Evolution Of My Diet #3- The Birth Of The Apex Predator Diet

In the last installment, I explained that the basis of my dietary regime is the paleolithic diet, but that I’ve
added a considerable amount in the way of tweaks to it in order to optimize my performance in the
gym. By tweaks, I mean tweaks in the same way a Japanese tuner enthusiast “tweaks” a pickup truck
to make it appear as though it’s a dragon- I took a giant, steaming shit in it’s mouth, threw half of it
overboard, and started wildly looking about for anything close at hand to make it appear exactly as it
shouldn’t.

My problem, you see, with the paleo approach was that I was eating way too fucking much food. I’d
been able to get away with this in the past, but time fucks up just about everyone, and my desk-jockey
job and middle age conspired to fuck me in the ass. Thus, I began tinkering with my macronutrients to
see what, if any, interesting results I could derive. The only way I could do this, however, and remain
true to my Robb Wolff-esque ketoish pale diet was to either start eating a shitload of beef jerky, which
would have been as delicious as it was economically unfeasible, or start replacing more meals with
shakes. That’s exactly what I decided to do, influenced heavily by T-Nation’s original Velocity Diet.

There are some damn good reasons to visit T-Nation.

For those of you who are unaware, the Velocity Diet is a T-Nation product used to sell their Metabolic
Drive protein powder, a powder priced so insanely that one would think that it was created by a team of
Russian alchemists using naught but powdered diamonds and dessicated unicorn cock. As I, unlike
many T-Nation readers, was cognizant of the fact that Biotest’s products differ from others on the
market only in their method and ferocity of wallet-raping, I decided to go with products that weren’t
priced by Bernie Madoff’s evil uncle-in-law- Monster Milk and Muscle Infusion. I chose the former for
the fact that it tastes amazing, has an impressive blend of proteins that is heavy on the slow-released
ones, and because it’s got creatine included. The latter was chosen on a combination of price point
and protein blend, in addition to the fact that it was low carb. Essentially, I wanted to maximize my
protein intake while minimizing my caloric intake, in the spirit of the Velocity Diet. For those of you
who are unaware, the V-Diet 1.0 consists of 5 protein shakes a day supplemented with EFAs, fiber, and a
multivitamin. Once a week, you’re allowed one real food, but non-cheat meal. It’s hardly rocket
science, though they would have you believe otherwise. Additionally, they claim that it’s not a protein
sparing modified fast (though without a shred of logic to support that claim) due to the fact that you’d
not be in ketosis (though I think this is a recent addition, as their PWO product Surge didn’t exist when I
read that article years ago).
 Dave Palumbo- keto advocate and bodybuilder who strangely resembles the bad guy in Cobra.

As some background, the Protein Sparing Modified Fast is a concept that arose in the 1970s as a way to
get Precious-type fatties back to human weight in a hurry. They were characterized by being high in
protein (at least in comparison with typical diets), and low in both carbohydrates and fats. As such,
they were intended to preserve what little muscle that land beast had while stripping away the blubber
to let their human side show. You can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, however, and
some of those non-humans perished in their quest to lose weight due to the fact that the researchers
conducting the studies apparently knew very little about nutrition. The doctor in charge of the diet
had his collection of farting, wheezing, pre-Klumps drinking a concoction of his own invention called
Prolinn, which “was a liquid protein that provided fewer than 400 calories a day, consisted of ground-up
and crushed animal horns, hooves, hides, tendons, bones and other slaughterhouse byproducts that
were treated with artificial flavors, colours and enzymes to break them down.”(Diets) From this, we
learned that a lack of protein can cause cardiac heart loss and a lack of minerals can cause arrhythmias,
which led later experimenters to choose a more suitable protein source and supplement with vitamins
and minerals.(MacDonald) Thus, diets like the Dukan Diet were born, which promotes this as the
Attack phase, in addition to the first two iterations of the Velocity Diet and Lyle Macdonald’s Rapid Fat
Loss Handbook diet.

Apparently this broad is not getting much cock, as the Protein-Sparing bit doesn’t appear to have kicked
in.

According to Macdonald, the PSMF was the outgrowth of the use of starvation diets to aid in fatloss.
Though they did result in considerable fatloss, starvation diets had the unhappy side effect of rapid
muscle loss, which is of course not the goal of any strength athlete. As such, it’s necessary to abate
that side effect with regular infusions of protein, which is what PSMF diets aim to achieve- it spares
muscular bodyweight from conversion into glucose by providing the body with a source of protein from
which it may do so, while at the same time maintaining ketosis. For this reason, it would seem to go
nicely with the diet I’d already had in place, perhaps (as I envisioned it) in a caloric cycling scheme, as I
couldn’t imagine training the way I do on that sort of a diet. I did, for a period of a few days, attempt
the Velocity Diet. It fucking sucked. I was so distracted during my workouts from hunger that I cut
them short. No amount of ephedrine and caffeine would push me through a ninety minute workout of
singles and doubles in behind the neck push press without gravely endangering my life. As such, I
deemed the Velocity Diet unsuitable for my goals.

Four months of dieting ago.

But, you might be thinking, “what about losing all of your fat”? It’s simple- I was never a giant fatass.
Although I let my bodyfat creep up to uncomfortable (for me levels in the 12-15% range are about as fat
as I’d ever get without being in a coma) levels, I didn’t see any reason to sacrifice muscle for fatloss.
Though the title of the diet is “protein sparing”, that’s not to say that such a diet would preserve mass
on a 6-10 workout a week program, especially with the weights I handle. Additionally, I saw no reason
to lose the weight quickly if I could take it off over time and get stronger. As such, I needed to find a
way to keep my saturated fat intake high for optimal hormone levels while accelerating my metabolism
with dietary trickery. In essence, I would have to become the Loki of diet and exercise.

How to become a mythical god of shenanigans? I explained that I found parts of the Warrior Diet to be
intriguing, as it’s an intermittent fast made popular by the rather convincing Ori Hofmekler. Hofmekler
based his diet on that of the soldiers of the Roman Empire, who ate sparingly throughout the day and
feasted at night. That seemed reasonable to me, and eminently doable, though I was concerned about
catabolism during the day. This is where the Velocity Diet/PSMF came in- provided I kept my calories
low throughout the day and simply utilized shakes to offset any catabolism I might encounter from
two-a-day workouts, I might be able to combine the fat-burning effects of the undereating phase with
the anabolic effects of the overeating phase to achieve both goals simultaneously. As such, this is
similar to what Martin Berkhan espouses, however without the actual starvation and potential
catabolism. Berkhan himself admits there’s no clinical evidence to support the theory that catabolism
is arrested in IF with heavy weight training, and as I’ve no interest in conducting that research with my
hard-fought muscle and PRs, so I figure there’s no harm in hedging like a motherfucker and chugging
some protein shakes.

The godfather of IF.

Thus, we come back to paleolithic eating and to the meal itself. It was, almost to a day, the exact same
thing- beef ribs. The reasoning behind the ribs was initially a revolt by my taste buds against chicken
wings, of which I’ve grown sick after a couple of years of occasional reliance. I found that beef ribs had
a similar macronutrient ratio to the wings, tasted amazing, were high calorie, and had one more thing in
common with the meat I’d cast aside- beef ribs are meat on the bone. Though most people would
posit that this is a ridiculous reason to choose a food, I have always found meat on a bone to be far
more satisfying than other cuts. There’s something visceral and animalistic about tearing the flesh of
an animal from its bones, and although I possess no scholarly evidence to prove it, I’m convinced that
this animalistic act has a significant effect on one’s psyche and hormonal profile. In essence, if one
wishes to be the apex predator of our forebears, one must eat like that predator, and rip the flesh of
their victims from their bones with their teeth. It’s for this reason I started referring to my diet as the
Apex Predator Diet, discovering later that another author had a very similar idea himself.
Up next, I’ll wrap this motherfucker up with a bit more science, doubtlessly field eleventy million Martin
Berkhan questions, and we can move on with our lives.

Sources:

CBS News. Diets: A Primer. CBS NEWS In-Depth.

http://www.cbc.ca/news/background/food/diets.html

Hofmekler, Ori. The Warrior Diet.

McDonald, Lyle. The Ketogenic Diet.

McDonald, Lyle. The Rapid Fat Loss Handbook.

Berkhan, Martin. Intermittent Fasting During Weight Loss Preserves Muscle Mass?
http://www.leangains.com/2011/03/intermittent-fasting-for-weight-loss.html

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
all-you-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.

Sources:

Forbes GB, Brown MR, Welle SL, and Underwood LE. Hormonal response to overfeeding. Am J Clin
Nutr 1989 49: 4 608-611.

McDonald, Lyle. Ketogenic Diet.

Oddoye EA, Margen S. Nitrogen Balance Studies in Humans: Long-Term Effect of High Nitrogen Intake
on Nitrogen Accretion. J. Nutr. 1979 109: 3 363-377.

Phillips, Bill. “Torbjorn Akerfeldt interviewed by Bill Phillips – Part I”

http://myoblast.wordpress.com/2010/02/02/abcde-anabolic-burst-cycling-of-diet-and-exercise-torbjorn
-akerfeldt/

Zatsiorsky, Vladimir. Science and Practice of Strength Training.

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
10-14 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

Up next, dieting for the Not Too Fucking Fat But Not Too Fucking Lean and the Rampage explained fully
and completely.

Sources:

Christie, Catherine. Mood-Food Relationships.

http://www.faqs.org/nutrition/Met-Obe/Mood-Food-Relationships.html#b

Doweiko, Harold E. Concepts of Chemical Dependency.

Macdonald, Lyle. Ketogenic Diet.

Russell, Sharmen Apt. Hunger: An Unnatural History.

Sayegh R, Schiff I, Wurtman J, Spiers P, McDermott J, Wurtman R. The effect of a carbohydrate-rich

beverage on mood, appetite, and cognitive function in women with premenstrual syndrome. Obstet
Gynecol. 1995 Oct;86(4 Pt 1):520-8. http://web.mit.edu/dick/www/pdf/909.pdf

Stanley, Owsley. Diet and Exercise. http://thebear.org/essays1.html#anchor496162

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 it’s still 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 you’ve made it to single digits, you may choose to drop the day of protein sparing
modified fasts to ensure you don’t leave weight on the platform on training days and that you continue
to make forward progress with your physique. At some point, you’ll get lean enough that you’ll 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 you’re still cycling your calories, even if you’re 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 I’ll 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 room-
you’re nearly there. Unlike said fratboy, however, you’ll 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) Since this could lead to muscle loss, I’d avoid it. For
the forty three thousand rugby athletes who’ve emailed me about this diet (sweet fucking Christ a lot of
you like wearing striped shirts), you’ll 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)

Don’t 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. Don’t be one of those guys- Rampage
like your name is King Kong once a week. If you’re curious as to why, there’s 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 it’s 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. They’ll 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 you’re 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 won’t 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, you’ll 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.

Sources:

Duchaine, Dan. Underground Bodyopus.

Ito R, Hayen A. Opposing Roles of Nucleus Accumbens Core and Shell Dopamine in the Modulation of
Limbic Information Processing.J Neuroscience. 2011 31(16):6001-6007

McDonald, Lyle. Rapid Fat Loss.

McDonald, Lyle. Ketogenic Diet.

Apex Predator Diet, Part 4- Every Apex Predator Goes On An Occasional Rampage, So Long As Chris
Hansen Doesn’t 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, you’re 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 isn’t going
to be a fucking free-for-all day, as you’re hardly out of the water yet. Instead, the Rampage is a
combination of a structured refeed (like you’d do for a glycogen supercompensation) and a cheat meal.

If you’re still worried that you’ll grow your disgusting 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, you’ll be well on your way to getting
the striated buttocks of which you’ve 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 you’ll 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 I’m sticking with it.

You don’t 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 you’re 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 I’ve 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, I’d avoid fruit for
the most part. Additionally, overdoing the sucrose can lead to some being stored as bodyfat. If
you’re 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) That’s 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, you’ll Rampage as intelligently and aggressively as you should do
everything, like you’re a modern day Neanderthal with an 8 inch boner facing down a wooly mammoth
that’s 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 you’d 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.

I think it’s cool to drink DUTCH beer on St. Patty’s provided it’s served correctly.

Sources:

Arnold, Patrick. A Steroid for Flu Prevention. Muscular Development, 2/10/10, p. 276.

Berardi, John. “Q & A with John Berardi.” Iron Magazine.

http://www.ironmagazine.com/article466.html

Bowden VL and McMurray RG. Effects of training status on the metabolic responses to high
carbohydrate and high fat meals. Int J Sport Nutr Exerc Metab. 2000 Mar;10(1):16-27.

Faigin, Rob. Natural Hormonal Enhancement. Cedar Mountain: Extique, 2000.

Hallfrisch J. Metabolic effects of dietary fructose. FASEB. 1990; 4:2652-2660.

Matsumoto T, et al. Comparison of thermogenic sympathetic response to food intake between

obese and non-obese young women. Obes Res 2001 Feb;9(2):78-85

McDaniel SS, Rensing NR, et al. Epilepsis 2011;52:3(30), e7-11.

McDonald, Lyle. A Guide to Flexible Dieting. Taylorsville: McDonald, 2005.

McDonald, Lyle. Ketogenic Dieting.

McDonald, Lyle. Rapid Fat Loss.

Palumbo, David. “Q&A with Dave Palumbo.”

http://www.rxmuscle.com/articles/qadave/590-qaa-with-dave-palumbo-august-6-2009.html
 Poehlman ET, et al. Genotype dependency of the thermic effect of a meal and associated
hormonal changes following short-term overfeeding. Metabolism 1986 Jan;35(1):30-6.

Saitoh S, Matsuo T, Tagami K, Chang K, Tokuyama K, and Masashige Suzuki. Effects of

short-term dietary change from high fat to high carbohydrate diets on the storage and utilization of
glycogen and triacylglycerol in untrained rats. EUR J APP PHYS OCC PHYS; 74 (1-2):13-22

Sarkola T, Ericksson TJP. Testosterone increases in men after a low dose of alcohol. AL Clin
Exper Res; 27 (4): 682-5.

Westrate JA, Hautvast JG. The effects of short-term carbohydrate overfeeding and prior
exercise on resting metabolic rate and diet-induced thermogenesis. Metabolism. 1990.
Dec;39(12):1232-9.

Willey, Warren. Better Than Steroids. Trafford: Pocatello, 2007.

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 form- people 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
densities- carbohydrates 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.

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 super-compensation 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 together- for 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
well- burly 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 (350×4 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 it’s 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
don’t 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
fist-pumping 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.

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