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by Lyle McDonald
Lyle McDonald is the author of the
Ketogenic Diet as well as the
Rapid Fat Loss
Handbook and the
Guide to
Flexible Dieting. He has been interested in all aspects of human
performance physiology since becoming involved in competitive sports as
a teenager. Pursuing a degree in Physiological Sciences from UCLA, he has
devoted nearly 20 years of his life to studying human physiology and the
science, art and practice of human performance, muscle gain, fat loss and
body recomposition.
Publication Date: October 15, 1998
Hello Lyle,
I recently ran across the Mesomorphosis
web pages and your articles and responses therein. I would like to
say that I am very impressed with your knowledge and feel that you
have probably provided me with more useful information in reading
just your articles on this site, than I have been able to find in
numerous other sites around the web combined. So I would like to ask
a few questions and see if you would be able to help me with them.
I did not work out for 1 1/2 years due
to extenuating circusmstances, now I am back in the gym and loving
it again. My first problem is this. Over that time, my bodyweight
went up to 235 lbs. at 6'2". I even got a body comp test that
brought me in at 27% (needless to say my jaw dropped at that).
Although I don't look it, I seem to be able to pack the fat into
hidden places so that it is not obvious. Well, in the last 6 months,
I have started on creatine (actually I started doing that EAS,
sucker buy my products, contest) and HMB and all the other products
promoted by good ole' Bill Phillips. Anyway, my weight went up to
242 after using the supplements, and I saw visible differences as to
my fat loss and muscle gain, but now I have reached some sort of
plateau that is getting to me. My last 2 body comp tests have come
out at 18% bodyfat weighing in at 229 and 231. I seem to have
trouble getting under the weight of 230 lbs. I have been using the
typical diet that EAS is promoting in all their winners from last
year (www.eas.com) but its not working anymore. Additionally, my
muscles now have basically stopped growing altogether, and worse,
they are
not nearly as hard as they have been in
the past. Am I just destroying myself somehow? I workout 3-4 days a
week on a split routing (chest/tris, back/bis, legs), and I eat a
diet basically consisting of grilled chicken,
brown rice, steamed vegetables, EAS
supplements, and ECA stacks. I also do 2-3 sessions of cardio (20-30
minutes) a week. BUT ITS NOT WORKING!!!
Like I said, I am completely frustrated,
I don't know where to go from here. I read all this information
about dieting and supplements and all, but there is so much
information, and then one discredits the other, and then back, I
don't really know where to look, and I am totally confused. I just
know that I have good potential, but am missing some key information
or something.
Thank you very much for taking the time
to read through this entire rant.
Garrett
Houston, Texas
One thing to note is that very low fat, mod carb, high protein
diets (ala the typical EAS diet) don't work for everyone. So it may
be time for you to try another dietary approach. For a lot of
people, increasing dietary fat (so that it makes up no less than 20%
of total calories) to slightly higher levels can get fat loss
started again (as well as helping muscle growth because too little
dietary fat can decrease testosterone levels). So you might try
moving to a Zone/Isocaloric type of diet where you daily diet is
made up of 30% protein, 40% carbs and 30% fat (somewhere in that
range, the numbers aren't that critical as long as you're within
shooting distance).
Additionally, after some period of time, almost all fat loss
diets stop working. YOu didn't mention exaclty how long you've been
fat loss dieting but a lot of people find that alternating 4 weeks
of dieting with 1 week at maintenance calories works better for long
term fat loss than just hammering away at the same diet.
You didn't mention your caloric intake on the diet but I have
found that lowering calories too far can cause fat loss to slow. A
good rule of thumb is 10-12 calories per pound or so. This seems to
give the best fat loss with little muscle loss.
As far as not growing any more, my guess is that you've just
adapted to the workout you're using. The body is highly adaptive
and, just like diets, any workout will eventually stop working. So
you might move from the split you're using now to something a little
different. Although it seems simple a 4 day split where you work
upper body two days per wek (say Mon/Thu) and lower body the other
two (Tue/Fri) works well. So it would look like this:
Mon: Upper body
Tue: lower body
Wed: off
Thu: upper body
Fri: lower body
Yes this means you would work your entire upper and/or lower body
in the same workout. While common dogma would hold this to be
insufficient, with all of the indirect workload (i.e. chest work
hits delts and tris) you can get a lot of work done (you might do
4-6 sets for chest/back, 2-3 for delts and lats and then 1-2 for
arms). On top of that, assuming your goal is still fat loss, you can
add 20-40' of cardio after the weight workouts. By performing your
cardio after weight training, your body will use more bodyfat (since
you have depleted blood glucose and glycogen during the weight
training). Alternately do your cardio first thing in the morning. If
training each bodypart twice each week is too much, consider the
following split:
Mon: upper body
Wed: lower body
Fri: upper body
Mon: lower body
Wed: upper body
Fri: lower body
This hits each bodypart three times every 2 weeks, and gives more
recovery.
Ultimately I gues the best general advice I can give is to change
*something*. I relize that there's a lot of contradictory
information out there and I thnk part of the reason is that most
approaches work to some
degree for some period of time. But very little works forever. So
when you haven't made any measurable progress in a couple of weeks,
change something, your diet, your training split, your rep range,
your lifting
speed, something, anything, for God's sake ANYTHING (sorry, got
carried away there). Frequently that change is all that's needed to
get progress going again.
Mr. McDonald,
I'm a natural competitive bodybuilder.
I've tried various fat burners, and metabolizers over the course of
the past several years, some with very good results and others with
not so great results. I've also been expiramenting with a couple
different water pills starting about 4-days out from the day of the
show. In your opinion what are the best ones out there?
Vincent
First the fat burners. Most of the ones on the market are crap.
The old 'lipotropics' (like inositol, methionine, betaine, etc)
never did anything to begin with. They prevent the buildup of fat in
the liver but have no effect on subcutaneous fat. I also think
carnitine is highly overrated and fairly useless. Although a couple
of studies have shown increased fat utilization, and I know a lot of
bodybuilders swear by the stuff, the majority of research has shown
no effect in terms of fat burning with l-carnitine and I would
generally say that I don't think it's the rate limiting step in fat
burning anyhow.
Probably the most well researched fat burner is the ephedrine,
caffeine, and aspirin stack (ECA). There are dozens of studies on
the ECA stack, and almost all of them support that it does enhance
fat loss and may spare muscle loss while you're dieting. This is
probably my first choice as a fat burner.
Another supplement with a lot of research behind it is yohimbine.
Yohimbine attacks fat burning from a different direction than the
ECA stack. I'll give you the short course. Fat cells have two
general receptors types: beta receptors, which increase fat
mobilization, and alpha receptors, which decrease fat mobilization.
the ECA stack stimulates beta-receptors, so it increases fat
burning. Yohimbine inhibits alpha receptors so it also increases fat
burning (it's basically a double negative, by inhibiting something
that decreases fat burning, you increase fat burning). While
yohimbine seems to be most researched in females, there are papers
where yohimbine increases fat mobilization in men too. You can
either alternate days of ECA or yohimbine or some people will use
yohimbe first thing in the morning (before cardio) and then use ECA
later in the day. For reasons I've discused in other Q&A, using ECA
with yohimbine can be potentially very dangerous and I don't
recommend it.
A final fat burner that is getting some press (probably because
the FDA may crack down on ephedrine) is norephedrine (also called
phenylpropanolamine) which is the active ingredient in Dexatrim. One
study in rats has shown that it is more thermogenic than ephedrine.
It's possible that alternating ECA and norephedrine/caffeine on
different days might prevent any problems with receptor
downregulation.
As far as water loss, I haven't done a lot of research into it
but the ones that seem to be most effective are dandelion root,
buchu leaves, and watermelon seed. And don't forget caffeine which
is a diuretic.
Dear Mr. McDonald
I just read your suggestion for carbing
up for another bodybuilder. I’m confused because it seems that you
recommended for him to carb up at the start of the week before the
contest rather than a couple of days before. I understood the water
manipulation but no the fact of eating less carbs before the show.
If you could get back to me as soon as possible, I would really
appreciate it.
Basically removing the carbs from your diet before the show IS
part of the water manipulation. The ideal look in bodybuilding is to
have full, round muscles (which is a function of cramming as much
water, glycogen, electrolytes, etc) into them while having minimal
subcutaneous (under the skin) water. This is a tough look to achieve
in general especially for naturals. Invariably you end up dry but
flat, or full but holding water.
So first we have to get the muscles filled up, which is the
purpose of the carb-up. But in addition to water, carbohydrate also
drags in sodium with it (and you can't cut out the sodium during
your carb-up because it's necessary for the glucose to get across
the intestinal wall) which holds water under the skin.
So after your carb-up you're left with a situation where your
muscles are full but you're also probably holding some water
underneath your skin. So to get rid of this water, we take the carbs
back out of the diet. This allows the body to drop water (and
sodium). Now you might ask why the glycogen/water in the muscles
isn't taken out too. The reason is that once carbs are stored in the
msucles as glycogen, they are pretty much trapped in there until you
burn them off with exercise. Since you don't train between your
carb-up and the show, you should maintain the glycogen in your
muscles while dropping the water underneath your skin.
Now your other question had to do with my choice of timing. The
reason I like to have people carb-up a little bit earlier (ending no
later than Thursday for a Saturday show) is more conservatism than
anyting else. Unless someone is using very hardcore diuretics (which
are now being tested for in IFBB shows by the way), they may not be
able to drop all their water in 12 hours if they stop their carb-up
on Friday night (for a Saturday show). I'd rather have that extra
day of leeway (i.e. Friday) to drop water based on the idea that
it's better to be in shape too early before your show than too later
after. Or put differently, I'd rather stop the carb-up on Thursday
and use Friday/Sat morning to drop water than finish the carb-up on
Friday and end up having a competitor look their best on Sunday.
Of course if you have established that you can drop any
subcutaneous water very quickly (or choose to use diuretics on
Friday), you can carb-up later in the week.
Dear Lyle,
I have been Bodybuilding for about 8 months. I started it
because I was getting really fat just sitting and doing nothing all
day. I have gained a lot of muscle. When i started I weighed 185 now
I weigh 210. But I just cant seem to lose any fat. I'm currently at
20% bodyfat, same as when I started. Do you now anything that I can
do to get rid of it as fast as possible. I currently train 4 days
on, 3 off. Would The Bodyopus diet work for me?
The simplest answer to the question of "How do I lose fat?" is
"Eat less and exercise more." Losing fat is ultimately a function of
burning more calories than you are eating. So you have two (well
three) options:
1. Decrease food intake
2. Increase activity
3. Decrease food intake and increase activity
Now you're already weight training which is good but you didn't
talk about your diet. Considering how much muscle you have put on, I
think it's safe to assume that you're eating a sufficient amount of
calories (since it's nearly impossible to gain muscle while you are
dieting). So you really have two options:
1. Start doing some cardio. This will increase your caloric
expenditure and might cause some fat loss. Start with 20-30' of
cardio three times per week and build it up gradually to 40' four
times per week. Either do it right after your weight training (the
blood glucose/glycogen depletion from weight training means you will
use more fat for fuel) or first thing in the morning, both are time
tested ways to maximize fat loss. Be careful that you don't
compensate for the increased cardio by eating more.
2. Decrease your caloric intake. Of course this assumes you know
your current calorie intake. You can either keep track of it for 3
days and figure out you caloric intake or just estimate your
maintenace calories.
The average person will have a maintenance calorie level of
~15-16 calories/lb of bodyweight. So to lose fat you have to eat
less than this. A good rule of thumb is to decrease calories to
about 12-13 cal/lb which for you at 210 lbs would be about 2400-2700
calories/day or so. Make sure and get 1 lb of protein per poud of
body weight (which would be 210 grams or 840 calories), no less than
20% of total calories as fat (which would be 2400 * 0.2/9 = 52 grams
minimum per day) and the rest of your calories as carbs.
I would suggest that you either increase cardio or decrease
calories but not both in the same week. Creating too much of a
caloric deficit can increase muscle loss and slow fat loss.
Dear Lyle,
I hope you can kindly help me with my
current diet. I will begin by telling you my goal, how I proceeded
at it and then of course what happened.
On January 1st, 1998 at the age of 21. I
was weighing 215 pounds. I wasn't obese nor ripped. My goal was to
become ripped as possible.
The way I went about it was by cutting
back on my calories and increasing my protein level(150gram). I was
eating about 1000 calories a day and weight training 3 times a week
for about 45min.
Approximately 4 months later I was
weighing 157 pounds. But was looking the exact same as before the
diet but smaller. My muscle to fat ratio was almost exactly the
same. So what I did was increase my calories to 3500 calories
keeping it low fat. I gained 10 pounds with the muscle to fat
proportion remaining almost the same. So being afraid of gaining
more weight, since then I kept my calories to about 2500 and have
not gained nor lost weight.
So my question finally is: "How can I
lose my body fat without losing muscle"? I would greatly appreciate
if you could give me an exact diet to follow.
Harvinder
Ok, first off you've found (the hard way) how NOT to diet for fat
loss. So let's look at the two major mistakes you made in your diet.
1. Too little protein. The only way to prevent muscle loss on ANY
diet is to consume adequate protein. A general rule of thumb is 1
gram of protein per pound of bodyweight which would have been 215
grams/day when you started. yes that's a lot of protein but that's
life if you want to avoid muscle loss.
2. Too few calories. This was your biggest mistake. IF you cut
calories too much below maintenance, your body will break down
muscle tissue (even if you're getting enough protein). As a general
rule of thumb, you should never cut your daily calories more than
1000 calories below maintenance. At 215 lbs, your maintenance
calorie levels are approximately 3000 calories per day (approx. 15
cal/lb). Consuming 1000 calories per day on your diet, you had a
deficit of 2000 calories per day. About half of which came from
muscle EVERY day of your diet.
Ok, that's the mistakes, so how do you lose fat without losing so
much muscle? here's a basic step by step way to set up your diet.
1. Determine calorie levels. To determine maintenance calorie
levels, multiply bodyweight by 15 cal/lb (this is a rough estimate
and is only a starting point). So 215 * 15 = 3225 calories/day. From
this level, you
may debit a maximum of 1000 calories per day. so the least amout
of calories you would consume would be 2225 cal/day. When you're
starting your diet, I recommend debiting about 500 cal/day (or less)
and seeing what happens. This should yield a weight loss of 1 pound
per week and all of it should be from bodyfat. If you're losing less
than 1 lb/week, you can reduce calories more. If you're losing more
than 2 lbs/week, you need to increase calories because you are
losing muscle.
2. Set protein levels. 1 gram/pound of bodyweight. At 215 lbs
this is 215 grams. Protien has 4 calories/gram so this is 860
calories. The remainder of your calories will come from carbs and
fat.
3. Set fat levels. I personally don't think fat intake should be
reduced to less than 15% of total calories. This helps to limit
hunger and prevents the body from losing the ability to burn fat. In
some cases, a
higher fat intake may work better but this is just a starting
point. So 2225 calories * .15 = 333 calories from fat. Fat has 9
cal/gram so this is 37 grams of fat. Some people (perhaps most) do
better with more fat in
their diet, up to 25-30% of calories. So your maximum fat intake
would be 2225 * .30 = 667 cal / 9 = 74 grams of fat.
4. Set carb levels. The rest of your calories is carbs. From 2225
calorie we subtract 860 calories (for protein) and 333 calories (for
fat) to get: 1032 calories from carbs. Carbs have 4 cal/gram which
is 258 grams of carbs. This is the high end. If you went with the
maximum dietary fat at 74 grams, you're looking at: 2225 - 860 - 667
= 698 / 4 = 174 grms of carbs
To summarize:
Calories: 2225
Protein: 215 grams
Carbs: 174-258 grams
Fat: 33-74 grams
Ideally, you should try to spread your nutrients out across 4-6
meals per day. So divide the above numbers by 4-6 to determine each
meal. On top of this, you should continue weight training intensely
as that helps 'signal' the body to avoid losing muscle. After 2-3
weeks of just caloric restriction, you can bring in small amounts of
aerobic exercise. Star with 20-30' three times week but more will
not be better. Too much cardio can cause as much muscle loss as too
few calories.
Lyle,
First of all, let me say that your
Bodyopus diaries were very informative and I have referred to it
many times as far as carb-ups, dosages, etc. Anyway, I was
wondering, once in ketosis, is it really necessary to do cardio
before breakfast?
I think for all practical purposes no. The idea behind
pre-breakfast cardio is that you will use more fat for fuel because
blood glucose and insulin will be lowered after an overnight fast.
This is true (although no-one is really sure what impact it really
has on fat loss). Thing is the lower blood glucose and insulin seen
after an overnight fast on a *normal* diet is pretty much the status
quo all the time on a ketogenic diet. That is, ketogenic dieters are
always running low normal blood glucose and insulin level. Meaning
that they are burning lots of fat whenever they do cardio, not just
in the morning. So I don't think it will matter really.
For the life of me, I just can't get up
and run on that damn treadmill before breakfast. I start work at
5:00 am and I'd rather do it later in the day. What if I do it about
3-5 hours after a delicious lunch of tuna smothered in mayo?
When you get right down to brass tacks, fat loss is going to be
the difference between fat burned (a function of metabolic rate and
activity) and fat consumed (a function of diet). During low
intensity cardio you're going to be burning essentially 100% fat in
ketosis (for any techie types reading this: studies show a resting
and exercise RQ of 0.7 once ketosis has been established). So the
overall impact of cardio should be the same whether you do it on an
empty stomach or a few hours after a meal: in that you have burned
fat that wouldn't have otherwise been burned.
Your insight into this would be greatly
appreciated. Am I just wasting my time by doing it in the afternoon.
If it really makes a difference, I'll just force myself to get my
ass out of bed and make like a hamster. Also, I tried the 12 days in
ketosis to hasten fat loss, and I read your suggestion about having
a concentrated carb meal one hour in length sometime during the
first weekend of ketosis. Anyway, what sort of carbs should I
consume? High glycemic or starches?
With one meal, it probably doesn't matter to much, either way
it's gonna end up as muscle glycogen. Starches will take longer to
digest meaning more fullness, which might mean keeping you out of
ketosis (if you go out at all) a little bit longer. High GI carbs
digest faster but you get a larger insulin spike which may be a bit
anabolic. so I think it's more preference than anything else.
Ultimately I'd say try both and see which works better for you.
The one time I tried it I just got one
of those mammoth bags of popcorn while watching a movie, but then I
wasn't able to get back into ketosis until Tuesday afternoon,
according to the Ketostix.
I find that very odd, very odd indeed. With depleted muscle and
liver glycogen, any carbs you eat *should* go into the muscles,
without affecting ketosis. Hmm..
Also, I was reading the new EAS
supplement cat-, uh, I mean the new Muscle Media, and I was
wondering, what do you think about doing high intensity interval
training while in ketosis? Would it lead to too much muscle loss?
Maybe, maybe not. if muscle glyocgen is depleted too far (and
unfortunately there's no way of knowing if you're there or not),
your body can use protein for fuel. But then again I know of people
who have used intervals sucessfully on a ketogenic diet. I'd
probably suggest doing them in the 2 days right after the carb-up,
when muscle glycogen is at it's highest. You may need to cut back
your volume on leg day if you do intervals.
I’d probably throw up, but I would much
rather do 8-12 minutes of HIIT instead of 30 minutes on the damn
treadmill. Also, how's the book on the ckd coming along. I know
you're probably sick of people asking, but how about a progress
report. By the way, Mesomorphosis.com is the bomb! Keep up the great
work. Thanks in advance for any help or suggestions you could offer.
The first draft of the book is *finally* done. I am editing it
this week, then it has to go to a few test readers, then finally to
the printer. So soon, very soon.
Dear Mr. McDonald,
I have been training for ab out 4 years.
I just turned 20. I am 5'9 196 lbs at 12%. I follow Charles
Poliquin's principles. I was wondering what you though about using
HMB as an anti-catabolic during my next dieting phase. I have used
it before for one month at 5 grams a day and gained 10 lbs. I have a
kilo on the way. Thank you for your time and effort. I enjoy reading
your articles.
Matt
You know I think you're one of the first people I've heard from
who got anything out of HMB. It may have been the dose since I know
Poliquin has said that 3 grams didn't do much for the athletes that
he trained.
Personally I've been unconvinced about HMB's effects in the real
world but only because nobody seemed to get much out of it.
Obviously, for whatever reason (whether dose or something else), it
is working for you.
I think anything that truly has an anti-catabolic effect (and
they are few and far between) during a diet is a good thing. I am of
the mind that any muscle loss on a diet is too much so if you can
find a way to prevent or even slow muscle loss, go for it. So yes I
think, for you, that HMB is a useful dieting supplelment.
Dear Lyle,
What do you think of the use of Lipoic
Acid on Bodyopus?
Although I haven't used it myself (haven't been on BO for a while
now), I have heard from many individuals who think it is THE best
glucose disposal agent to use during BO carb-ups. Much more potent
than chromium or vanadyl. So I do think it's worth trying. It can
get expensive though. |
