REDUX — Diet log: necessity or superfluous exercise in futility?
14 August 2006If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
If you are thin or seeking to add muscle mass a diet log is superfluous. When you want to add muscle mass the key is to eat more calories than you oxidize on a consistent daily basis. Train hard and heavy in the weight room: establish a routine that includes plenty of squats, bench presses, overhead presses, rows, arm work and fill in the cracks with a smattering of machine work. Throw in a little cardio to keep newly acquired muscle mass marbled with as little fat as possible. Lift hard and lift heavy, eat more than you burn off each day, use cardio to keep gains lean and keep the metabolism kicking. No you can’t live on Hagen Daz, lasagna and pork chops – too much saturated fat or sugar will result in ¾ of every pound gained being FAT with a capitol F. Lean protein, fiber and starch are the mainstays for adding muscle; some dietary fat is fine as long as it doesn’t dominate the caloric profile. Saturated fat is the eternal enemy, even for someone thin looking to add heft to their spindly physique. Saturated fat converts into body fat with the greatest of ease. The idea is to train like a powerlifter, eat like a starving Armenian, hit the cardio 3-4 times weekly (it aides digestion, elevate basal metabolic rate and keeps the appetite kicking) and make that bathroom scale ratchet upward 1-2 pound a week – no matter what! A 1-pound weight gain each week might seem inconsequential at first glance however keep it up for ten consecutive weeks and you’ll add 10 pounds of pure muscle and transform your physique. Excess calories and power training has been the classical recipe for building muscle mass for fifty years and this approach works as well today as back in the post-WWII era when guys like Clancy Ross, Jack Dellinger, John Grimek, Marvin Eder and Steve Reeves first formulated the formula.
But man (or woman) does not live by bulk alone and every athlete who acquires a significant amount of muscle need periodically trim and shape, hone and chisel the big block of flesh-granite they’ve created – otherwise they just stay smooth and undifferentiated. There is no sense trying to develop muscular delineation on someone who has no muscle to delineate…I advise those serious about physical transformation to start with a mass cycle – once they have some muscle shift the approach and morph into a diametrically opposed training and eating template wherein bulk is assumed (a relative term) and the mission now becomes how best to melt off the intercellular fat that obscures and obfuscates one muscle boundary from another. The trick is to do this without ‘going catabolic.’ Shift from plentiful eating to starvation mode causes primordial hardwiring to trigger and the body suddenly attempts to save precious body fat at all cost; stored body fat is the last defense against death by starvation and in order to preserve body fat the body will instead cannibalize muscle tissue; literally ripping muscle tissue apart from the inside out, internally eating itself for the amino acid content in order to fuel caloric shortfall. To avoid catabolism you must avoid slashing calories in order to ‘lose weight’ – the goal is not to lose weight but to lose body fat.
A successful fat lose program requires a long, slow, gentle glide path, downward, ever downward…a looping series of gentle concentric circles, akin to a red-tailed hawk riding thermal currents….we keep lean protein intake high in the face of ever-decreasing calories in order to preserve muscle tissue thus forcing the body to mobilize stored body fat to fuel caloric shortfall…1-3 pound body weight reductions per week are the ticket….slow and steady…continually re-supply amino-acid regenerating protein…the process unfolds gradually and in the end, after 10-12 weeks, upwards of 30-pounds of body FAT will be oxidized while 95% of hard-earned muscle tissue is retained. This approach requires patience, discipline and precision eating. Settle in for the long haul and have faith in the fact that it’s not how fast you lose weight but how much fat is lost at the end of a protracted process. Professional bodybuilders have had this formula down cold since 1985. In 2005 it’s finally filtering down to the masses and the implications are profound: train hard, hit the cardio consistently and eat with a plan; settle in for three months and rest assured that the final finished product will blow the collective minds of all who know you.
So how precise does the nutritional leg of the fitness triad need be? Pretty damned precise. Pro bodybuilders weigh their food. What a hassle. After a while they’re able to “eyeball” a portion size with an amazing degree of accuracy. There are a limited number of allowable foods. In order to maintain muscle they eat a lot of protein and in order to simultaneously minimize body fat, protein is devoid (virtually) of saturated fat. This eliminates pork, high fat cuts of beef and leaves a limited selection of foods: white meat poultry, shellfish, fish, flank steak, egg whites and little else. A pro can eyeball 100-grams of protein (roughly 25-grams of protein) as easily as you can differentiate blue from green. A 100-grams portion of protein is about the size of a deck of cards. Normal folks serious about stripping off body fat while holding onto muscle (and avoiding the perils of catabolism) can purchase a rudimentary food scale at the grocery store and start weighing foods prior to cooking. Obviously anyone serious enough to purchase a food scale and start weighing portions is deadly serious about kicking the whole “fitness” concept up to the next level. Is this degree of precision and anal-retentiveness for everyone? No way. On the other hand there are those individuals super serious and ready, willing and able to do what it takes to punch through to the next level. This is a tried and proven tactic: one note of caution – please don’t get into this degree of precision unless you’ve actually built some muscle. Otherwise you’re playing into some Karen Carpenter eating disorder obsession and need to seek psychological help.
If you are ‘massed out’ and determined to refined the granite block without losing the muscle, consider the competitive bodybuilder route: weigh your food until you have a sense of what 100-gram portion of chicken breast, flank steak, sweet potato, brown rice, egg whites, shrimp, cod, salmon, skinless white meat turkey or scallops look like. Fiber carbs, the green stuff, broccoli, lettuce, green beans, etc. actually requires nearly as many calories to digest as they contain and competitive bodybuilders will eat as much as they can stomach of fiber each day and not even worry about weighing it. The typical bodybuilder will allow 12-weeks to prepare for a competition and start the process off allowing 12-15 calories per pound bodyweight: a 200-pound athlete would commence the process consuming 3,500 calories per day – hardly starvation amounts – and whittle that down to maybe 2,000 immediately prior to competition. Most competitive athletes will allot 1.5 grams of protein per pound bodyweight per day. Our hypothetical 200-pound athlete would allot 1,200 calories per day to pure protein in order to preserve calories in the face of declining calories. (1.5 grams x 200 pounds = 300 grams of protein per day; 4 calories per gram of protein x 300 grams = 1,200 calories)
NEXT: LOG YOUR FOOD PART II
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