Ephedrine/caffeine stack- 12.5 to 25 mg of ephedrine 3 x per day along with 100-200 mg of caffeine per day. Providing you tolerate it and don’t have any issues with its use, it’s a very good for appetite suppression, fat loss, and also helps maintain muscle mass during caloric restriction.
Green tea- Prolongs the action of natural nor-epinephrine and is also a great anti-oxidant.
Seems to be somewhat useful.
Oral Yohimbine or Yohimbe Cream- If you can tolerate the stuff it can be useful during the fat-burning phase to inhibit A2 adrenoreceptors (stubborn fat), and improve blood flow to trouble areas. It’s particularly effective for hip and thigh fat on a woman at a dosage of .2g/kg bodyweight. I actually prefer the cream because the oral version can create some strange side effects like anxiety, sweating, and heart palpitations. It’s actually used in clinical settings to induce anxiety. I don’t know how much more
effective the cream is from an effectiveness standpoint, but the side effects are definitely reduced compared to oral versions. (See Avant Labs Lipoderm Ultra)
Calcium: Important for females who don't consume enough dairy and may also help with fat loss.
Q: In most of your examples you recommend weight training on an every other day basis. Why is this?
A: I have found that strength gains are much more consistent training in this fashion.
Taking 48 hours rest between intense workouts allows your central nervous system to recover. Training every day, even different body-parts, still puts a strain on your CNS, which is why it can be difficult to push the bar weights up training every day or even 2 days in a row.
Q: During the muscle gain phase, should I be putting on a bunch of fat?
A: Not a bunch of fat, but put it this way - there shouldn’t be 2 days that go by during that 11 day muscle gain phase where you’re not going up at least some in scale weight.
You’ll probably find you will be the heaviest the day after a hard workout. This is due to the fact that the micro-trauma induced from your workouts generates a bit of an
inflammatory response and you’ll tend to retain more water in your tissues. You should be taking a fairly hardcore attitude towards getting that scale weight and muscular bodyweight up during the mass gain portion. The body can grow very fast when it’s being well fed. Does that mean that you eat like a stunk pig and pig out on pizza, KFC, ice cream and Oreos every single day? No! But that means you should never go without eating and if the only way you can do that is to have some junk food occassionally have at it. Now, along with that good eating you’re probably gonna gain a bit of body-fat. No big deal. That’s what the fat burning phase is designed to take care of.
Q: Do I have to keep my diet ultra clean?
A: See above. I’m not gonna tell you to go out and eat a bunch of crap, but I will tell you that if you don’t eat during the mass gain phase you will not have success. If you wanna eat some junk occasionally have at it. The cleaner your diet is, the less fat you will tend to gain. Can you still gain fat eating ultra clean? Sure. But if you’re eating
pizza and ice cream and drinking a 12-pack of beer EVERY single night don’t be surprised that you’re putting on more fat than you’d like.
Q: If I were gonna pig out, when would be the best time to do it and what would be the best foods to do it with?
A: Definitely anytime after your workout on day 1, anytime during day 2, as well as during the 2-3 hour post-workout period after all your mass gaining workouts. During the first couple of days of the plan you’ll be refilling depleted glycogen stores and, for the most part, regardless of whether that glycogen comes from oatmeal, cereal, or fat free ice cream, it will all go to the same place. You’ll actually continue to burn fat while repleting those glycogen stores. Additionally, for people that have a hard time getting their weight up, I also recommend they eat as much as possible during the 2-3 hour post-workout period throughout the entire duration of the mass gaining phase, since the body is so receptive to nutrition during that period.
Q: Do you have any more specific recommendations for the first 2 days of the diet?
I know when I’ve followed cyclical depletion type workouts in the past like
Bodyopus and The Ultimate Diet 2.0 the plans called for 12-16 grams of carbs per KG of bodyweight the first 24 hours of the high calorie phase.
A: Well, you shouldn’t be fully depleted and not everybody handles carb loading the same, so to an extent you gotta go by feel here. Having said that, remember I said I recommended at least an average of 3 grams of carbs per pound of bodyweight per day the first 2 days. That means from the time your workout is over on day one, to the end of day 2, you should consume around 6 times your bodyweight in carbohydrate grams. So, if you weigh 150 pounds, you’d eat at least 900 grams of carbs combined over those 2 days. Immediately following your workout on day 1, you’d want to have a post-workout shake containing 1 gram of carbohydrate per pound of bodyweight and about 1/3 that amount in protein. For a 150-pound guy, that's 150 grams of carbs and 50 grams of protein. I’d also recommend you take creatine with that drink.
During those first 24 hours after your day 1 workout, you can actually eat as many complex carbs and as much glucose as you want, as long as you don’t exceed about 100-150 grams per hour. In the past I personally liked to indulge in rice krispies. You can also drink the carbs if you don’t feel like eating them. If you decide to do that (drink) make sure you take in glucose, glucose polymers, dextrose, or maltodextrin instead of fructose. Twinlab UltraFuel or Unipro Carboplex are examples.
So, if you feel like sitting around and drinking and eating a bunch of carbs every hour or 2 for the first 2 days have at it. If you notice you’re putting on fat during that time span you might wanna cut back. If you get it right, you should become very hard and vascular (veiny) during those 2 days and on day 3 you should look very full and even leaner, as your body sucks up those carbs like a sponge.
Q: Why should I not over-consume sucrose of fructose?
A: Fructose (fruit sugar) is preferentially used to replenish liver glycogen and won’t impact muscular glycogen. Your liver can only store about 75 to 100 grams of glycogen per day, while your muscles can store a of 300 to 500 grams. If you over-consume fructose in excess of what your liver can store and use, the excess will convert to fat. Sucrose is ½ glucose and ½ fructose, so it’s pretty much ok, but you probably want to keep the total amount the first 24 hours down to around 200 grams total. Fruit is typically ½ glucose plus ½ fructose. It’ll also take quite a bit of fruit to add up to 75 grams of fructose. Glucose WILL replenish muscular glycogen as will dextrose, maltodextrin, and starch (complex carbohydrates). Drinks like Gatorade are typically ½ glucose plus ½ sucrose, so are also pretty much ok from a carbohydrate replenishment standpoint. However, some sports drinks are ½ fructose and ½ sucrose, which are quite terrible from a glycogen replenishment standpoint.
Q: I hate staying out of the gym. Can I do cardio during the muscle gain phase or is there anything else I can do?
A: By all means if you like cardio feel free to do it during the muscle gain phase. Don’t go overboard with it, but 20-40 minutes of low intensity cardio isn’t gonna kill you. If you like going to the gym every day I suggest you do cardio; or just go in and work on smaller muscle groups like abs, calves, and forearms.
Q: Can I adjust the schedule so that days 1 and 2 occur on the weekends instead of on Monday and Tuesday?
A: Sure, adjust the schedule however you want. Don’t be a slave to the system. What I write are guidelines, but I encourage you to take it and adjust it to fit your needs.
Q: Instead of taking the tough approach like you recommend and going in and doing a high rep workout and cutting back quite drastically on the calories during days 12-14, can’t I just cut back off on the food a little bit and maybe do some normal cardio or interval work and make it easier and still get the same type of results?
A: Yes, you can do that and still get good results. Some people can do that and get great results. I have a friend who’s put on nearly 40 pounds of muscle with nary any increase in fat and all he does is reduce his carbs to under 100 grams every single weekend.
That’s it.
If you find that you’re not gaining as much muscle as you’d like and are actually
LOSING fat following the normal program, what you suggest would be the approach to take. That would also be the approach to take if you just kind’ve get worn out and don’t feel like buckling down. In fact I often tell people to simply add an extra day to the mass phase to make it 12 days, and just cut back a bit on the food intake on days 13 and 14.
Nothing really drastic. You might do some intervals on one of those days and it’ll work fine. Having said that, the more you struggle to lose fat the less favorable that approach
will work for you. Not that it won’t work. I’ve known plenty of people who have done variations of that whose genetics are nothing to write home about. But I KNOW the plan I suggest can work for even the most disadvantaged metabolisms. Like I say though, don’t be a slave to it and modify it to suit your needs.
Q: Should I consume a post-workout drink containing carbs during the fat burning phase?
A: You can but I don’t necessarily recommend it because that cuts into your daily carbohydrate allotment considerably. I’d prefer to spread the carbs out throughout the day and if you have a post-workout shake just make it protein.
Q: What if I’ve gone the 11 or 12 days and I have gained muscle but haven’t gained any fat whatsoever. Should I still do the 3-day fat burning phase?
A: It depends on you. Do you want to reduce your body-fat while maintaining that muscle? Or are you happy with where your body-fat is? If you’re happy with your current body-fat, no need to do the 3-day fat burning phase.
Q: Do I have to do the plan based on a 2-week cycle?
A: No, I set it up that way because most people tend to like things that fit a weekly format. Adjust it to fit your needs.
Q: You recommend an “unloading” period after 4 consecutive cycles. How would you typically go about doing that?
A: There are many ways to do that. The idea is to lower the load and volume and let your body recuperate. Don’t worry, you’re not going to lose any size in such a short period of time. You could just take a week or 2, split your body in half, hit the gym 2 days per week, and hit each muscle group with a 2-3 sets in the 12-15 rep range stopping well short of failure. Or just do 2 fairly easy full body workouts per week.
Q: Do I have to take appetite suppressants like ephedrine and caffeine during the fat burning phase?
A: No, you certainly don’t. I wrote about them because they can be a useful option to help reduce appetite. If you feel uncomfortable taking them it’s no big deal. Your results won’t be affected, you’ll just have to fight your appetite a little more.
Q: In your theory section you recommend training a muscle group heavy once per week and light again the same week, but on this program there are only 2 heavy workouts the 2nd week?
A: On this program that recommendation really only fits in with the first week. In the first example I gave, on day 1 you’d come in and hit chest and back heavy and shoulders
and arms light. On day 5, you’d hit shoulders and arms heavy and chest and back light.
You’d hit legs heavy on 5 and light on day 6. The following week everything would be heavy, since you’re only doing 2 heavy workouts.
Q: Can you be a bit more specific on how much I should be eating during the mass gain phase?
A: It’s hard to be all that specific because metabolisms vary considerably. I know one guy approaching about 8000 calories per day who still sometimes has trouble getting that scale weight up. In contrast, another person the same size might gain weight on only 2500 per day. If it were me, on days 1 and 2 I would eat 1.5 grams of protein per pound of lean body mass per day, 3 grams of carbohydrate per pound of lean body mass per day, and neglible fat intake. On days 3-11 I would eat 1.5 grams of protein per pound of lean body mass per day, about 2 grams of carbs per pound of lean body mass per day, and maybe 50 grams of fat per day. I would take in quite a bit more nutrition and food during the 2-3 hour post-workout period then I would the rest of the time. On days 12-14 I would eat 1.5 grams of protein per pound of bodyweight, 75 grams of carbohydrate per day, and fairly neglible amounts of fat. I know by doing that I’ll get the results I want, but you might have an entirely different metabolism so you have to kind’ve experiment.
Q: How would you modify this plan for an athlete?
A: You wouldn’t need to modify much at all. If you’re that concerned with putting on
“non-functional” muscle, you might eliminate the density and metabolic fatigue
stimulating stuff (rest-pauses, high-rep, sets etc.), and stick to a rep range of 6 and below.
You might also insert some movement work like sprints or plyometrics prior to your workouts on day 3, 5, 8, and 10.
Q: In all your examples you have us taking day 11 off. Can I train on this day if I want to?
A: Yes, you definitely can. I assumed most people would be doing the light full body workout on day 12 so I gave them day 11 off. You can still train on that day if you want since the full body workout is light and won’t interfere much with recovery. However, most people just like to have a day off before that workout. Also, if you plan on doing intervals and cardio on day 12 instead of the full body workout, you would probably WANT to weight train on day 11.
Q: In the training examples you gave do I have to use the exercises you laid out or can I choose my own exercises.
A: Definitely choose your own exercises. As long as you’re training your body with compound movements you’ll be fine.
Q: You talk about the importance of eating and you make it sound like the more you eat the better off you are. Isn’t there a threshold where increased calories don’t do anything extra for muscle growth but just lie down more fat?
A: Yes, you’re exactly right. There is a point where increased food intake won’t do anything extra for muscle growth, but will make you fatter. If I were to guess I’d say it’s probably at about 750 calories over your maintenance level per day. The hard part is that as you gain bodyweight your maintenance intake is always changing and often going up at a rate that can’t be explained by bodyweight increases alone. As you gain weight, your body tends to resist you by increasing your metabolism. So you end up having to eat more and more to maintain or gain. Let me give you an example: You might have a 150 pound guy who starts off eating 3000 calories per day initially might be gaining at a rate of nearly 2 pounds per week. Yet, by the time he eats 180 pounds, he might have to eat 5000 calories per day just to maintain his weight. See, the metabolism increased more than the bodyweight. That’s why you have 250-pound guys eating 8 or 10 thousand calories per day. They probably didn’t start off eating nearly that much but by the time they bring their scale weight up to a level that exceeds how much their body wants to weigh, the metabolism increases dramatically and just maintaining bodyweight becomes a chore.
Q: In the set and rep schemes you talked about such as 4 x 6 or 3 x 8 etc., do you recommend a person add weight each set or stick with the same weight for all sets?
A: Either way can work fine but I would generally prefer the 2nd method. Say you’re shooting for 4 sets of 6 reps with 150 pounds. You get 2 sets of 6 reps with 150 pounds on the first 2 sets, but lets say you only get 5 and 4 reps on the last 2 sets. As soon as you’re able to get 6 reps over all 4 sets, you’d increase the weight. You can also combine the 2 methods. In other words, increase the weight for 2-3 sets and maintain the weight for several sets. So a 5 sets of 5 progression could look something like this:
Warm-up- bar x 10 Warm-up- 95 x 5 Warm-up- 135 x 5 Set 1- 185 x 5 Set 2- 205 x 5
Set 3- 210 x 5 (heaviest working weight of the day) Set 4- 210 x 5
Set 5- 210 x 3 (came up just a bit short on the last set)
Q: I’m setting my diet up during the fat burning phase and want to allow myself 100 grams of carbohydrates? Should I subtract grams of fiber when I’m figuring out my carbohydrate allotment?
A: Yes, you should subtract grams of fiber, since fiber is indigestible. For example, an entire 1-pound bag of frozen broccoli contains about 15 grams of total carbs, but 5 of
those are from fiber. So, each pound of broccoli contains about 10 grams of net carbs, which you’d count towards your daily allotment.
Q: Several Questions: You talked about insulin levels, glycogen levels, carbohydrate intake, and fat intake.
1. Are you saying that as long as glycogen levels aren't full that carbohydrates won't convert into fat?
2. Do most people that aren't dieting have full glycogen stores?
3. Since insulin can make a person fat and carbohydrates stimulate the most insulin, I thought carbohydrates make a person fat?
4. What about protein? Does it convert into carbohydrate at all?
A: Good questions. Yes, ingested carbohydrates will be used to replace depleted muscle and liver glycogen stores. These stores are generally NOT completely full in most people. Contrary to popular belief, even when these stores are full, carbohydrates still don't easily convert to body-fat. In controlled studies done to monitor carbohydrate to fat
A: Good questions. Yes, ingested carbohydrates will be used to replace depleted muscle and liver glycogen stores. These stores are generally NOT completely full in most people. Contrary to popular belief, even when these stores are full, carbohydrates still don't easily convert to body-fat. In controlled studies done to monitor carbohydrate to fat