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I started to lift weights in the fall of 1998. My body went through quite a few
changes since then. It's more muscular of course but also leaner and this is
what I am looking for: lean mass. To achieve that, I found a great diet and exercice program. It looks tough at first but isn't really too bad and gives great results if your devotion is there. The program is all about cycles and micro-cycles; it is called the Anabolic Burst Cycling program. But enough of words let's take a look at the diet. |
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[08/22/00] I've been on the
Body For Life
program for a month and a half.
It's pretty tough and even lifting is cardio-oriented but my strength
improved and I lost 4 pounds!
It kind of forces you to write down where you are at and it makes
it better to see improvements.
Also, I found an excellent site to buy Sports nutrition products online: fitRx.com. Prices are awesome and customer service is very good. Let me know what you think. They have tons of stuff. |
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HIGH CALORIE DIET
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During heavy weight lifting, you should strech hard especially during
the 2nd week when you are going to be at the top of your strength.
Notice that 865 calories are consumed within a 2-hour frame after the workout.
It will make a big difference if you consume a high number of calories right after
working out. I also try to alternate chicken and beef for lunch and dinner as well
as rice and pasta. |
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It also makes more sense to eat more fat before working out rather than after since you
want to use it as fuel, hence the cheeseburger. It will also help your strength during
weight lifting. Tip: After a very intense workout you should try comsuming up to 1000 calories within 2 hours.
LOW CALORIE DIET
As you can see this phase it tough. The idea here, to limit the pain(!), is to be snacking every now and then. The afternoon will appear very long though since you won't be eating anything solid between noon and 8pm! Tip: Your protein intake should be at least 1 gram per pound of bodyweight. By doing 40 mins of aerobics after an overnight fast on an empty stomach, you'll accelerate the fat burning process tremendously. If you feel light headed during this phase, eat something! This is not a contest about how little you can eat. If you felt like eating 4000 calories per day in the bulking was kind of hard, I guarantee you that after going through this cutting phase, 4000 calories will feel like a piece of cake.
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| This program variant suggests that you include micro-cycles within your cutting phase. During these micro-cycles you are going to want your body to release protein from its natural pool. For 3 days, you should try to lower your protein intake down to 60 grams per day (not much huh?) and then for the next 3 days bring it up to over 200 grams. This should allow you to lose fat while gaining muscle during the cutting phase, which is absolutely great! |
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One more thing before we take a look at the diet. If you are currently
consuming a high amount of protein per day you should try to gradually lower your intake.
If you are currently consuming 400 grams, you should cut it down to 200 grams for 3 days,
then go up to 350 grams for 3 days, then come down to 150 grams, up to 250 grams, and so on. Well, the good news is that now, since we are cycling our protein, the amount of calories during the cutting phase can increased by about 300 calories. Let's take a look at what could be a typical day of low calorie but high protein diet: LOW CALORIE / HIGH PROTEIN DIET
This is definitely not as bad as the previous low calorie diet. However, the carbs are much lower because the protein intake has been increased as well as the fat intake and because we still need to keep the total number calories low. This diet allows you to workout a little harder than what you would with the previous cutting phase diet. Tip: The source of your fat intake should be mostly from salmon, sardines, olive oil or some kind of nuts and not from saturated fat. Let's see what the low protein diet looks like: LOW CALORIE / LOW PROTEIN DIET
Tip: The quality of your protein intake should be increased since it is so low. Salmon, beef or albacore tuna will work. Conclusion What are you waiting for? Go try it :o) ! This is great stuff. You can find further information on musclemedia.com and go to the training section. If you have any suggestions, questions or comments, feel free to shoot me an mail. This program gave me good results, I had fun and the protein cycling part is very interesting. The micro-cycles allows you to get out of the regular diet phase and avoid getting bored. If you want to get big and ripped, this is the way to go. Here is the Excel spreadsheet diet.xls, which contains all diets. For nutrition facts questions, check out cyberdiet.com, they have a link towards a food database at the bottom. Final Tip: Sleep, sleep and sleep some more at least 8 hours per day. If you can't then take a nap in the afternoon. Sleeping is the best way to recover. Have fun doing this program and don't forget to give some feedback about your results. |