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.

Gina Carano knows ass.

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 shit works. 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 postworkout 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 hormonefueled 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)

They understood this, because they were stronger, smarter, and tougher than the lot of us. "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.

Exactly A

Apex Predator Diet, Part 2- Dieting For Fat Fucks

It occurred to me over the weekend that this is going to be one hell of a long series, so I've decided to break it up into its component diets. Given that they've the furthest to go, I thought we'd start with our tubby compatriots- they need a head start shuffling towards whatever destination to which we send them, and ample breaks to catch their breath and shoot insulin and the like.

The Fat Fuck Approach

I've actually not had to use this, as I have about the same ability to ignore the sensation of my abdominal fat sitting on my waistband when seated as those overly pretty people on the Bachelor have for admitting that they're actual prostitutes. As soon as I start feeling that sensation, I start dieting my fucking ass off. Once lean, I freak out when I lose abdominal vascularity, much less my abs in general. As such, I've had to extrapolate from the diet I used to jump start my fat loss once I noticed that my abs were going the way of the the Kardashian family's collective personal pride.

I think I hate her more than I actually should because she's got one of the best asses on Earth. As with everything I do, this diet is hardly a hard and fast dietary regimen, but rather more like a broad outline with suggestions on what you can do with the finer points. Thus, you should experiment with a couple of different approaches to determine what works best for you. From there, you can carry what you've learned into the succeeding phases and have an even better handle on your diet than the cast of that ridiculous show Mike and Molly, who apparently have made a pact to eat into immobility in recent years. The Rundown Kick it off with a 10-14 day keto run (no Rampage for 10-14 days) Protein-sparing modified fast at least one day a week 5 days a week, one solid-food meal a day, with one of those days being a fairly low calorie meal low- but not no- carb one day a week, punctuated by a 3 hour cheat window that is at least moderately reasonable. This is not, then, a full on Rampage day, but more of a moderated eating spree. One day wherein you eat more than one solid-food no-carb meal a day

Seems fairly simple, right? As I've said before, this is hardly brain surgery. The point in this phase is to get you looking at least decently while keeping your lifts up and not completely hating life. One of my main problems with the PSMF, as I've mentioned, is the fact that they leave you insanely hungry and can be a distraction from training. As such, I would recommend (based on personal experience) throwing that day in between your Rampage day and your higher calorie day. As I almost invariably have my cheat meal on Friday, that works out pretty nicely- keep the calories low on Saturday, drink a shitload of protein shakes (at least 6), and then grub on every meaty bit of deliciousness I can on Sunday.

If you're concerned about calories, you will moderate your caloric intake according to your individual metabolism. I'm not talking about some bullshit, low-brow, Easy Bake Oven BMR calculation- you will find your sweet spot through experimentation, because you're a fucking mad scientist and only you can understand your own insanity. Additionally, my conception of a workout is considerably different tan that of most, so it would be completely disingenuous for me to suggest that I could tell you what caloric intake would result in the most fatloss and muscular gain. I can tell you that your body will tell you when it's had enough fatty meat. My sweet spot seems to be between 1 and 3.5 lbs of meat in a sitting, depending on the type, my level of activity, and where I am in a week. Luckily for you, "studies of ketogenic diets have found that when subjects are told to limit carbohydrate intake but to consume "unlimited" quanitites of protein and fat, they automatically limit caloric intake and consume between 1400-2100 calories." (Ketogenic Diet 101) That's a very cool biological cruise control you've got built in, and I can say that though I generally go a bit higher than that (2000-3000 calories) in my evening meal, I definitely hit a point where I can go no further, and it's not from being stuffed- my body just taps out and says and says "fuck it, I'm done." The key here, especially for you tubby motherfuckers, is to stop eating before you're full. Luckily, meat on the bone slows your eating considerably (I

personally tend to scarf down my food like a wild, starving dog), so you'll have a better sense of where you stand in terms of fullness than you would otherwise.

There is one unfortunate caveat for you people, however- years of overindulging have fucked you harder than a big-bootied white girl at a black fraternity and you can no longer fully trust your body's satiety signals. Leptin is the hormone made by fat cells that causes your brain to listen to signals of satiety, but overweight people, having much greater fat stores, have higher leptin levels and become resistant to the signal. As such, I would start toward the lower end of the caloric spectrum and increase as needed, using your level of energy in workouts as a guide. (Russell 22) One nice thing about the structure of this diet is that it will help to moderate the other side of the hormonal overeating coin- ghrelin. That's the hormone that tells your body you're hungry, and it's suppressed with high fat diets. As such, you'll likely find you're hungriest on your Rampage day, since you won't be eating such high fat foods throughout the day. Many of you, upon seeing some quick results, are going to come to the conclusion that you should skip your Rampage day to prolong your fat loss. If you choose to do so, I would add in another high calorie day (but not consecutive with another), and would not recommend that you go more than two weeks without a cheat meal, both for sanity and your metabolism's sake. The reason I start this phase with a 1014 day keto run is that the fatter you are, the harder it is for your body to get into ketosis. Basically, if you think of your glycogen stores as a water glass, you filled that fucker up years ago and kept dumping buckets of water on top of the full glass for years, while leaving it out in the rain. In Seattle. Your insulin

receptors threw in the fucking towel years ago, while you shoving Little Debbie snack cakes down your piehole and washing it down with a Coke. You're completely destroyed your body's ability to correctly recognize its own metabolic signals, so you're going to have to suffer a bit to undo the damage you've done. Additionally, Dan Duchaine was a big fan of starting ketogenic phases with 10-14 day keto runs, and that makes good sense- fat people produce ketone bodies much more slowly than do lean people.(Russell 22) Thus, I can drop into ketosis inside a day right now, but the 308 lber trying to drop to 242 is going to take the better part of the week, for the reasons I outlined earlier in this paragraph. In regards to how much carbohydrate you should eat, which I'm sure many of you are wondering, you should shoot to keep your carbohydrates to 30 grams or less a day. "Although up to 100 grams of carbohydrate will allow ketosis to develop, it would be rare to see ketones excreted in the urine at this level of intake."(Ketogenic Diet 104) Because you've spent the last several years stuffing your face with all manner of bullshit, you might want to go ahead and forgo it for the time being so as to get your body back to a state where it can better tolerate carbs. The nice thing about dieting is that the leaner you get and stay, the more leeway you end up having with it, and the more rapidly you can make physiological changes for the better. Think of fatloss like a massive freight train- it's a bitch to get that motherfucker moving, but once it's up to speed, nothing short of a nuke is stopping that fucking thing from reaching its destination. Is this phase going to be fun? In spots. Eating every meal with your hands is fucking awesome, in my opinion. There's less cleanup, you get to use wet wipes, and gnawing on a bone is a hell of a good way to avoid biting your fingernails. The days you're not eating real food, however, are going to fucking blow. That's the price you pay for years of eating like dogshit, however, and if you want to be a beast, you're going to have to go hungry like one every now and again.

I'm sure you wrestling marks just came in your pants. Triple H actually uses a moderate-fat ketogenic diet, as it happens.

Sample Week Of The Fat Fuck Approach

Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday: 5-6 protein shakes throughout the day (and one overnight, which I'd leave on the toilet and chug while peeing). I usually had Monster Milk in the morning, and followed that with Muscle Infusion throughout the day. If I did a morning workout, it was a short workout (20 mins) usually consisting of one arm

deadlifts, and I usually did not have a pre-workout shake. On two of these four days I typically substitute one shake at lunch with wings or other no-carb meat. 1500-2500 calories worth of meat, preferably on the bone, for your evening meal. If you're eating chicken, make sure you're eating the skin. You might want to think about a Protein Sparing Modified Fast (nothing but shakes) on Monday as well, especially if you want to accelerate fatloss.

Wednesday: 5-6 protein shakes with a less calorically dense dinner. This is intended to rotate your calories and stimulate more fatloss. Friday: Watered-down Rampage day. Keep you carbs reasonable, and focus on getting lean proteins throughout the day. To give you an idea of how I did this to into single digit bodyfat, most Rampage days consisted of 94% lean meat tacos on low carb shells. For my cheat meals, I went bananas, but I'd suggest that while you definitely want to make sure you eat a considerable amount of carbs, you should keep your calories in check until you're starting to see decent progress. This is for two reasons- you need to learn dietary discipline and because your body still has massive fat stores on which to draw, so massive cheats are unnecessary. I'll cover the Rampage Day in depth in an upcoming post, but for now I'd say eat lean and low-to-moderate carb throughout the day and cap the day with a carbohydrate bonanza the likes of which you've likely not seen since you saw undergraduate college girls descend on a table of free bagels. In terms of amounts, I'll agree with Dave Palumbo and say your initial Rampage day should be in the neighborhood of 400 grams of carbohydrates. If you don't lose more weight the following week, reduce that number. If you lost plenty, you can adjust it up. For you guys, however, I'd suggest you go easy, since you've mangled your insulin sensitivity worse than that broad who got attacked by a chimp a couple of years ago.

This is what your metabolism looks like. Well done. Saturday: Protein Sparing Modified Fast. Nothing but shakes in water today. Quite frankly, you're likely going to want to skip the gym today and just occupy yourself otherwise, but if you do plan on training, be prepared for it to suck, so don't plan to hit PRs.

Sunday: Keto day, but eat two meals today- one smaller and one larger. Make sure you train on this day- your lift

will be awesome.

What You Will Need For This Diet

A good multi-vitamin. I cannot bring myself to eat offal, so this is a necessity for me. If you like eating liver and kidneys and sundry other items you see falling out of hapless victims in Hostel, feel free to skip the multi. I'm back on the Animal Pak bandwagon, and I'm fairly certain you could cure cancer with it. Omega 3 fatty acids. I'm not paying eleventy billion dollars for grass-fed beef. I've not got the money for that silliness, and likely nor have you. Pop Omega 3s like candy and you're gold. Some permutation of the ECA/ECY stack. I don't give a fuck how you combine them- just do it. Neanderthals were huge fans of ephedrine, and so should you be.(Doweiko 88) I've written about why you should love it here. I use Stimerex or Lipodrene. A good blended protein. I've used Matrix 5.0, Muscle Infusion, Monster Milk, and Pro Blend 55 to good effect. Just make sure that the carbs in that fucker are LOW- that means no Muscle Milk, no Syntha 6, no weight gainers.

A Note About Women And This Diet Assuming you're a woman or have ever met one, you're aware that women regard carbohydrates like the last life boat on the titanic and will maul you like a fucking honey badger if you get between them and their potatoes. There's actually a psychochemical reason for this- women appear to either have chronically low seratonin and tryptophan levels or are just addicted to high levels of the two chemicals. This is especially true around their period, at which time the production of both chemicals in the brain is suppressed. Additionally, seratonin reduces anxiety, from which every chick I know suffers, and tryptophan is the amino-acid precursor to seratonin, so it contributes to anxiety suppression as well. (Sayegh et all, Christie) Guess what kinds of foods stimulate the production of those chemicals? Carbohydrates.

Protein-rich foods (i.e. the foods women typically ignore for carbohydrate-laden foods) increase dopamine and norepinephrine, which means eating a lot of protein will make you more alert and energetic. This may be why men are so ready with solutions to any woman's problems, and happy to share them until she plants a fucking fork in his eye for doing so.

Her craving for carbs was so great, she had to wrap her face in a dirty blanket to restrain herself. The reason why I'm including this is because women need a priest qualified for an exorcism and a psychiatrist far more than they need this diet. I'm not saying you necessarily can't do it, but it'll likely make you miserable for a couple of weeks. Men with high estrogen levels and might have this problem too, but that's just speculation. The original sound guy for the Grateful Dead is apparently 100% carnivorous and had this to say about chicks and keto diets: "The female hormones seem cause a strong craving for carbs, as the female body isn't fertile without a layer of fat. This makes this diet very hard for women to follow. Traditionally the women are the gatherers of fruits and (starchy) roots, while the men are the hunters. This is shown today in the different ways men and women go about buying things. The gals "shop" which is a trip through the entire store or mall in search of things to buy. They may not actually buy (gather) anything. The guys on the other hand know what they are after, and then seek it out (hunts it down) and buys it, usually then taking it home right away."(Stanley) If you do decide to try it, I did a quick google search to see which kinds of cheese might work for this diet, since it's my experience chicks will consider eating dogshit if it's covered in enough of the right kind of cheese. I'll say right off I know fuckall about cheese and despise it. Thus, I'm making recommendations on macronutrient ratios: Gruyere Cheese- This seems to be about as close to beef ribs as you can get in a cheese. If you want to sit down to a pound of this shit a day, have at it. 40g of protein and 42g of fat per cup with <1g carbs Limburger Cheese- Damn near as good for you as Gruyere, provided you can tolerate the smell. Goat Cheese, Hard Type Brie Cheese Edam Cheese Monterrey Chesse Muenster Cheese Camembert Cheese

Apex Predator Diet, Part 3- You're Getting Less Fat. Congratulations.

The Not Too Fucking Fat, But Not Too Fucking Lean Approach.
This is what I used when I was between 12% and 8% bodyfat. I could see two abs clearly and two a bit hazily at the beginning of this diet, and I followed this fairly strictly for about two months. Once I started getting into single digits, I noticed myself getting hungrier and hungrier, and had to start eating more to maintain my bodyweight. Additionally, 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. As such, this approach is going to alter slightly as you get leaner (should you wish to alter it). I realize that some of you react like Luddites at a robotics convention when faced with changing a workout or diet if its sti ll yielding results, and if you fall into that category stick with the more draconian approach until you hit the next stage of the diet. For those of you who have less resolve for sticking with something than a meth addicted four year old white trash kid in the toy department at Wal-Mart, I recommend setting a hard start and stop point on the evolution of this phase of the diet to ensure that you make the progress you should. This stage is not too much different than the previous one, except that I recommend only one day of Protein Sparing Modified Fasts and your Rampage day kicks in harder than a teenage erection at a Hustler party. After youve made it to single digits, you may choose to drop the day of protein sparing

modified fasts to ensure you dont leave weight on the platform on training days and that you continue to make forward progress with your physique. At some point, youll get lean enough that youll notice a very pronounced loss of aggression in the gym due to those days. Additionally, once you hit single digits, I recommend adding a smaller second food meal midday. This will help you stabilize your weight as you bring the diet home.

The Basics of the NTFBNTS Phase

Saturday, Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday: 5-6 protein shakes throughout the day (and one overnight, which I'd leave on the toilet and chug while peeing) comprised of 40-60 grams of protein. On two of these four days I typically substitute one shake at lunch with wings or other no-carb meat. Once you hit single digit bodyfat, you can make this a four day affair. On one of these days, try to fit in a protein sparing modified fast (i.e. consume nothing but protein shakes) until you hit single digits. I recommend placing this day on Saturday, in between your Rampage and high-calorie keto days, so as to keep your metabolism stimulated and reap the benefits of alternate-day fasting. 1500-3000 calories of fatty meat, preferably on the bone, in the evening.

Wednesday: 5-6 protein shakes throughout the day (and one overnight).

Less calorically dense meat for dinner (t-bone, ribeye, or NY Strip steak, leaving the fattiest bits behind. This is to ensure that youre still cycling your calories, even if youre skipping the protein sparing modified fast day.

Friday (Rampage Day): Today is going to be characterized by medium- to low- (but not no-) carb meals throughout the day. Restrict your meals to 50 grams of carbohydrates or less per meal, and keep your fat low to ensure carbohydrate reuptake. This is the polar opposite of your typical day, so just bear in mind that your carbohydrates and fat should be inversely proportional at all but the Rampage meal. Rampage! This is going to be a three hour cheat window that Ill detail in the next installment.

Sunday: Higher calorie keto day. Ensure that you eat two solid food meals on this day, preferably of fattier meat on the bone- think wings, ribs, chops, etc. 5-6 protein shakes throughout the day (and one overnight).

Jesus tittyfucking christ. Who doesn't understand the proper use of the word "too"? ...Fratboys. During this phase, you should be making progress like a fratboy with a sorostitute in his dorm roomyoure nearly there. Unlike said fratboy, however, youll likely find rohipnol unnecessary, though you might benefit from the following: Avoid doing cardio. Though utilizing a CKD (Cyclical Ketogenic Diet) as opposed to a TKD should forestall muscle catabolism brought on by high volumes of work in the gym, aerobic exercise taxes your anaerobic substrates too heavily.(Duchaine 132) Sinc e this could lead to muscle loss, Id avoid it. For the forty three thousand rugby athletes whove emailed me about this diet (sweet fucking Christ a lot of you like wearing striped shirts), youll want to follow the Whiny Bitch permutation of this diet, which is forthcoming. Supplement with Chromium Polynicotinate or Vanadyl Sulfate . Both minerals work to regulate your blood sugar and insulin levels, and might aid in training and recomposition as a result.(Duchaine 131) Dont skip or skimp on your Rampage day. I cannot imagine a person actually doing so, but based on the emails I get, a lot of you do some tremendously stupid shit. Dont be one of those guys Rampage like your name is King Kong once a week. If youre curious as to why, theres a good reason- you cannot sustain high intensity training indefinitely in the total absence of dietary carbohydrates and expect to make continued progress. You do have some glycogen resynthesis that naturally occurs as a result of weight training, though its relatively small.(McDonald KD 122) As such, you need to hit the Rampage once a week to ensure you replenish glycogen stores. Skipping or

postponing your Rampage in this stage will, at best, make you fucking miserable, and at worst, reduce or eliminate your gains. Since this diet is all about being fucking awesome, reducing your potential for awesome is counter-intuitive. Consume stimulants. Theyll fuel your workouts and they help establish and deepen your levels of ketosis.(McDonald KD 116) Additionally, amphetamines have been shown in recent studies to increase the effect of dopamine on your brain, which increases motivation for both physical and mental activities.(Ito) Happily for us, ephedrine is an amphetamine, so feel free to make use of the wonderful bounty that is ephedrine and all of its amphetaminy goodness. You'll be focused like a pedophile on a preschool playground when you hit the gym, find dieting easier, and generally be more awesome. For those of you with heart problems, moral issues, religious issues, or simply think youre better than the rest of us, feel free to abstain. Stimulants, while not necessary on this diet, definitely help.

Drink if you want. Though by no means necessary, and done to excess will fuck up your gains, drinking can actually help you deepen your levels of ketosis.(McDonald 115) Alcohol itself gets converted to ketones in the absence of dietary carbohydrates, which means that it wo nt fuck up your diet beyond replacing the ketones your body would produce from the conversion of stored bodyfat. Thus, it can slow fat loss if done to excess, but will not fuck up your ketogenesis. This is, of course, assuming you stick to non-carbohydrate laden alcohol like vodka, gin, tequila, Everclear, etc. Additionally, Robb Wolff recommends you drink as early as possible to allow the alcohol to clear your system before bedtime to avoid completely shutting down GH release overnight. One of the best things you can consume, alcohol wise, on this diet is the disgusting old-timey gin and tonic, garnished with lime. The lime juice blunts insulin release while the tonic water acts as a non -polar solvent that delivers the alchol into your system faster.(Wolff 138) Wolff actually recommends the Crossfitters drink of choice, the NorCal Margarita, but it occurred to me as I wrote this that the drink of choice in the period of British Colonialism will do the job just as well, while additionally conferring resistance to malaria. Thus, feel free to show up to your local gin bar rocking a monocle and a comically undersized safari outfit to cover all of your bases. At the very least, youll annoy the holy fuck out of the hipsters drinking that vile bullshit, which makes it a victory no matter what.

Up next- a detailed description of your Rampage.

Apex Predator Diet, Part 4- Every Apex Predator Goes On An Occasional Rampage, So Long As Chris Hansen Doesnt Catch Them First

A hulking figure appeared in the doorway, cloaked in an aura so intense that he barely seemed capable of doing aught but great violence to anything within his reach. As he stepped heavily into the room, the onlookers noticed that every sinew, every muscle, and every vein stood in stark relief beneath his paper thin skin, which threatened to burst like the skin on a sausage left too long on the grill. His t-shirt, loose at the waist, grew tighter as the eye moved upward until it appeared to be strangling him, so tightly was it stretched over his bull-like neck and shoulders. Shouldering aside ill-clad, scrawny hipsters, the brute made his way to the front of the establishment and spoke. "Bring me a pizza adorned with every conceivable type of meat, as many breadsticks as you can fit into a garbage bag, and a half gallon of whiskey, or I swear by all of the gods that I shall reduce this building to rubble, lay waste to the surrounding areas, carry off your women, and drink all of your liquor. You have fifteen minutes to comply. "

Goddamned right.

It was, clearly, Rampage Day. Though you might be thinking that skipping your Rampage day might be a good way to accelerate fat loss, this is not so. In the initial phase of this diet, you might stretch your keto runs to acclimatize yourself to the diet and undo the massive damage you've wrecked upon your internal system. Additionally, youre primarily concerned with being less disgusting to look at and touch, which is understandable. As such, you might be inclined to continue to stretch the no-carb phase of this diet to ten to fourteen days, which can have some very positive metabolic effects. Once you've re-entered the realm of human physiques, however, you should rethink that policy, as this diet's not about not being fat- it's about being fucking awesome. If you're going to be awesome, you're going to need to lift continually heavier weights and get more muscular, and the Rampage is a critical component in that, especially given the fact that some studies have shown that long-term ketogenic diets inhibit muscle growth when the dieter is in a hypocaloric state, which you'll likely be in for at least part of the week if you're doing one or more days of Protein Sparing Modified Fasts.(McDaniel) If you're doing PSMFs and breaking your ass in the gym, it's highly likely that until you engage in a gastronomic catastrophe like the Rampage, you're going to be in a hypocaloric state over the balance of the week. That shit simply cannot be allowed to stand, as your workouts will suffer and you could lose some of the muscle you've broken your ass inside out to get.

Thus, you should regard a refeed day as sacrosanct. The Rampage Day is essential for getting insanely strong and lean, as a day in which you deliberately overeat carbohydrates is utterly necessary for muscular hypertrophy, strength gains, and overall recomposition. Essentially, the Rampage Day confers more benefits than a cattle prod at a school for the mentally retarded- it stimulates your metabolism,(Matsumoto) replenishes your glycogen stores for heavy training,(Bowden) increases your thyroid, adrenal, and sex hormones,(Poehlman) provides sundry mental health benefits through a forced break from clean eating,(Westrate) and helps normalize most, if not all, of the hormones [involved in] metabolic slowdown: leptin, ghrelin, insulin, etc.(McDonald RFD 46)

You will, however, have to do the refeed correctly in order to reap its benefits like a Muslim collecting hymens in Jannah. Unless you're where you want to be in terms of bodyfat, however, this isnt going to be a fucking free-for-all day, as youre hardly out of the water yet. Instead, the Rampage is a combination of a structured refeed (like youd do for a glycogen supercompensation) and a cheat meal.

If youre still worried that youll grow your disgust ing fatbody back in your first Rampage, fear not- there are at least two studies that suggest that the body continues to use bodyfat for fuel during the first 24 hours of carbohydrate loading, so provided you stick to the plan, youll be well on your way t o getting the striated buttocks of which youve always dreamed.(McDonald KD 135) At least one study has shown that short breaks from high fat diets will not have an adverse effect on lipolytic activity, and lipolytic activity in people who take high carb breaks from high fat diets are actually higher than those who are on a high carbohydrate diet, meaning you'll burn more fat if you cheat a bit once a week.(Saitoh) Additionally, fellow low-carbohydrate dieting advocate, Dave Palumbo, stated that if "you use a keto-diet, you'll need to have a cheat meal (to spike insulin) at least once per week to keep the thyroid functioning normally." For anyone who's ever met a grossly obese person, they invariably claim that their thyroid's at fault, rather than the fact that they gave up vertical locomotion for a scooter and some Ho-Ho's ten years ago, and haven't even bothered to mourn the fact that they've not seen their genetalia in in 15 years due to their obsession with television game shows and Cheetos. Best to keep your distance from those motherfuckers and keep that thyroid humming like a chick from the Berkeley School of music giving a blowjob.

Get Rampagin'!
On your Rampage Day, you're going to plan on consuming 3.5-4.5 grams per pound of gross bodyweight. Thus, a 154 lb. person should consume 600 grams of total carbohydrates on Rampage Day, whereas a 200 lb person would consume around 800. The timing of the carbohydrates is not as important as the amount, though I prefer to keep myself in a caloric deficit until the cheat window to milk every bit of stimulus I can out of the massive influx of food. Additionally, predators in the wild invariably have a marked circadian rhythm and their hunting motivation is influenced by the activity of endogenous clocks(McFarland 463) Though you might be skeptical of the application of this fact to you, humans are universally considered to be apex predators, so it is in our nature to eat in a particular rhythm. This might be why I find this diet so fucking easy to follow- it has a nice flow. Additionally, my body seems primed for the influx of calories in the evening, which leads me to believe that youll utilize the majority of the calories you ingest if your Rampage is synchronous with your largest meal during the week. Is there science to support that? Fuck no, but it makes sense, so Im sticking with it. You dont need to walk around with a notepad and calculator all fucking day long, either - the key to the refeed is how many carbs and which kinds, rather than the pace at which you eat them.. For the first couple of Rampages, you might want to plan them a bit so youre shooting for the right carbohydrate levels. This will give you a benchmark and allow you the opportunity to fine tune your intake as you go. Others of you might want to go my route and keep your carbs under 200 grams for the duration of the day, so that no matter how fucking nuts you go come cheat time you cannot overshoot your mark. I found this particularly helpful in the early stages, but as I got leaner it went from unnecessary to possibly counterproductive.

Anyone else amused that the less-skinny guy is "clearly juiced up"?

Multiple sources Ive read virtually scream that you should avoid fructose during glycogen recomposition , as it simply replenishes liver stores and can actually be stored as bodyfat. Thought vegans will scream bloody murder this isn't true, science does not appear to have their back. Instead, science appears to have gained full mount and is currently beating vegans like they're talking shit on a California playground. "Fructose is more lipogenic than glucose or starches, and usually causes greater elevations in triglycerides and sometimes in cholesterol than other carbohydrates. Dietary fructose has resulted in increases in blood pressure, uric acid, and lactic acid." To add insult to injury, "added fructose seems to provide little advantage over other caloric sweetners and compares unfavorably to complex carbohydrates in susceptible segments of the population."(Hallfrisch) Thus, Id avoid fruit for the most part. Additionally, overdoing the sucrose can lead to some being stored as bodyfat. If youre eating either, try to restrict them to 50 grams and 100 grams, respectively, to avoid reducing the efficacy of the refeed.(McDonald RFL 46-7) Thats not to say that you should underdo it, however. The Minnesota Experiment showed that the utilization of the minimum necessary calories in a refeed will lead to decreased enthusiasm for the diet and training, no matter the macronutrient composition.(Russell 129) Thus, youll Rampage as intelligently and aggressively as you should do everything, like youre a modern day Neanderthal with an 8 inch boner facing down a wooly mammoth thats trying to rape your girlfriend.

Rapist.

The Rampage Itself

In the past, I covered cheat windows fairly in-depth and mentioned that there are a couple of ways to skin this proverbial cat. The Rampage will utilize none of those, and will instead rely on a single 3 hour cheat window on the heels of the aforementioned carbohydrate refeed. During the cheat window, I encourage you to eat like you're a midwestern housewife at an all-you-can-eat buffet and gorge yourself. I usually pick foods on which I can graze, as I've shrunken my stomach and haven't got any interest in putting myself in physical pain during my weekly three hour holiday. There's no metabolic reasoning for grazing, however- it's just what I like to do. For those of you who are about to throw Lyle McDonald in my face, relax, I've read the same shit. His contention is that during these structured refeeds, you should definitely not "use the concept as an excuse to eat yourself sick or eat three times what youd normally eat."(McDonald, 34) I'll tell you this from experience- the farther you get in a given diet, the less you can consume in three hours- it's a matter of pure biology. Thus, at the beginning of your diet, you'll be able to eat more during your cheats, which will likely slow your progress. Should you notice this, you can moderate future Rampages to forestall that slowdown, though as you get leaner, you'll notice you can get away with a lot more in the way of craziness and lapses. Additionally, once start seeing definition you'd never seen before, or veins you never thought you'd ever see, you're going to naturally restrict yourself on your cheats to prevent any backsliding, at least until you've stayed lean for a considerable period of time and find yourself nearly insane with hunger by Friday night.

The night is a very dark time for me.

Timing:
I usually choose to Rampage at night. From a insulin standpoint this is probably not ideal, but from a lifestyle standpoint, I don't care. There's not enough of a difference in hormone levels between morning and night to justify worrying about my insulin levels, and I find that it's awesome to go to bed full to bursting and have the night to digest and bomb out my place in peace, rather than force myself to eat a meal when it's inconvenient. Some nutritionists believe that pre-workout is the best time for a scheduled cheat window. Anytime I've tried to schedule a cheat meal early in a day and train later, however, I find that my lift's a disaster, and I spend the majority of the time acting like I've got some horrible stomach flu. The kind of flu wherein you know you're going to paint the bathroom one color or another because everything wants out all at once. I chose wrong once, and my mom had to clean the bathroom after, as I passed out with my head hanging over the toilet, pants around my ankles, shit covering every square inch of the bathroom. This has made Mother's Day expensive since I was 6. I don't wish to repeat that event, so I don't cheat pre-workout.

There is no reason for this picture other than its existence, which is reason enough.

Two supplements that will increase the effectiveness of your cheat meal are: ECA stack- It increases your thermogenesis anyway, but "ephedrine alone can increase the thermic effect of a meal by 30%"(Berardi). As such, make sure you whack that back prior to the initiation of your feeding frenzy to ensure that you're getting the optimal metabolic response to your overfeeding. Digestive enzymes- Before, during, and after. Trust me, they'll help. If you've been eating clean, your body's going to have something to say about what you're eating, and it's going to let everyone in the room know what it thinks about it. This should prevent any non-alcohol-related pants-shitting, and keep you

from smelling like you've shit them. Lastly, it'll increase the absorption of the nutrients you'd so rudely and crudely stuffed down your ravenous gullet, increasing the positive effects of that meal and hopefully negating any of the negative ones.

One last word on this, for you fatties- don't include these feeding frenzies if you're not already lean. If you're a fatass, you don't deserve them from a mental standpoint and cannot really utilize them from a metabolic one. As such, you'd be wise to steer clear until you can see some abs. For guys, this means under 15%, tops. For girls, that means... whatever the female equivalent of 15% is. We'll call it 25-27%. If you can see abs, have at it- otherwise, wait until you can. Additionally, if you find that cheat meals are either not helping, or they're actually hurting, monkey with the timing, duration, and what you're actually eating. Should you find yourself in the aforementioned fatass category, limit yourself a bit in your Rampage- you've been on a years-long Rampage and it's high time you exercised some self control. Make sure you get your carbs, but keep the fats below 25% of your total calories while doing so. Kill a couple of bags of Baked Lays and hit up Fuddruckers for a couple of Buffalo Burgers, maybe. Remember- eye on the fucking prize. The rest of you... get ready. Tomorrow we Rampage.

Apex Predator Diet If You're Lean As Shit

If you're following the Apex Predator Diet, it's highly likely that you didn't start out ridiculously lean. As such, it'll have take you some time to get to this point- this diet's not a quick-fix or crash diet, but rather a way to lean out while getting bigger and stronger all at the same time. By the time you hit 8% bodyfat, your metabolism should be wearing a pvc outfit and holding a cat o' nine tails tipped with metal rings, because it's dominant as hell and has made your bodyfat into its snivelling sissy bitch. You should now be at or under 8% bodyfat, so your abs are standing out in stark relief, your body looks like a Rand McNalley

map due to your incredible vascularity, and you should be feeling like you can eat lightning and shit thunder at this point. You are, officially, awesome, provided you're not bereft of muscle mass.

I'm not satisfied until every vein is forced up against my skin. Look how vascular I am Brian. If there's one thing women love it's a vascular man. I've got veins, they carry blood all over my bahday. That's how John Mayer would say it. Bahday. Assuming you had to work to get here, you'll know exactly how your body responds to both diet and exercise, which affords you a tremendous amount of leeway with your diet. Before you head for the allyou-can-eat pizza buffet, however, bear this in mind- you'll never be so awesome that you can out-train a shitty diet. As such, sticking to the Apex Predator Diet is a good idea, though you can have the occasional dalliance. As always, I encourage you to explore your inner Nikola Tesla and get as mad scientist as you can with both diet and training, but just remember that until you stay lean for a considerable period of time, your body is going to attempt to return to whatever your previous fat setpoint is. Thus, if you spent the last 10 years eating butter sandwiches and appeared to be one box of Milk Duds away from

purchasing a rascal to get you hither and thither, take the following with a grain of salt. Additionally, if you like Milk Duds, you have no working taste buds, so dieting shouldn't be all that difficult for you anyway.

Got the coke and the smile covered. Candied gastronomic atrocities aside, the Apex Predator Diet will become for most of you a delicate balancing act, wherein you're going to try to maximize your caloric intake while remaining super lean. Though it's not as simple as most would like, nothing fucking is, so have a coke and smile and shut the fuck up about it. You'll find that you'll naturally cycle your calories, as your ghrelin and leptin production will be optimized at this point, and your body is going to loudly let you know what it needs when it needs it. Your stomach will growl its fucking ass off all day if you try a PSMF, and you will be miserable in the

gym, so you'll likely drop those days. They'll be replaced by the regular Apex Predator days from earlier phases of the diet, wherein you drink shakes until your final evening meal. When your metabolism resembles nothing more than Slayer's War Zone in speed, ferocity and overall sentment, it's tough to live on protein shakes and nothing more. As such, your weekly diet will start to look much more like this: Monday - Thursday, Saturday and Sunday 5-6 protein shakes evenly spaced throughout the day consisting of 40-60 grams of protein and less than 10 grams of carbs. 1 medium sized meal midday (I shoot for 600-800 calories in the form of wings, generally, although I'll substitute other meats as well. 1 large evening meal of 2000-4000 calories in the form of (preferably bone-in) meat. Let your hunger levels dictate the size.

Friday Rampage Day- Go here for details. Alternate Saturday At times, you're going to find both your enthusiasm and your energy waning for continued ketogenesis. On those weeks, push hard to make it to Fridaywith the knowledge taht you're going to carry your carbup over onto Saturday. As to when you'll want to do this, it's entirely up to you- I would use a combination of the mirror and your general level of enthusiasm for the gym as a guage. If you find yourself incredibly burned out, a second carbup might be the boost you need. Make Saturday more of a medium carb, low to moderate fat, high protein day than a Rampage. It's important to remember that these carbohydrate refeeds are not supercompensations. Supercompensations should only be used sparingly, as frequent use reduces their efficacy.(Zatsiorsky 13) Additionally, I would not make a habit of utilizing the moderate carb Saturdays on a frequent basis, as there's only a small amount of glycogen resynthesis that occurs in the second 24 hours of carb loading, and there's the potential to regain some of the fat you lost during the week. As such, you should keep carbohydrate levels at or below 2 grams per pound of bodyweight on Saturdays.(McDonald 132-3)

It's Time To Take A Vacation

Another massive and awesome benefit of breaking your ass to get this lean is the fact that short dietary vacations don't do much harm, and in some cases will break you out of a plateau. According to Torbjorn Akerfeldt, our "genes have not evolved much during the last 100,000 years; thus, they are still developed for our hunter/gatherer and, more recently, pastoral ancestors, who, whenever they succeeded in killing an animal, lived on meat for a week or two. At other times, when they had bad luck hunting and a crop failed, they lived on a low-calorie diet. This selective pressure gave man adipose tissue with almost unlimited storage capacity and a very adaptive metabolism to cope with periods of different diets."(Phillips) Basically, once you'e lean, if you diet hard and undereat a bit, you'll get a consistent carryover of the rebound you get from your Rampage Day into multiple days. I will generally not take this past 5 days or so, but one study showed that a three week period of overeating resulted in mass gain that was nearly evenly split between fat and muscle, and an increase in nitrogen retention that persisted even after the diet returned to normal.(Forbes, Oddoye) Thus, protein retention after the overfeeding was increased, and the body was more anabolic.

Eat up, motherfucker. Personally, I don't plan these. They just sort of happen, and are generally the result of a long-weekend vacation or something similar. You could try planning them if you wanted, and if you chose to do so, I would suggest they be limited to 4 or 5 days and occur on non-consecutive months. Additionally, I'd suggest you undereat a bit in the week prior to the overfeed to accelerate fatloss. Provided you jump right back into the Apex Predator diet, keep your training up, don't abuse the vacation and aren't completely ridiculous about it, you can get away with quite a few dietary shenanigans. Up next, the Apex Predator Diet for Whiny Bitches and the innumerable rugby players who email me about this diet.

Ask The Asshole #12 - All Apex Predator Diet, All The Time
Quick note to begin: I've come to the realization while googling for questions about the diet that there are at least two other diets by this name. One I've already mentioned, though he didn't quite title it as such, and was the brainchild of J. Stanton of gnolls.org. If you've not checked out his site, do so. The other was a thread post on elitefitness.com in 2001 by a guy named Paul. His idea was really more intermittent fasting than mine, but we focused on a couple of similar points about meal timing. I'd imagine my ridiculously overcited blog might have been a tipoff that I'm pretty scrupulous when it comes to intellectual property and giving credit where it's due, but I wanted to make it clear I'd not interested in coat-tail riding or theft. As such, I'm going to change the title of this diet to one of two things, and though you assholes might like to chime in: The Predatory Diet, or the Predator's Diet. Let me know in the comments

No matter what I end up calling it, it will unfortunately never be as awesome as this scene. 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.

Isidro of the Tohono O'Odham nation 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.

One day, pretty white girls will figure out the fact that they should stay the fuck out of Aruba. NEAT, or nonexercise activity thermogenesis, is regulated by the shit you do every day when not in the gym, like fidgeting, random physical activities, and shit like standing up while you play XBox. You might find that the latter is ridiculous, but science has shown rather definitively that it's more likely your random activity that contributes to bodyfat, rather than diet by studying office workers that and comparing rates of obesity in offices that employed labor-saving devices rather than those that didn't.(Lanningham-Foster) In the aforementioned study, "changes in NEAT accounted for the 10-fold differences in fat storage that occurred and directly predicted resistance to fat gain with overfeeding."(McDonald) Additionally, "NEAT increases with overfeeding and decreases with underfeeding."(Levine 2002) That's right- it increases with overfeeding. This is likely why you're so fucking overheated during your cheat meals- I personally know that I sweat like fucking slave during my cheats, and the more aggressively I cheat, the more pronounced the physiological response. As such, I dress for warm weather no matter what temperature it is, and utilize the thermogenics to drive my metabolism on like I'm a a a manager in a DeBeers diamond mine. Thus, the Rampage is a ridiculously important part of this diet, due to the fact that fat gain is inversely proportional to NEAT levels.(Levine 1999)

During my cheats, my name is Toby.

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)

The Harder Than You Crew. 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 supercompensation 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.

Someone's been eating their fiber. 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.

Ok, so Bruce White's a wheat farmer and thus hardly paleo, but this pic rules. 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 togetherfor 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.

Fat's not always a cause for shame. (If you're not seeing the movement, click the pic.) 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 wellburly 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.

BMI of 41.55. Morbidly obese, according to the geniuses behind the BMI. 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 (350x4 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 its 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 dont 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)

You know, Vicki mentioned she smelled like ammonia during Friday's workout, and come Monday, BAM!Full blown AIDS. She should also get that eye looked at. 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.

This PR happened after about 7 months of experimenting with this diet. 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.

You come from fine stock, Serpico. 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 fistpumping 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.

As you'll see- the

Apex Predator Diet For Athletes and Italians (APD + Carbs)

When I first posted about my concept for the Apex Predator Diet, I received a spate of emails asking me about pre-, peri-, and post-workout carbohydrates. As I've stated more than once before, I think that the current infatuation with those three facets of one's nutrition are perhaps the most absurdly overblown distraction from critical points of training and nutrition one could have. It's like a leper colony appealing to the UN for condoms and zit cream. People obsessed with peri-workout nutrition come in exactly one formpeople who have no fucking clue what a real workout is, clad in whatever the trendy workout gear of the moment is, making a fucking production of making a shake midworkout and getting in my fucking way when I'm trying to get water in between sets. That's right- if you're focused with laser-like intensity on your mid-workout nutrition, you're a fucking bitch. When you're lifting, you should be concerned with weights, not Biotest supplements and waxy maize.

Jon Cole, beast of all beasts. First man to squat 900, and an unreal 1200 total (430 press, 340 snatch, and a 430 push jerk) at the same weight in weightlifting, a sport for which he really didn't train and rarely competed. This man was wildly unconcerned with his peri-workout nutrition.

As for the pre- and post-workout nutrition guys, they're certainly a lesser form of evil, probably duped into thinking that shit is of critical importance through the constant barrage of marketing that pervades every corner of life. For every person who states that pre- and post-workout nutrition is of critical importance if you want to gain mass and strength, I've got 100 people to name who did it without either, and a cock to slap across your lips. That's not to say, however, that there's no benefit to be gained from either, but rather that their combined importance is still far less than that of the workout itself. Given the fact that

you're reading this, it's highly likely that you know this, so I'll be happy to impart a bit of knowledge on the subject of pre- and post- workout carbohydrate meals and their utility in the Apex Predator Diet.

That stated, I'll address the athletes who've expressed their concerns about consuming a ketogenic diet while participating in a sport that involved more than simply grunting and picking up heavy shit. I personally have followed a ketogenic diet while wrestling and found I had no problem with energy provided that I kept my calories relatively high. At that time, I was wrestling at 134 pounds and my diet consisted, as I recall, of pork sausage patties for breakfast and about a dozen hamburger patties throughout the rest of the day, in addition to the very occasional protein shake. At the time, I hadn't really jumped onto the supplementation bandwagon, so I really didn't consume much in the way of supplements outside of my favorite ephedrine-filled supplements ever- Metaform Heat and Ultimate Orange. For those of you too young to know about either of these supplements, they had so much caffeine and ephedrine in them that meth addicts were scared to take them. Both of them tasted like fruit flavored cat shit, but they got you fucking going. As such, I'll reassert my support for the consumption of stimulants, especially for those of you who need extra energy for running around and the like. Once more, they're not necessary, but they're helpful, just as the inclusion of carbohydrates might be if you're not as genetically well-suited to ketogenic dieting as I am.

Oh, how I long for thee, Metaform Heat.

Tinkering with the Apex Predator Diet

I've stated time and time again that it's imperative that you experiment with anything and everything you try in order to maximize your personal benefit. Doing so would generally necessitate a fair amount of research, but give my penchant for research, I've tried to do a fair amount of the legwork for you. One concern some people have had with the Apex Predator Diet is that they experience a tremendous amount of lethargy a couple of days into the low carbohydrate phase of the APD. Given the amazing array of biochemical makeups one could have, this should come as no surprise- I've never suggested that anything I do is "one size fits all." In my still unfinished Metabolic Typing series, I outlined various metabolic typing methodologies, but the current trend is to divide people into Protein, Carb, or Mixed types. It's possible to transition from one to the other, according to some authors, so making that attempt might be worthwhile.

As I mentioned in the ATA about the diet, Lyle McDonald and Dan Duchaine both suggested the use of an Isocaloric diet if one is shifting from a traditional high carb, low fat diet into a ketogenic diet. An interesting study by Stephen Phinney examined the initial investigations into ketogenic diets for endurance energy, and his study uncovered exactly what Duchaine and McDonald alluded to- the body often requires at least a two week acclimation period to wean athletes off their carbohydrate diet.(Phinney) Thus, your "carb crash" might be mitigated by the gradual transition. Something like the Zone Diet might help people who would be considered Carb-Types according to a Metabolic Typing test transition to a Protein Type. A month of Zone Dieting, however, might not be enough to complete the transition, and you might experience the crash Phinney noted. The Inuit, according to Phinney, dealt with energy lags by greatly increasing their consumption of fat and decreasing their protein intake accordingly, while other authors have suggested taht fat could be decreased and carbs could be increased accordingly. The key, then, is to determine what works best for you. That is, of course, the entire purpose of the Apex Predator Diet- to allow one to shed fat while gaining muscle and strength. Luckily for me, I'm well-suited to ketogenic dieting. For those of you who aren't, or feel as though you need more quick energy to facilitate sporting competition or just to fuel your workouts, there is hope for you yet.

Efferding rocks a fairly unique diet of 50% fat, 23% carbs, and 27% protein, for instance. It's all about finding your person sweet spot, which he's clearly done.

A Historical Aside
Before you delve into the following bits about the utilization of carbohydrates to spur greater athletic performance, I'll go ahead and make a quick aside- a quick study of the entirety of human history will lead to one inevitable conclusion. Humans do not require carbohydrates to perform at a high level. The history

of agriculture is essentially the history of human collectives in areas of high population densitiescarbohydrates provide a cheap, easy way to feed a large population in a small area. Put another way, carbohydrates are the fare of plebians and slaves, as crops were grown to feed the menial workers cheaply and to keep them alive while they built absurd buildings like ziggurats and pyramids. As I've shown before, humans were larger and more muscular in the paleolithic era than the neolithic, and those peoples credited with being the strongest and most muscular in recorded history were all nearly entirely carnivorous. The peoples considered to be the scourges of Europe were always nomads, championing animal husbandry and looking down upon agrarian societies as prey- the Huns, Goths, Mongols, Scythians and Sarmatians all ate similar diets that consisted of little more than meat and milk. Of the Goths, Tacitus noted that "Feasts and entertainments, which, though inelegant, are plentifully furnished, are their only pay. The means of this bounty come from war and rapine. Nor are they as easily persuaded to plough the earth and to wait for the year's produce as to challenge an enemy and earn the honour of wounds. Nay, they actually think it tame and stupid to acquire by the sweat of toil what they might win by their blood."(Tacitus) Though the latter two tribes eventually adopted agriculture, their agricultural products were the fare of those who remained behind with the villages, rather than those who rode into battle. The Huns and the Mongols took this even further, eating little more than horse and game meat, and drank mare's milk and horse blood to supplement their nutrition. This diet hardly hamstrung them- it enabled them to conquer vast territories while constantly outnumbered, and fueled legends of their incredible ferocity.(Turnbull 30)

looming on horseback 8 ft above the ground, screaming maniacally, capable of unleashing repetitive and deadly fights of triple-edged arrows, they must have seemed the very embodiment of horror to those who had to stand and fight them. Nor were such fears unwarranted, for Scythian warriors regularly beheaded their enemies and sometimes even skinned them whole. If an enemy were known personally, his skull might receive a special treatment: sawn through below the eyes, it would be cleaned and painstakingly fashioned into richly appointed drinking vessel. Not surprisingly, Scythian ceremonies especially royal funerals, were drenched in blood: sometimes these drinking vessels were filled with enemy blood, mixed wine and after arrowheads were dipped into it, the concoction was imbibed by the Scythian chieftain."(Mann 4) Contrast these diets of these lean, mean killing machines with that of the gladiators. Gladiators in the Roman era were generally captives obtained from battles with neighboring tribes, all of whom generally subsisted on meat. As such, they were generally described in accounts by ancient authors as huge framed, broad shouldered, muscular, and wild eyed,(Tacitus, Jordanes, Turnbull) and were chosen to be warriors for their stature and ferocity. Once placed into the arena, however, their diet was changed to a nearly vegetarian diet, and not because the gladiators needed the extra energy. "The vegetarian diet had nothing to do with poverty or animal rights. Gladiators, it seems, were fat. Consuming a lot of simple carbohydrates, such as barley, and legumes, like beans, was designed for survival in the arena. Packing in the carbs also packed on the pounds. 'Gladiators needed subcutaneous fat," Grossschmidt explains. "A fat cushion protects you from cut wounds and shields nerves and blood vessels in a fight.' Not only would a lean gladiator have been dead meat, he would have made for a bad show. Surface wounds "look more spectacular," says Grossschmidt. 'If I get wounded but just in the fatty layer, I can fight on," he adds. "It doesn't hurt much, and it looks great for the spectators.'"(Curry)

So, high carbohydrate diets are awesome for getting fat, and but are they necessary for maintaining cardiovascular endurance? Fucking nope. The aforementioned study by Phinney cited two still-unrefuted

studies in which endurance athletes were switched to a ketogenic diet. In both studies, their performance improved considerably after their acclimatization period. Neither group consumed supplementary calories, but rather increased their fat intake to accommodate their increased energy needs. Thus, you might consider altering your macronutrient profile simply by adjusting your fat intake prior to attempting the inclusion of carbs. Were I to do so, I'd consider adding heavy cream to my protein shakes and possibly rubbing my ribs with olive oil.

Oil makes delicious things deliciouser.

Upping Your Carbs Pre- and Post Workout

If you're not interested n increasing your fat intake or have already tried it and found it didn't do what you'd wanted, there's always upping your carbs. In the Anabolic Diet, Mauro Di Pasquale mentions that certain people will have a tremendous amount of difficulty maintaining progress on a ketogenic diet consisting of 30 grams of carbohydrate a day. As such, he recommends that one complete at least the initial 10-14 day keto run and then begin experimenting with increases in their carbohydrate levels until an optimal balance between performance and body recomposition is struck. Following this line of thought, he tailored a diet for Gozilla's second cousin on the black side of the family, Bob Sapp, so that it lowered the fats somewhat and increased the carbohydrates.(Di Pasquale, Bob Sapp 11) He did mention, however, in the Anabolic Solution for Powerlifters, that people who are excellent fat oxidizers (like myself) can easily train on 20 grams of carbohydrates a day, so experimentation is absolutely critical- don't just decide what you need at the outset.(ADFP 21) Ol' Mauro claims that the timing of one's carbohydrates is fairly insignificant, but does note that eating pre-workout carbohydrates will decrease IGF-1 and GH.(ASBB 70) Thus, he recommends eating 50-100 grams of carbohydrates postworkout, for a total carbohydrate intake

of .5-1gram of carbohydrates per pound of bodyweight a day. This, of course, would necessitate a concordant drop in fat intake.

On the flip side of the coin, Lyle McDonald's Targeted Ketogenic Diet is actually based on the utilization of mostly pre-workout carbohydrates, which he feels are necessary to fuel high intensity exercise. He recommends 25-50 grams of carbohydrate pre-workout, and claims that the type of carbohydrate and the glycemic index thereof is insignificant. This would, of course, still preclude the use of fructose, as the goal is to replenish muscular glycogen stores rather than the glycogen stores of the liver. According o McDonald, pre-workout carbohydrates will likely not affect either your insulin levels nor your ketosis (though they might throw you out of ketosis for the duration of your workout), and are thus fair game for just about everyone. Conversely, post workout carbohydrates may negatively affect ketosis, so he encourages experimentation with those.(Ketogenic Diet 125)

As for the type of carbohydrates, I have a suggestion from novelist and paleo internet guru J. Stanton, who told me that he's been using a modified version of the APD for a while with great success. If you're unfamiliar with his stuff, Stanton does a bunch of wacky shit outdoors that I'm inclined to call cardio, but he insists it's just "doing epic shit outdoors", like climbing mountains while fasted and all sorts of other shit that doesn't involve picking things up and putting them down. He did, however, recently start lifting and noted the APD is the shit, with a couple of his own variations: "Here's an advanced-level Predator Diet variant: you may get more mileage out of your protein shake if you eat several grams of dextrose with it. Reasoning: the protein causes some insulin release, which (if the protein is eaten solo) requires some glucose to be released from the liver in order to maintain blood sugar levels. Then your liver will signal "NEED MORE GLUCOSE" and there will be a cortisol spike, whereupon your liver will suck up some of the protein and convert it via gluconeogenesis. Also cortisol is

catabolic. So the additional dextrose basically gives the inevitable insulin something to chew on, and as a bonus, causes a bit of extra insulin release which will help drive protein into muscles. (Note that "weight gainer" shakes have an assload of sugar because it's cheaper than protein. Too much, no good. I'm working on about a 4:1 protein/glucose ratio, but that's a guess and open to refinement. And it includes whatever sugar's already in your protein powder.) You can buy a big bag of dextrose at the brewery supply store...but the easier way is to just eat a few Bottle Caps or Sweet Tarts candies. Believe it or not, they're basically 100% dextrose: no sucrose or HFCS. So my routine during protein loading days is: glass of unflavored whey isolate + 4-5 Bottle Caps, every few hours. Note: add Runts and Spree to the list of "glucose with impurities": like Bottle Caps and Sweet Tarts, they're just dextrose, maltodextrin, and flavoring."(Stanton)

The Gist
As you can see, there's a bit of debate on the optimal timing of one's carbs if you're adding them to the Apex Predator Diet, but if you feel you need them, there are methods to try. Experimentation is the name of the game, so get out your chemistry set and make something fucking awesome happen. Just remember, however- the baddest motheruckers ever to walk the Earth didn't need bread to help them stomp the piss out of a bunch of bagel-chomping motherfuckers, and it's likely you don't either. Sources: Bodybuilding.com. Stan Efferding 6500 calories diet. http://forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?t=138848513&page=1 Curry, Andrew. The gladiator diet. Archaeology. http://www.archaeology.org/0811/abstracts/gladiator.html Di Pasquale, Mauro. Anabolic Diet. Di Pasquale, Mauro. Anabolic Solution for Bodybuilders. Mauro Di Pasquale: 2002. Di Pasquale, Mauro. Anabolic Solution for Powerlifters. Mauro Di Pasquale: 2002. Di Pasquale, Mauro. Bob Sapp (The Beast) Training and Nutrition Secrets. Published as pdf. Jordanes. An account of the person of Attila.

Mann, Nirmil. The Life and Times of Pakher Singh Gill. Pittsburgh: Dorrance Publishing, 2005. McDonald, Lyle. Ketogenic Diet. 1998 Phinney, Stephen D. Ketogenic diets and physical performance. Nut Metab 2004, 1:2. http://www.nutritionandmetabolism.com/content/1/1/2 Tacitus. Germania. Turnbull, Stephen and Wayne Reynolds. Mongol Warrior 1200-1350. Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 2003.

Time To Stir The Pot- A Refutation Of The Science Behind Carb Backloading

For fans of the podcast (which is being resurrected soon and will likely involve video), you know Paul and I spoke with Kiefer, the progenitor of Carb Backloading. As I stated on the podcast, I'm generally of the opinion that CBL is perfect for getting fat and contracting Type II diabetes, and I'm skeptical of its realworld applicability. The majority of the people I know who tried it either felt like Gary Busey after a weeklong Jack and coke (Columbian marching powder, not the Beetus-bringer) binge the majority of the time but leaned out a bit or felt like Busey and got fat. No one I've seen, however, thrived off the diet. As such, my skepticism seems to have been justified. When I learned of a Duke grad in strength training world who shared my psychotic, balls to the wall training approach and had the credentials to back his opinion of CBL, I felt compelled to drop an interview bomb in his lap to hash this whole thing out. Thus, without further adieu, the interview:

Alex, looking perfectly ridiculous on a bicycle. Alrighty, it's interview time. In the interest of dogmatic adherence to the typical structure of an interview, why don't you brag about yourself a bit. My names Alex Viada, and I run a company called Complete Human Performance. Were a small coaching company with one primary focus- building world class strength AND top level endurance in ALL our athletes. Weve never felt those two goals are mutually exclusive, just damn difficult to put together. There are a lot of guys and girls out there who love throwing around huge piles of iron, but either for professional reasons (military, police, fire, etc.) or personal reasons (enjoy mountain biking, trail running, marathons, etc.) need excellent endurance. Most of the crap you read out there either tells you that you cant do both, or throws out this minimalist garbage that says you can train for Ultramarathons and Ironmans by doing 30 minute sprints and metcons. The former is flat out wrong, the latter, well, lets just say one of the best known founders of one of those systems has successfully DNFed every race hes done since switching to a minimalist program. For us, everything we do is proven- based on solid, no BS training routines that are backed by actual sports science and plenty of results. Basically, we take on people who want to do it all, but have been told they cant and help them shut the naysayers up. Personally speaking, well, Im a lousy athlete [ed.- yes, all 4:20 milers are terrible athletes], genetically speaking (sorry dad). Never been very strong or fast, was quite honestly just a smart kid growing up. Played a lot of sports in high school and succeeded mostly on determination, and I never had much of

that. When I tried to gain weight, I ended up fat. When I tried to cut, I ended up skinny fat. Currently, at 33 years old and 220 pounds, my best raw squat is 615 (695 single ply currently), best bench is 445 raw (485 shirted currently), and deadlift 705 in gear or without (as of five weeks ago). I currently run a 4:23 mile, have done 4 marathons, 1 Ultramarathon, 1 Ironman triathlon, and 1 half Ironman in the last three years, regularly compete in mountain centuries (100 mile bike rides through the mountains), and drink entirely too much high gravity beer. On the education side, graduated from Duke University with a degree in biochemistry, am a USA Triathlon certified coach, and an NSCA-CSCS. Eleven years of coaching experience, but worked in the clinical trial world for 8 years as well, which gave me an excellent bullshit detector and made me a real skeptic.

Seems to me the average marathoner weighs about 130lbs and would struggle to bench their bodyweight. Careful with the jogging- I hear joggers have had a problem with spontaneous combustion up North. For some reason I thought you were a grad student- I guess because you still lift in Duke's gym, where the next strongest person is my 130 lb girlfriend. I was going after my Msc in physiology from NC State, but honestly the program was pretty mediocre. Either switching to biomechanics or transferring to UNC when I got the time to reapply. Work and life gets in the way, man. Either way, wasn't going to mention something in progress. Understandable, I suppose. Now, I've heard a rumor that you rock a supertotal that's even more ridiculous than combining real lifting with clog-wearing trick lifting. What's your version of a supertotal- what I heard about you doing passed the Carrot Top-on-angel-dust-fellating-a-rabid-badger level of insanity. My supertotals (and there are a few I use to judge progress) are always zero. In other words, take a measure of strength (weight) and pit it against a measure of speed and endurance (time), with the goal of them canceling each other out. My most frequently used supertotal- run a marathon in less than your bench press. Bench 400? Run a sub 4:00. Bench 350? Run a sub 3:30. For the ladies, its 2.5 times your bench versus your marathon. Most people, with proper training, should be able to do this. My personal goal this next year or two is run a 100 mile ultra in less than my PL total, but this will take some serious work for now Id like to be the only guy whos qualified for Kona (Ironman world championship) with a 700 pound deadlift.

That's fucking ridiculous. I would rather masturbate using Freddy Krueger's glove than run a marathon. I heard you recently did a meet, tore your quad, and still did the marathon anyway. Why the fuck would you do that? How'd it turn out? Ha. It went pretty damn badly. I sustained a pretty serious quad tear on my opening squat during a meet three weeks out from a 50 mile ultramarathon. Missed what was supposed to be my longest training run 8 days out from the race I was thrilled that I could final ly walk without limping and that the swelling had gone down enough for me to wear regular pants. 6 days out I successfully jogged a mile. The race itself was brutal- I couldnt run or walk downhill, (I had to sidestep slowly), and by the end of it there wa s so much swelling in my calves and ankles (from pooled blood and fluid) that I couldnt feel my right foot. Finished about 2.5 hours slower than Id planned, but got it done. As for why, well, look at it this way - You learn more about yourself and your tolerances pushing through and competing under crap conditions than when things are perfect. Most folks whove been at this long enough are always injured in some form or another, and if you let it hold you back, youll never leave the house. Besides, I work with disabled athletes as well- some of these people have less than half an intact limb and theyre out there running a hundred miles. I can suck it up for 50 with a bit of swelling. Finally, Im a cheap, stubborn son of a bitch, and having folks tell me that A) I should just stay home, and B) No, I couldnt get a refund on the entry fee, meant I had really no choice.

This picture makes more sense, and is less uncomfortable, than jogging. I don't give a shit if disabled people can hop on one foot and sing the national anthem for an entire marathon- I'm still not fucking running. Alas, down to the meat and potatoes- I hear you and Kiefer have heat. How'd this happen? Man, truthfully speaking the guy probably has no idea who I am- I dont have heat with him in particular, just with bullshit science and those who make a buck off it. All these diet and health gurus are interchangeable, whether they be dangerously hardcore or bulletproof executives- they learn just enough about a topic to sound authoritative, then put down half-baked theories that would get torn apart by a first year biochem major, back it with a whole bunch of references that they either havent read or dont really understand, then say shit like This works, and you cant disagree because I know science and Im over 200 pounds. My real beef with this is that nobody seems to question this stuff - they just fall into the pack and go wow, this works. Of course it works- eat next to nothing all day except some eggs and protein powder, pound coffee until youre tweaked to shit, then only stuff yourself with sugar after your evening workout? I know a whole bunch of sorority girls who went all through college like this. Controlling cravings through fasting then binge eating at night makes it hard to take in enough calories for most folks, so they lose weight. Miraculous. Look, I have nothing against the guy personally- I dont know him. Could be the nicest guy on earth, and hes certainly earnest about the field. What I dont like is bad bullshit s cience being repackaged and sold. Ive picked apart a lot of his stuff, but hey, its the internet, what are the odds hes seen any of it and felt the need to respond? Pretty low. Its not about debunking anyhow- most of what I write isnt an attack on people trying to come up with new ideas, its just stating the facts. People can draw their own conclusions from there. If that makes some popular diet or amazing new underground renegade magic bullet systemic manipulation whatever the crap sound like bullshit, then, hey, maybe it is bullshit.

This picture has nothing whatsoever to do with Carb Backloading. Goddamn, you're going strong to the hoop. So you're saying the idea of carb backloading is, in essence, bullshit? The concept might have some merit when it comes to helping people restrict calories, control cravings and take in an overall solid nutrient profile, but theres no magic to it. The concept of clinically significant modulated tissue response using your bodys natural hormones is bullshit. Which, yes, basically undercuts the entire premise. If the tagline was CBL- itll make you less hungry during the day and youll lose weight, Id say GREAT. But no, its pages and pages of hyperbole and in -text citations to 20 year old studies on diabetics.

Christ almighty, I'm sure half of my audience has already rage-quit this article and has some half-formed, incoherent, all-caps diatribe against you and your family forming on their fingertips. Half of Supertraining now wants you dead. As such, it might behoove you to tell us with what, specifically, you disagree? Oh man, Id be doing you (and myself) a disservice if I tried to condense this into anything shorter than a novella. Were talking basic, basic stuff, things like the clinical insignificance of morning growth hormone pulses (i.e., the pulses are far too low to really affect muscle gain or fat loss in any meaningful way), a seeming lack of comprehension regarding digestion times and insulin peaks (particularly digestion of large meals- CBL as designed will have most people waking up with carbohydrates still digesting in their small intestine), flaws in understanding receptor kinetics and response to hormones (i.e. the entire concept of Modulated Tissue Responseand Im not dignifying that with t he trademark symbol, assumes you can cause selective expression of certain receptors in muscle as opposed to fat via resistance training and insulin regulation, but fails to understand that this selective expression is upended the moment you ingest ANY glucose.. unless youre diabetic. Which is why most of that cited research on diabetics here is not really relevant.). This last part is the biggest problem, for me. Any entire system based on a shaky foundation is, to me, completely suspect and the foundation simply doesnt hold water. Sort of like chiropractors. Sure, you can seem to know what youre talking about and can be right about a lot of things, but your entire field is based on quackery bullshit so Im not trusting you over a more reputable source.

Mexican chiropractic medicine seems a tad extreme. You're the only other person of whom I know who knows that the founder of chiropractic/osteopathy was a med school dropout and out-and-out quack. Mention that in some circles and people get very stabby in a hurry. That motherfucker thought he could cure cancer by cracking the joints in peoples' skulls... nevermind the fact that they fuse when you're a child. That science shit is SCARY. Oh man. The founder claimed you could heal people with magnets. There are some good chiropractors out there who are really trying hard to become more scientific and restrict their practice to conditions that they might actually be able to treat, but if they really wanted to be legit, theyd go into orthopedics. I think about it a little like Scientologists- you might seem like a rational, reasonable person who might occasionally have some good insights on life, but underneath it all your beliefs are batshit crazy. The only things Id have a chiropractor treat outside of lower back pain are fibromyalgia and chronic Lyme disease [ed. aka Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever / Valley Fever for those of you outside of the NE United States. I've no clue what they call it overseas, but I don't even know if they have ticks overseas]. Because nonexistent illnesses respond well to useless treatments... (Im going to catch some heat for this one).

Ok, so now just about half of the women in the United States want you dead, too. You're making a lot of friends here. So, in your opinion, is there any fact behind Kiefer's work, or do you just consider Carb

Backloading to be a work of fiction? Theres fact behind it somewhere. Look, the guy did some homework. Problem is, he did what most first year bio grad students do before they figure out how to really examine research- he looked at a few mechanisms in isolation, then figured these would translate to the real world. Problem is, this ignores the reality of the human body. I spent enough time in pharma to know that out of every 10,000 cant fail perfect mechanisms discovered by some very very smart people (driven by money, so they got incentive), only 1 of them turns out to be applicable in the real world. Most of these ideas sound great in theory, but when the systems involved are examined in more detail and all the bodys various homeostatic safeguards kick in, the ideas fall apart. When you read this stuff (CBL), its really a lot of selective interpretation of data (Hell, his own references contract his statements and conclusions), hand-waving about MTR, and other Trust me, Im a scientist and Ive read 40,000 studies. Bullshit. A) Your PhD is in an entirely unrelated field, probably about as diametrically opposed to biochemistry as you can get. B) Really READING a study, understanding it, analyzing it, reading its references, examining the mechanisms in question, cross referencing its conclusions, and otherwise being able to draw YOUR OWN conclusions from it takes HOURS and HOURS- theres a reason that post docs have journal clubs to help them understand new research. You do the math here. If the 40,000 figure is true, then this most likely equates to about two or three minutes spent scanning each abstract and looking at pretty graphs.

AAAAANNNNNNND now physicists want you dead as well, which is not all that awesome because they've apparently been building death rays with which to kill Obama. Soon, the Japanese will send giant robots after you and you'll have to hide in the Nazi base on the dark side of the Moon. Before you depart this Earth in a fiery blast of physicist-fueled rage, could you expand a bit on the insulin peaks? I've been arguing this point with people since I first saw a powerlifting face those cookie sandwiches with the frosting in between the cookies postworkout. To me, that shit seems like a recipe for the beetus. Yeah, absolutely. I think selective citation of clinical studies have done people in this community a tremendous disservice. When people think insulin peaks, they think insulin spike, post workout anabolic windows, thirty minute periods of high levels that can be taken advantage of to shuttle nutrients into the

body, etc. The major problem- this is NOT how the body works the majority of the time. Insulin spikes, followed by a return to baseline, are the norm in studies that test insulin response to foods because these are conducted on FASTED SUBJECTS. These are people who have ZERO food in their guts who then take in small quantities of carbohydrates, which allows researchers to study the dynamics of glucose and insulin response. For MOST of us, our insulin levels look like a sine wave thats always above zerotheyre constantly rising and falling throughout the day in response to a semi-constant release of nutrients in the gut (insulin oscillation). And it is a semi-constant release- very few of us are EVER in a truly fasted state, since food digestion is measured in multiple hours, not minutes. Look at it this way- say I take in 500 grams of PURE sugar, as would be an ideal post workout carb meal as per CBL. What ACTUALLY happens? First of all, most of that will sit in the gut for hours- transporting sugar across the intestinal lining requires both ample amounts of water and ample amounts of sodium- too little of each and it just sits in the stomach (ever seen a distance runner puke up pure Gatorade even when totally dehydrated? This is why- that sugars just sitting in the stomach sloshing around for hours, holding water there to maintain osmotic balance). What then happens is a relatively slow absorption of sugar for the next 8-10 HOURS. Yes, you get a huge insulin spike that then REMAINS elevated all night. Fact is, post-training is one of the WORST times to take in huge amounts of sugar, since not only are you probably slightly dehydrated, but your gut is also operating on low power mode (since your muscles are receiving most of the blood), further delaying gut emptying time. Hence, you get a fat insulin spike that lasts for hours and hours. You want a recipe for insulin resistance? There you go.

I am not a fan of the post-workout carb-up either, but I imagine the hordes of people screaming for your blood are calling bullshit for lack of citations while stuffing their faces with Twinkies. While you're pissing everyone off, though, would you mind expanding on Modulated Tissue Response as well? Sure. So the general idea here is that you can, and I quote, give each tissue of the body a specific instruction, either through diet, activity or both. Generally speaking, this is a natural part of how the body works- each system operates under a set of rules and feedback mechanisms, and depending on the conditions it can operate in different ways. Now there are two primary mechanisms that CBL discusses: 1. The overnight increase in insulin sensitivity, and 2. non-insulin mediated glucose transport into muscle cells.

First, just to recap, insulin has MANY purposes in the human body, but the most significant one here is its ability to cause glucose uptake by the cell. Basically, when insulin encounters any nutrient storing cell (muscle, liver, fat, etc.), it binds to the insulin receptor, which then (simplify simplify) causes a glucose transporter receptor to come to the surface. Its essentially telling these cells to open their gates to glucose.

For keto dieters, gates for glucose might as well be the gates of hell. Theres a problem with number 1. The CBL book states Both fat and muscle cells react strongly to insulin in the morning and less so as the day goes on, i.e. insulin sensitivity is high in the morning. this is actually completely, 100% INcorrect. Even his own references state the exact opposite (as does every biochemistry textbook ever written). The body is insulin RESISTANT in the morning (the well documented dawn phenomenon), which means it is LESS capable of quickly storing excess glucose. So, n o, your fat cells wont soak up sugar like a fat kid with a gallon of melted ice cream and a straw as the book states quite the opposite., Now, the data supporting a few other claims based around this (Including all-day suppression of fat burning) is not really supported by any references- there is a SINGLE study done on ten volunteers where the researchers make this claim, but they themselves state its a theory, with more research needed. At least somebodys being responsible here. As for number 2, theres an even bigger problem with this. When youre exercising, your body is burning glycogen (even at low intensities, some is being used). At high intensities (as when weight training), your muscles are using glycogen as its primary fuel source. In response, your body releases small amounts from your liver as glucose and dumps it into the bloodstream, with the goal of getting this sugar to the working muscles. This is a small amount of sugar- not enough to cause an insulin response. Now, as an adaptation, your muscles themselves, when stimulated by high intensity activity, signal their OWN cells to open their gates to glucose WITHOUT needing insulin to tell them to- this is precisely to facilitate uptake

of this liver-sourced glucose by the muscles that need it most. The CBL argument is then, post exercise, you can take advantage of this selective response by flooding the system with sugar, and the muscles will take up a huge amount of it before insulin is released thus avoiding an insulin spike and mini mizing fat storage. Bzzt. False. The reason this is so studied for diabetics is because they do NOT release insulin naturally (or, in the case of type 2 diabetics, do not respond to it), so ANY non-insulin related expression of glucose receptors is beneficial- its one of the few ways the body can clear sugar from the system (which is toxic in high amounts). For NON-diabetics, this isnt a concern. And, in fact, within SECONDS after taking in simple sugars, whether post workout or otherwise, your body releases JUST AS MUCH insulin as any other time of day. Insulin expression is not governed by the amount of receptors open on muscle cells, it is released a) by high levels of glucose in the blood, and b) on its own in pulses throughout the day. The few seconds that a handful of muscles have their glucose transporters open before the floodgates open are in no way clinically significant youd be talking maybe a few extra grams shunted into muscles as opposed to fat cells. The reason is simple- theres only so much glycogen storage capacity in your muscle cells, and even prolonged high intensity weight training wont do much to drain these stores. All they really need is a few grams to fill them up again, and any extra glucose simply floats on by, right to the fat cells it was destined for all along. These are basic, BASIC fallacies. It makes the book hard to read.

She mad. Well then. Fatties are wheezing with rage and conspiring to kill you. Before they heave their sweaty bulks out of their chairs and begin their labored-breath struggle towards their front door and vans equipped with chair lifts, I figure we can cover your endurance stuff. You kind of sound like a powerlifting version of J. Stanton from Gnolls.org. He's a huge fan of doing shit like hiking a mountain fasted and then going directly into the gym to deadlift to max. Frankly, I think it's lunacy, but more power to you guys. After all of the nonsense about the SEAL who ran a bunch of marathons while looking muscular, your take is refreshing in that you actually lift serious weights. Since people are going to ask, how do you combine training for the two sports?

Funny you asked! I actually have a series up about it on my website (So you want to run and be strong parts 1 and 2) that outline the framework. I basically use a complex/parallel form of periodization for my lifting (alternating upper and lower max effort and dynamic effort/hypertrophy days), similar to Westside, but with more emphasis on straight weight and the competition lifts as opposed to frequent rotation. For the endurance training, its basic block periodization (a la Verkhoshansky). What really makes the system work, though, is that the programming is all integrated- the lifting and endurance pieces are not treated like separate components, every workout is programmed in with full consideration to the others. This is usually the downfall of most combination attempts- few coaches or trainees are accustomed to, say, taking the duration or intensity of last weeks trail run (with ten minutes of hill repeats) into full consideration when deciding on the intensity and rep range of the second accessory lift during the next lower body day. Lastly, I try to keep the systems as separate as possible- there is ZERO reason for me to incorporate barbell complexes or high intensity conditioning into my lifting workouts (as these do not benefit my endurance training as much as, say, running or biking), and there is zero reason for me to incorporate strength intervals into my running or cycling. (Pedaling in a high gear may increase leg strength for a typical cyclist, but Id rather squat 600 for a few reps).

Cycling appears to be working for Lokelani McMichael, however. Agreed on the squatting. Frankly, I'm still confused by your psychotic obsession with "endurance", but everyone has their faults. How off base did you think I was, then, in my "Run and You Will Only Die Tired" series? I thought it was pretty damn excellent- one of the best systematic breakdowns of the limitations of steady state LSD type training, any why the costs FAR outweigh the often limited benefits. I definitely agree with most of your points- I would NOT recommend long duration steady state cardiovascular work for most folks. It makes it hard to maintain muscle, harder to gain strength, and its not ideal for staying lean (youre taking in huge amounts of calories to fuel energy take in too few, and youll drop muscle. Take in too many, and youll just get fat. Long distance training doesnt make your body want to add on lean mass). Add on to the fact that I agree most of us arent born to run neither you nor I is built much like a Tarahumara.

There are still a few cases where I DO recommend low intensity steady state cardio, though, which tends to spark some disagreement. 1. First is, surprise, if low intensity steady state activity is the goal. Put simply, if youre looking to run a marathon, you have to run long distances. Doing nothing but high intensity training may improve peripheral vascularity, stroke capacity, etc. etc., but doing enough volume here would result in ANY athlete burning out. The long slow distance work is actually relatively easy to recover from, provided energy intake is high enough, and still results in a number of these same adaptations. Much like you cant go balls out with heavy max attempts and sets to failure every time you lift, you cant trash your body every time you hit the track. Other side of this is, if you dont run long distances, youll never know what its like to run long distances. Theres a reason why CrossFit Endurances founder didnt finish a single ultra for years after adopting his own routine- theres NO way 30-60 minutes of cardio can prepare you for what happens to your body after 15 hours on the trail. You need to learn what you can eat, you need to learn pacing, you need to learn how to run after youre bonked, you need to learn stride efficiency, etc. 2. The second is if youre a top level powerlifter or strength athlete already pushing the ragged edge of your training envelope. If your routine is designed to give you JUST ENOUGH time to recover from your workouts, you cant afford to throw in additional high intensity work without experiencing some diminishing returns. If youre tearing your hamstrings to pieces three times a wee k in the weight room, and every time you get back in there youre JUST recovered enough to push a little more weight, throwing in sprints or extra prowler pushes will do nothing but hinder that recovery (and if you find you CAN handle additional work, then squat more, you lazy bitch). Far better for this type of guy to do a nice steady walk or slow jog for thirty minutes to get the heart rate up and improve cardiovascular endurance somewhat. The impact to maximum strength and recovery will be absolutely minimal.

Lifters who jog are still weird. I generally don't stroke my cock as hard as you just stroked my ego. In any event, I figure we ought to wrap this bitch up by having you divulge what diet to you recommend to your clients, and why.

If it fits your macros. I tell them all to basically come up with a diet framework that accounts for about half their calories and gets in the basics of what they need- enough protein, enough good fats, and enough carbs. What they do beyond that, as long as they dont go batshit crazy high on the calories or starve themselves, is up to them. Calories, macronutrients, and training is 95% percent of this all. Diet timing and hormone manipulation is the other 5%... I make sure they worry about the bigger things first. The only time I really tell them to worry about exact macros and timing is either when theyre trying to make weight or during contest prep. Period, full stop. Thing is, no matter what you end up doing, theres some diet system out there that probably has, at some point, claimed its the absolute best way to do things. Between 8 small meals old school bodybuilding lore, intermittent fasting, CBL, paleo, Mediterranean diets, the Warrior Diet, etc. etc., youve pretty much got the bases covered no matter what you r eating habits are.

As I'm sure you know, my diet (the Apex Predator Diet) and Kiefer's Carbnite Diets are similar, and I think they're generally a far saner approach to fat loss. Agreed. What I read of your diet, it uses ACTUAL well-documented systemic processes to suppress appetite, minimize muscle loss, and still allow you a few days of normal eating to both maintain sanity and account for ANY micronutrients you could be eating. I also like the fact that you recommend cycling calories- between that and the higher protein (which also keeps people eating a bit more), you definitely managed to fix some of the biggest problems I have with CKDs mainly that people starve themselves and wind up looking and feeling like shit when all is said and done. I have to be honest, I havent read nearly as much on Carbnite- after reading CBL I sat under my kitchen table rocking back and forth alternately weeping and screaming at the cats for three days, I dont think I could handle that again. Neither could the cats. Goddamn, I am awesome. Well, guys, there you have it- a Duke biochemist powerlifter-endurance athlete's take on CBL. I'm sure you guys will have 11,000 follow up questions, so feel free to bring the heat in the comments. I'll shoot Kiefer an email to see if he feels like making this a debate, and if he does, I'll get you guys front row seats to the battle royale. In the meantime, check out Alex's website here and direct your hatemail to alex.viada@completehumanperformance.com. entire diet's