, then worrying about getting quick absorbing carbs immediately after training isn't as important. However, if you're going to eat high glycemic index foods or rapidly absorbed carbs, then right after intense and exhaustive workouts is a good time to do it.
Fifth, you can drink your post workout meal if that's your preference. Liquids are often recommended for post-workout nutrition because they're absorbed more rapidly than whole foods. If you opt for a liquid "meal" after your workout, you can use a commercial post-workout drink or make your own using cheaply obtained individual ingredients such as whey protein powders and carbohydrate powders. Both are available in bulk from supplement wholesalers and it pays to compare prices between your own home-made postworkout drinks and commercial drinks as the cost difference can be substantial.
You might be wondering if it's wise to eat any refined and simple carbs at all. The fact is, many athletes do and get great results when the carbs are consumed mostly in the post-workout period, they're accounted for in the daily calorie and
macronutrient budget and the majority of the daily food intake is high in nutrient density.
If your goal is fat loss and you have the endomorph body type or carb-intolerant metabolic type, you may want to be more cautious about high sugar post-workout drinks and stick with natural, whole food.
Whole food can provide micronutrients and fiber, not just calories and carbs, while satisfying the appetite better, and those are decided advantages over liquids.
What about pre-workout nutrition?
Some of the supplement and sports nutrition companies would love to have you take a pre-workout drink, a during-workout drink and a post-workout drink. Serious athletes and sophisticated dieters may want to keep their eyes on future research regarding pre- and during-workout nutrition (which often comes in liquid form and sometimes includes additional amino acids or other nutrients). However, for the vast majority of everyday fat loss seekers, it's best to avoid over-thinking this subject.
Keep it simple: Eat at regularly scheduled meal times and have substantial pre- and post-workout meals, which are basically the same as any other meal: natural
complex carbs and lean protein. It’s the amount of carbs that will vary the most.
Many physique athletes report great results with the bracketing technique: simply surrounding their workouts with their two largest meals of the day. If the workout
Many physique athletes report great results with the bracketing technique: simply surrounding their workouts with their two largest meals of the day. If the workout