Anyone experienced in physique transformation knows this is nonsense. Most people have a terrible tolerance for carbs, shitty insulin sensitivity and [...]]]> 1) You’re Eating Too Many Carbs

This should be pretty obvious to most people by now, but there are still the old die-hards out there who swear that everyone should be consuming two grams of carbs per pound of bodyweight every day while maintaining a low fat intake. Load up on whole grains and fruit while cutting down on healthy, essential sources of fat like grass fed beef they’ll tell you.

Anyone experienced in physique transformation knows this is nonsense. Most people have a terrible tolerance for carbs, shitty insulin sensitivity and simply don’t do enough physically demanding work to warrant too many carbs. If you want to get lean cutting carbs is usually one of the first and most important steps you need to take. That doesn’t mean you can’t have any but you need to make smart choices and they need to be taken in at the right times and cycled properly.

2) You’re Eating Carbs at the Wrong Time

If you’re above 20% body-fat pretty much any time is the wrong time. In that case I would only recommend vegetables and possibly some post workout potatoes or a once per week refeed. When you get down to 15% you can increase the amount of carbs in the post workout meal or the weekly refeed. Everyone else should limit carb consumption to post workout and night time, as per The Renegade Diet rules. During the day you want to be alert and focused, which is one reason why you don’t want to load up on starchy carbs during this time. Save for them for the night time when you want to optimize serotonin production and rest, relax and repair.

3) You’re Eating Too Much Fat

Some people cut carbs and assume that they’re good to go and there’s nothing else to worry about. Unfortunately, the low/no carb diet isn’t as much fun as Dr. Atkins made it out to be. You can’t just eat pounds of bacon and mayonnaise with reckless abandon and think that you’ll magically end up ripped. Fat contains calories; nine per gram to be exact. At the end of the day total calories still matter, and if you’re eating more than you burn you’re never going to get ripped. Please don’t mistake this as my advocating a low fat diet. That’s just as bad, if not worse, than eating too much fat. A bare minimum of 20% of your calories should come from healthy fats like pastured egg yolks, wild caught salmon, grass fed beef and coconut oil to ensure optimal health. Just be careful about going overboard with it and thinking that low carbs automatically leads to single digit body-fat. You still need to keep a handle on things like total calories.

4)You’re Not Eating Enough Protein

In my experience it’s usually only females who are guilty of this but guys can make this mistake on occasion as well. The average female who can’t lose body-fat usually eats a bowl of oatmeal for breakfast with an egg. One… single… egg.

Then she’ll have a sandwich for lunch with four ounces of lean turkey. For dinner it will be a salad with low fat dressing and four ounces of chicken or fish. Although, in all honesty they may skip the protein all together and just have a salad for either lunch or dinner. Let’s assume she weighs 135 pounds. Most experts would agree that she would need to consume at least 100 grams of protein per day, if not a gram per pound, which would equal 135 grams. Each ounce of protein is around 4.5 grams of protein. So in this example she had 36 grams combined with lunch and dinner plus the six grams from the egg. So that’s a total of 42 grams, which falls just a wee bit shy of where she needs to be.

Females often freak out when you tell them to eat more than six ounces of protein at a sitting but when you break down the numbers for them and reveal just how many calories they’re eating it should make more sense. If they had eight ounces of protein three times per day it would 108 grams of protein. That’s only 432 total calories. Add in the fat and it’s still not that much.

People who eat a sufficient amount of protein usually end up having an easier time getting ripped than those who don’t. Make sure you’re getting enough.

5) You’re Drinking Too Many Protein Shakes

There are two problems associated with drinking shakes when you’re trying to get ripped. First of all, whey protein can raise insulin levels, as I have been telling people since the mid 90’s. If you’re trying to get lean you don’t want insulin to be flowing like the Nile all day. You want a nice insulin surge post workout but the rest of the day you want it under control. That’s why The Renegade Diet limits the intake of whey protein to very small amounts during most of the day and only allows a larger amount post workout or at night.

The second problem with drinking too many shakes is that they are so easy to digest that you don’t really burn any calories when you eat them. When you chew down some salmon and broccoli your body works harder to digest that food and you burn more calories during the digestion process. When you drink something that is so easily digested, like a protein shake, your body does almost no work in the process.

So, when getting ripped is your main goal, limit your shake intake and chew as many calories as you can.

6) Your Liver is Over Stressed

This is usually the last thing people think of when embarking on a fat loss diet but it can sometimes be the most important. Everything that goes into or on your body has to be processed by the liver. That means all food, alcohol, suntan lotion, environmental pollutants, etc. If you are constantly exposing yourself to this kind of stuff and overstressing the liver fat loss will be much more difficult to come by. Cut out booze, stop eating grain-fed, chemical laden meat and incorporate some regular periods of intermittent fasting to give the liver a break and you will find your rate of fat loss is noticeably faster.

7) You’re Eating Nuts

I love nuts. I mean, who doesn’t? Give me a bag of pistachios or cashews and I won’t look up till the whole thing’s gone. The problem is nuts have a ton of calories. When you’re dieting for fat loss the rules are usually the opposite of those followed by skinny hardgainers trying to gain size. Those guys want the most calorically dense foods possible. Fat loss dieters do not. You’re better off filling up on nutritionally dense foods that don’t pack a lot of calories, like green vegetables. If you’re dieting you need to limit your nut consumption to about ten almonds per serving. No too many people can eat ten almonds. Most people eat ten handfuls. If you are strictly tracking and calculating everything all day and you want to load up on nuts at certain times I suppose you could but I wouldn’t recommend it. Nuts can be very problematic for a lot of people, especially those with digestive or auto immune issues. As Paleo Solution author Robb Wolf has noted, nuts should be used the same way you use condiments- sparingly.

I should also add, and this is strictly my opinion, meaning it has NOT been proven and posted on Pubmed… nut butters seem to be easier for most people to digest than actual whole nuts. Just something to consider.

8) You’re Eating Fruit

“What?! You’re telling people not to eat fruit!? Everyone knows that it’s impossible to get fat from eating too much fruit!”

Yeah, yeah I know, that’s why physique competitors eat so much fruit and why all fat loss experts who specialize in getting people shredded recommend such high quantities of it. In our hunter gatherer days fruit was nothing like what you see in the supermarket today. Berries were small, dark and bitter; not the huge sugar sacks most people consume these days. Don’t get me wrong, fruit is healthy and can be eaten by lean individuals in limited amounts but any type of excessive fructose (a sugar found in fruit) consumption will lead to fat gain. Fructose can only be processed by the liver and once liver glycogen stores are full the excess gets converted to triglycerides and stored as body-fat. If you want to get ripped cut fruit completely for a while or limit it to one to two small servings per day. Just be sure to really up the vegetable consumption so you can keep your vital nutrient uptake where it needs to be.

9) You’re Not Training Heavy

When you want to lose body-fat the first inclination is often to crank up the reps and cut the rest periods. I actually have no problem with fairly low rest periods. But not if you’re used to resting three minutes between sets and all of the sudden cut them down to thirty seconds because you decided it was time to get shredded you’ll be in trouble. That never works. All that happens is your weights start plummeting on every exercise and you get weaker and smaller. High reps have the same effect.

When dieting, the primary role of strength training is to maintain muscle mass. That is the single most important thing. Don’t use it as your primary “fat burning” activity… UNLESS you are seriously overweight. If you need to lose more than fifty pounds or so that would probably be fine (although please don’t ever do any of the bullshit you see on those fat camp TV shows). Females can actually get something out of metcon workouts in the right situation as well. The caveat, however, is that that they need to be strong and actually have some muscle mass. If you take a weak female with no muscle and give her a silly metcon circuit she won’t usually get much out of it because she’s too weak to produce enough force. Females should get strong first before they attempt that type of training.

If you’re a guy and are trying to lose 10-20 pounds of body-fat without losing all your muscle mass in the process you should use strength training as a way to maintain size and strength; nothing more, nothing less. So the same principles that helped you get big and strong apply when dieting. Keep the reps low and the resistance high.

10) You’re Overdoing Cardio

Traditional forms of cardio are largely useless for fat loss. But useless is even okay, it’s when it starts to be counterproductive that we have a real problem. Excessive amounts of cardio lead to an overproduction of cortisol which leads to more abdominal fat and numerous health problems. If you want to do cardio that won’t actually hurt you and could do you some good, go for a long walk. No self respecting man should ever be spotted on an elliptical machine.

Sled work builds muscle, burns fat and is irreplaceable

11) You’re Not Running Sprints or Doing Sled Work

Dieting is the most important thing for fat loss. After that you should be doing some form of strength training to maintain your muscle mass. When you have those to things dialed in you’ll want to add in some type of sprinting or sled work. There is nothing more effective for fat loss. See all wide receivers, defensive backs, sprinters, soccer players, etc. for proof. Two or three 20-40 minute sprint or sled sessions per week will be enough for most people.

Don’t have a sled? Get one HERE.

12) You’re Not Getting Enough Sleep

When you’re short on sleep your insulin sensitivity decreases and your cortisol goes up. Both things lead to less than optimal fat loss. You also miss out on the critically important Growth Hormone boost that comes each night during deep sleep. If you want to lose more fat you have to get more sleep. Most people will ignore this and some of you are probably reading this at 2am. Unfortunately this just might be the most important thing on the whole list. More sleep improves EVERYTHING. Make it a priority.

If you liked this post do me a huge favor and hit the Facebook Like button and share it with anyone you think would be interested.

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Fuck bulking and cutting.

Clearer?

The concept of bulking and cutting is old school bullshit that went out with fanny packs and jean shorts. For the initiated it means that you eat like crap for several months while training hard and heavy. The theory behind it is that it’s impossible to gain large amounts of muscle mass without getting fat in the process. So you accept [...]]]> I’ve covered this topic before but judging by some of the questions I receive I may not have been clear enough. So I’m gonna try it again…

Fuck bulking and cutting.

Clearer?

The concept of bulking and cutting is old school bullshit that went out with fanny packs and jean shorts. For the initiated it means that you eat like crap for several months while training hard and heavy. The theory behind it is that it’s impossible to gain large amounts of muscle mass without getting fat in the process. So you accept a bunch of fat gain along with the additional muscle during the bulking phase then you switch over into “cutting” mode and diet off all the fat.

What’s supposed to happen is that you gain thirty pounds during a bulk, ten of which will be fat, and then during the cutting phase you lose all the fat and keep 90% or more of the muscle. If you bulked for four months and then cut for four months you would theoretically end up gaining about fifteen pounds of lean muscle at the end of eight months. For a natural guy who has been training properly for more than 3-5 years this would be HUGE.

Unfortunately it never works out that way. We all wish it were that easy, but it just aint. If bulking and cutting worked so well there would be far fewer supplement ads because people would be easily achieving the results they wanted. In that case there wouldn’t be as many desperate dudes looking for the solution to their problems for these companies to advertise to.

What Really Happens During Bulking & Cutting

What really happens during a bulking phase is that you gain at least as much fat as you do muscle. That’s usually the best case scenario. More often than not people actually gain more fat than muscle during a 12-16 week bulk. Instead of the hoped for twenty pound muscle gain along with just ten pounds of fat it turns out to be twenty pounds of fat with ten pounds of muscle.

Even if it was 50/50 at the end of your bulk phase you still only end up with maybe an additional two to five pounds of muscle eight months later. For a guy who has been training for more than five years that’s a very good gain but getting fat in the process isn’t necessary or smart.

A smarter approach would be to aim for slower gains while staying lean throughout the whole process. At the end of the year you will still end up making the same progress but having not had to go through the fat-ass phase.

When you allow yourself to get fatter you not only increase the size of your fat cells but there is also evidence showing that you can increase the number of fat cells you have. This means that it will forever be easier to get fat again and harder to get lean. So basically one or two “bulk” phases gone awry and you’re fucked for life.

As many people have said before, the best way to get lean is to never get fat in the first place.

What About Former Fat Powerlifters Who Got Jacked?

This isn’t my first foray onto the internet, however, and I know that people like to argue. So allow me to address the former powerlifter example.

There are plenty of cases of former 275-300 plus pound powerlifters who have slowly dieted down, over the course of 12-36 months, and ended up looking incredible. Some of them are friends of mine.

But before you get too excited about this possibility let me point out what some may be overlooking…

You can’t simply eat burgers and pizza every day for the next twelve months and expect to look like one of the fattest guys in The Worlds Strongest Man. No, no, no. That won’t happen by a long shot. No matter how much you eat, and even how many drugs you take, you can only build muscle so fast. If you’ve been training properly for more than three to five years muscle growth will come at a snails pace regardless of what you do. So at the end of a one year bulk that gets you up to 275 you will look like someone on one of those weight loss shows; far more sloppy and obese than muscular and imposing.

To eat and train your way up to a legitimate 250-275 pounds (without being an obese slob, but still pretty fat) will take most people a decade, bare minimum (if it was physically possible for you at all). Then you will have to remain there for another several years just to kind of lock that weight in so your body knows that that is a normal condition to exist in. At that point you can start the process of very, very slowly dieting down over the course of several months. This could take over a year in some cases. The end result, after 10-20 years of hard work is that you will be one of the biggest, most jacked dudes in your neighborhood at a rock solid 220 or so.

Now you just have to ask yourself if you’re willing to spend all those years walking around looking like an offensive lineman and pounding down 6,000 calories per day or if you’d be happier with a smarter, slower, healthier approach.

I prefer and recommend the latter. I’ve done the old school bulking and cutting nonsense. I don’t have anyone do it anymore.

Get Lean Once & Stay Lean Forever

Staying lean is very important to your health and performance. Getting fat is unhealthy and decreases your performance.

My advice is to get down to around 15% body-fat or lower and remain there when trying to gain size. When your body-fat is 15% or lower while training and eating for size a greater portion of the weight you gain will be muscle. If you are fat get lean first before you start focusing on muscle gain because most of the weight you gain will be fat. So lose the excess fat first. Your body will be more anabolic.

Once you are lean enough to start a muscle building diet make sure to be smart about it. Stick with primarily healthy foods and don’t go overboard on the calories. You definitely need to bring in more calories than you burn, but not inordinately more than that.

Let’s assume you have been training for a few years and that the absolute most weight you could gain would be two pounds of muscle per month. For those beyond the newbie stage this would be an enormous gain at the end of the year but we’ll be optimistic and go with it. If we assume that it takes an additional 3500 calories per week to gain a pound of muscle how many extra calories per day do you honestly think you need?

I failed math and my calculator’s broken so I’ll wait while you break out yours.

The point is that if your maintenance caloric intake is 2600 you definitely don’t need to eat 5,000 calories per day. Take measurements, watch the scale, the mirror and your weight room numbers and adjust up or down accordingly. If you get to the point where you can’t buckle your pants you’re on the wrong path. If your shirt sleeves are getting tighter you’re usually on the right path.

The most effective plan to help you get this done is The Renegade Diet. The countdown to it’s release is on…

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Unfortunately, what’s a healthy choice for me may not be a healthy choice for you. Everyone reacts differently to certain foods. For the most part you can’t go wrong with lean protein, vegetables and berries. Those foods seem to be tolerated very well by the majority of people. Once you veer off that list it gets [...]]]> What food you put in your body is probably the single most important decision you make every day. A lot of us have that down and always make very healthy choices. Or so we think…

Unfortunately, what’s a healthy choice for me may not be a healthy choice for you. Everyone reacts differently to certain foods. For the most part you can’t go wrong with lean protein, vegetables and berries. Those foods seem to be tolerated very well by the majority of people. Once you veer off that list it gets a little bit more complicated.

Foods like grains, eggs, nuts, certain fruits, legumes and dairy can all have negative effects on people’s digestive systems. When your digestion gets messed up so does everything else.

So what I suggest is that for a week or so you simply keep a food journal. Write down what you ate and then make note of how you felt during the 60-90 minutes following that meal. What you discover may surprise you.

I’ll use myself as an example.

I love sweet potatoes, but when I really cued in on everything I was eating and recorded it all with notes I realized that sweet potatoes make me feel a lot worse than white, red or Yukon gold potatoes.

Quinoa gives me an instant headache.

Oatmeal just makes me feel blah and I have no energy.

Nothing makes me feel better than red meat. I feel incredible after eating it and have zero digestion issues.

Eggs are one of my favorite foods yet if I eat them too much I get a similar (though nowhere near as severe) feeling that I get from eating oatmeal. One tip for egg lovers is to make sure you don’t eat them every day and to always change the way you cook them (hard boiled, fried, scrambled, etc.).

I love nuts and nut butters, but unfortunately I have adverse reactions to many of these. Some cause digestive issues, others cause my throat to get scratchy.

Same with apples. The only apple I can eat is a Pink Lady. If I eat other types of apples my throat gets itchy and slightly swollen and my stomach just doesn’t feel right.

Many of these reactions aren’t the end of the world so I continue to eat these foods (eggs, nuts and apples; never really quinoa or oats anymore) occasionally just because I enjoy them so much. You don’t have to give up every single pleasure in your life.

The point of this little exercise is to identify what causes adverse reactions in your body. If you eat something and it causes your nose to run, as do certain foods I eat, that means you’re not meant to eat that food. If a food doesn’t agree with you, sure you can deal with excess mucus production for a little while or a scratchy throat, but just imagine how much better you would feel if you eliminated all the foods you can’t tolerate. You’d be unstoppable because you’d be operating at 100% and firing on all cylinders.

You see, any time your body has to react to an outside stressor like that you’re taking vital energy away that could be used more efficiently elsewhere, like recovering from workouts, etc.

So take the time and do this for a week. Then cut out the foods that are causing you problems and note how much better you feel. Some may make such a big difference that you’ll vow to never eat them again. Others may be your favorites and even though they cause some minor problems you’ll allow yourself to have them for a treat on occasion.

It’s up to you but I think it’s very important to at least know what is causing you problems.

If you really wanna take it up a notch do a full blown elimination diet and get rid of all foods that are known to cause allergies or inflammation then gradually add them back in one at a time.

It’s a short time to sacrifice considering you’ve got the rest of your life ahead of you. And every one of those days could be a lot better if cut out the stuff that’s making you feel like crap.

Don’t be fooled into thinking this is too simple to make a huge difference. This could be a lot more significant than changing your training split or improving your squat technique. Digestive health is crucially important to how you look, feel and perform.

Don’t ignore it.

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Firstly, I debated about even writing this article at all because the last thing I want is to start a whole debate about the morals and ethics of eating meat. For some reason a lot of people take it more seriously than religion and I don’t really want regular visitors to this site getting all fired up and arguing with each other about something so trivial.

But the fact of the matter is a lot [...]]]> Fourteen months ago I ended my three year stint as a vegetarian. Here are the reasons why…

Firstly, I debated about even writing this article at all because the last thing I want is to start a whole debate about the morals and ethics of eating meat. For some reason a lot of people take it more seriously than religion and I don’t really want regular visitors to this site getting all fired up and arguing with each other about something so trivial.

But the fact of the matter is a lot of people ask me about my diet and would probably like to know what I’m doing now and why. Even though I know my explanation can’t and won’t satisfy everyone I hope you will at least understand why I did what I did and why I’m doing what I do now.

Four years ago this coming June I decided to start eliminating animal products from my diet. Friends and colleagues of mine who I have the utmost respect for, like Robert Dos Remedios and Jon Hinds had been vegan for years and they’re both jacked and in great shape, in their 40’s. At 47 Jon can dunk a basketball, walk the stairs of the Capitol building on his hands and perform various other physical feats that most mere mortals could never dream of. He’s also one of the coolest dudes I know and a big influence on me.

Becoming a vegetarian was an idea that intrigued me for a variety of reasons. As I expressed more interest in it a friend turned me onto The Food Revolution by John Robbins and told me it would change my life. If you are considering vegetarianism or on the fence about it Johns book will make the decision very easy. He makes a compelling argument and by the end of the second or third chapter I was done with meat and dairy.

At first I kept some fish and eggs in but eventually eliminated those as well. I experimented with various degrees of vegetarianism and veganism over the next three years and for the most part found it pretty enjoyable.

The Good
Within the first two weeks of eliminating meat and dairy I felt significantly better. Less inflammation and faster recovery from workouts were the two biggest positive changes. Looking back, I automatically assumed that this was from eating less meat and dairy but it could also be due to the fact that I instantly doubled or even tripled my consumption of fresh organic produce.

A lot of people make the same mistake when first switching to a vegetarian diet. They think it’s the lack of meat when in reality it might be the inclusion of all the extra greens and fruits.

I also cleaned up everything across the board and eliminated any food that wasn’t 100% organic. That right there makes a huge difference as well.

Being forced to eat so many more plant based foods brings out the need for creativity in the kitchen and Jen and I learned of countless new ways to prepare veggies, nuts and seeds into delicious meals that we still use today.

We also discovered new restaurants and plenty of foods we had never eaten before. The transition from meat eater to vegetarian was smooth and painless.

Now, for what a great majority of readers want to know…

How did being vegetarian affect my size, strength and performance?

Oddly enough, it had very little negative effect. Even I was somewhat surprised by this. I started my first day of vegetarianism at around 224 pounds. A year later I was right around the same weight. I cut my protein intake in half and it really didn’t have too much negative effect, which is what Brad Pilon talks about in How Much Protein.

But I was definitely getting a bit fatter from the extra carbs.

The Bad
After a while I loosened up the reigns and starting eating more soy and fake meat products. This was a huge mistake. I was just craving cheat foods and needed something to break the monotony.

I also started adding more and more legumes and grains to my diet. Since it’s hard to find protein sources that are vegan you’re really only left with legumes, soy and wheat protein. Those that know the problems associated with eating legumes and grains can see where this is going.

Eventually I started feeling worse. I slowly accumulated more bodyfat. My digestive health went way down hill and other issues started popping up.

The problem with legumes is that they contain lectins. Lectins are anti nutrients that can cause a lot of problems.

Here’s a brief description of lectins from Jonny Bowden’s excellent book, The 150 Healthiest Foods on Earth:

“Lectins are substances contained in grains that originally evolved to fight off insect predators. But a portion of lectin can actually bind with tissues in our body and create problems. A highly respected researcher at the University of Colorado, Loren Cordain, Ph. D., published a paper in the British Journal of Nutrition detailing a theory that dairy foods, legumes, grains and yeast may be partly to blame for rheumatoid arthritis and other autoimmune diseases in genetically susceptible people, due in part to the lectin molecule. According to Cordain, the lectins in food are known to increase intestinal permeability- they allow partially digested food proteins and remnants of gut bacteria to spill into the bloodstream. Cordain calls lectins “cellular Trojan horses.” They make the intestines easier to penetrate, impairing the immune system’s ability to fight off food and bacterial fragments that leak into the bloodstream.”

The whole food combining thing is big for vegans because of the deficiencies that the diet can lead to. Another huge problem for a lot of vegans is staying lean because they have to eat so many starchy carbs. Actually, let me rephrase that… they don’t necessarily have to but they do. Especially if they want to maintain their size.

Eventually I tightened the reigns back up and cut out beans, some grains and all fake or processed foods.

So at that point I was limited to just sweet potatoes, rice, quinoa, fruits, veggies, nuts and seeds. If you live across the street from Pure Food and Wine in New York or Planet Raw in Santa Monica (and can afford to eat there daily) this might be doable. But for me it started getting too hard to deal with and I was craving something else. Jon Hinds lives primarily on fruits and veggies and seemingly has no problem with it. I simply started getting burnt and would have loved a piece of salmon.

The health problems I had, while not severe or life threatening, weren’t getting much better and my testosterone took a dip as well. The funny thing is that I still felt better than 99% of the people I know my age (and plenty of people younger than me). But I always expect to feel like I’m 18 and be at the absolute pinnacle of physical health. Knowing what I know and considering what I do for a living I don’t think that’s asking too much. I like to lead from the front.

But I’m human and slipped up. Something had happened to me that needed to be fixed. I had to make some kind of change because living like that simply wasn’t worth it anymore.

Finally I decided to add back twice some fish and eggs a few times per week. It was a hell of a lot healthier than fake foods and buckets of grains so at least it was a step in the right direction.

Eventually I added back in some meat as well and my health improved. My testosterone came back up and I felt better.

Yet again, the protein intake didn’t seem to make much difference when it came to training. I had rotator cuff surgery at the end of my first year of vegetarianism that caused me to lose a ton of size and strength. Eventually I got back up to 220 plus with no animal protein. I was definitely fatter though, from my previous days at 220. So I do think that if you want to gain size eating more protein than less will, obviously keep you leaner. Especially if you have skinny-fat guy genetics like me.

As I’ve said before, I don’t think there is anything magical about proteins muscle building effects. In other words, double the protein does not equal double the gains. It simply allows you to eat more calories without getting fat. And that’s a good thing for those looking to build muscle.

Even though I added animal protein back in and cut out some of the other unhealthy foods I was eating I had, unfortunately, already done some pretty serious damage from the excessive consumption of legumes and grains. Because of the internal havoc that beans and grains can create they make you much more susceptible to parasites and fungus and a host of other digestive issues.

Robb Wolf explains a similar situation that he and many other vegetarians go through in his awesome book, The Paleo Solution and gives the steps necessary to get back to full health.

What I’ve Learned
I will never regret my three years as a vegetarian as I learned a lot and had some cool experiences from it. I even met some people I never would have otherwise. The great thing is it allows me to help any vegetarian readers or clients I have.

One thing you have to remember about your own personal diet is that what you respond best to will be largely based on what your ancestors ate hundreds of years ago. If they lived closer to the equator they ate more vegetarian foods. If they lived further away, in places where there was a winter, they obviously had to eat more animal foods to survive. That right there explains why some people do better on a vegetarian diet than others. I’m half Italian and half Scottish (where it seems like it’s always winter… kinda like San Francisco).

However, when examined closely you will find, through information packed books such as Nutrition and Physical Degeneration by Weston A. Price that there were very, very few cultures that ever survived, and almost none that thrived on vegetarian diets.

If you choose to be a vegetarian for moral issues I completely understand and would never argue your right to do that.

Would I recommend a vegan diet to those interested in maximizing their performance and looking their best? Absolutely not. It can be done by some people but it’s tough. There are some deficiencies you will need to make up for as well. Adding in some eggs and raw dairy would make it a lot easier.

My job is to help people reach their goals as rapidly as possible so I have to use the most efficient, time tested means to do so.

I think animal protein and fat can definitely help anyone with performance or, especially physique, goals. It’s less important for strength and athletic performance than it is for body comp but it makes a difference for both.

I’ve read over a hundred books on the topic of nutrition the last four years and have talked with some of the top nutrition experts in the world. The major consensus seems to be that a lot of greens are good, pasteurized dairy is bad, grains and legumes are questionable, if not the devil (depending on who you ask) and animal protein in small to moderate quantities are healthy.

That’s where I’m at and what I’m following these days; following the Renegade Diet with tons of greens, moderate amounts of animal protein (about .8-1gm per pound of BW) and clean carbs like sweet potatoes. I usually have red meat three times per week, fish twice per week, and chicken twice per week. I believe it’s the smartest, healthiest approach to nutrition. If you want to gain a ton of size you may need a few extra meat meals per week. That’s up to you.

To any vegetarians who feel I let them down, I apologize. I hope you understand and maybe can even learn from my experiences. I had to do what was best for my own health and for my training goals. This stuff is what I do for a living so it’s important to me to be at my best.

Like you guys I’m always trying to learn more and better myself, each and every day.

Hopefully we can all continue doing so together long into the future.

Thanks for reading, my friends.

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We all know that it’s not in the best interest of big business/ big pharma for us to be healthy. Apparently selling healthy, organic [...]]]> Last Wednesday I drove over to Rawesome in Venice, like I do every week, to pick up some meat, produce and a little raw butter, cream and goat yogurt. I arrived at the tail end of a government raid in which the LAPD and government officials poured out all of the raw dairy and left with a flat bed truck full of produce, nuts and bison steaks.

We all know that it’s not in the best interest of big business/ big pharma for us to be healthy. Apparently selling healthy, organic food is now a crime. A crime worthy of jail time and $123,000 bail for the owner, James Stewart.

Like many members of this small co-op I am very passionate about healthy food and was pretty disgusted and had to seriously question the world we live in. There are SOOO many other more important issues to spend taxpayers money on. But instead they choose to focus on raw milk.

Whether you drink raw milk or not I’m sure you can see how insane this is.  At the Whole Foods right next door they sell pasteurized dairy which is a hell of a lot worse for you.  And in the fast food joint next to that that they sell absolute crap that will destroy your insides. Then there’s the liquor store a block down. But booze, cigarettes and French fries are all good. No one ever dies from too much of those items. So let them be. Take down the little organic food market instead. That’s more worthy of a raid than any crack house around.

The ridiculousness of it all leaves me at a total loss for words.

Here’s what Forbes.com had to say about the raid:

“Obviously spending this much time and this many resources to bust people selling dairy products is silly. Making arrests, rather than simply issuing a fine for non-compliance, is silly.  And yes, the fundamental issue here is the silliness of requiring permits – or making outright bans – to sell raw milk in the first place. Permits typically don’t make us any safer, and can serve to crowd out competition. In this case, big dairy farms are crowding out smaller competitors. “

And here’s some video footage from last Wednesday:

Finally, check out this trailer for the movie Farmageddon and do whatever you can to support sustainable farming and our right to eat healthy foods.

Let me know what you guys think…

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The guy who invented the 4,4,9 calorie counts for Pro, Fats and Carbs

How Much Protein Should You Eat Per Day? By Brad Pilon

You’d think by now we’d have a clear-cut answer to this question, but to tell you the truth, ‘how much protein’ is a question [...]]]> I have a great article for you today by my colleague, Brad Pilon. Brad is a super smart dude who knows more about nutrition than most people have forgotten. He’s also one of the few guys I rely on for dietary advice. Check it out…

The guy who invented the 4,4,9 calorie counts for Pro, Fats and Carbs

How Much Protein Should You Eat Per Day?
By Brad Pilon

You’d think by now we’d have a clear-cut answer to this question, but to tell you the truth, ‘how much protein’ is a question we’ve been trying to answer for over 200 years.

In fact, protein has played a central role in nutrition since the mid 1800’s. Luckily, we’ve refined our approach to studying protein over the years.

As an example, in 1865 scientists generally believed that the energy needed for muscular contraction came from the breakdown of proteins…in other words they thought that the major fuel of muscles was dietary protein (we did not know that muscles used sugars and fats for energy).

Even though this was proven wrong by a scientist named Fick in 1866, it was still the prevailing belief for another half century.

Back in the 1890’s The United states governments leading nutritionist was Dr. Wilbur Atwater. Atwater followed the general idea that when people had sufficient means to make a free choice of diet, their intakes would match their needs…for protein as well as for calories (back in the 1890’s ‘nutrition’ was simply protein and calories).

It was assumed that people who had money and access to food were automatically eating “Just the right amounts’. It was then assumed that all you had to do was measure how much the affluent people were eating and we would know how much EVERYONE should be eating. – This was kind of like an early version of ‘set point theory.’

At the time it worked well, mostly because it was a simple way of studying optimal nutrition – eat like a rich person.
So Atwater studied the diets of undergraduate boat crews (I.E. young, athletic rich guys) and showed that during intensive training they had high intakes of protein, – about 155 grams per day.

Atwater turned these findings into the ‘Atwater standards’, a set of protein recommendations based on degree of daily muscular work.

Degree of Muscular work:                           Daily Protein Intake:
Light                                                                                          112
Moderate                                                                                125
Heavy                                                                                       150

Challenging the status quo in the early 1900's...and Pilon's beard role model

As you might have noticed, these numbers weren’t based on any measure of nitrogen balance, protein synthesis or muscle growth, but rather were based on the measurement of what healthy active men happened to be eating at the time.  Despite this rather limited scientific approach, these numbers helped shape the USDA recommendations for protein intake.

Based on these numbers nutritionists were primarily concerned with providing people with enough protein and calories, and how to do so in a way that was cheap and inexpensive.

The interesting fall out from this was that fruits and vegetables, being low in protein, low in calories and n

ot overly cheap, became viewed as ‘secondary’ in the diet. (At this time we only had a basic understanding of the importance of vitamins and minerals, let alone phytochemicals, antioxidants, fiber and the many other beneficial components of fruits and veggies that we are still discovering to this day).

This created some extreme opposition from ‘fringe’ groups of people that argued that a diet rich in calories

and protein would lead to obesity and that meat and animal fat intake should be greatly reduced, and that consumption of fruit and vegetables should be encouraged.

These recommendations were typically viewed as lunacy at the time.

1901 - now that's OLD SCHOOL nutrition

But then along came a researcher from Yale named Russell Henry Chittenden, who after a year long experiment at Yale demonstrated that men could maintain their health, muscularity and ‘sporting prowess’ with one half of Wilbur Atwater’s standard intake of protein.

This was the breaking point in protein’s early glory and it created enough controversy and buzz that the protein popularity pendulum swung from one extreme to the other.

By the 1920’s the new lower standard of protein intake (roughly 60-66 grams per day) had been accepted and was even thought to contain a considerable safety margin.

From the 1920’s to the 1950’s protein was not a high priority among nutrition professionals. But in 1950 things changed again…dramatically.

Chittenden was very interested in maintaining muscle mass, to the point where he photographed his subjects as 'proof

From 1950 to 1975 protein was now back in the spot light. The rallying cry of nutritionists around the world was:

“Deficiency of protein in the diet is the most serious and widespread problem in the world!”

Since then we’ve settled down a bit, but still argue over what is an optimal daily protein intake.

Most of the world’s governing bodies agree with a protein intake that averages around 60-66 grams per day. However many researchers still argue the original much higher amounts suggested by Atwater to be correct.

So what gives?

For starters, Atwaters original numbers were based on the theory that the muscles could only use protein as a fuel. So while the theory was wrong, it doesn’t necessarily mean the number is wrong. (Kind of like getting the right answer using the wrong equation in a math test).

Secondly, Chittenden’s work was based on finding the minimal amount of protein needed to MAINTAIN muscle mass.

My findings have basically married these two century old recommendations. It seems that 60ish grams of protein per day is enough to maintain muscularity in most people, while higher amounts up to 120 gram per day may increase the speed of muscle gain during periods of muscle hypertrophy.

At this point it seems that all protein recommendations may be correct in the right circumstances with the right people.

For more information on exactly how much protein you should eat to build muscle, please check out my NEW and Expanded book,  How Much Protein.

***

Hey guys, Jay back here. I had the chance to read Brad’s newly updated and expanded version of How Much Protein last week and thought it was awesome. It’s packed full of great info and he breaks it all down really well so that anyone can easily understand the science. Definitely a very interesting eye opener (some of you will even find it mind blowing) and WELL worth the read.

It will also save you some money on your butcher and protein powder bills each month.

Check it out HERE.

Also, let me know what you think of this article and what your opinion of high protein intake is and what experiences you have had.

Agree?

Disagree?

Share your thoughts in the comments section below.

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But right around the time I started reading more about I started to [...]]]> It was almost too weird of a coincidence. My obsession with digestive health led to an interest in fungus and parasites. I was reading a lot about these topics and I ordered a few more of Doug Kaufmann’s books to help address the candida issue I had and ignored for a while and many other digestive issues I had developed during my time as a vegetarian from too many grains and legumes (more on that in the future).

But right around the time I started reading more about I started to suffer from more of the symptoms. Before I knew it I had a full blown parasite infection. It definitely wasn’t in my head, as Jen will back me up on. She saw my belly instantly expand before her eyes like I was nine months pregnant one night after eating something I shouldn’t have when dealing with parasites and fungus (a Jerusalem artichoke, for the record). I  knew about my problem digesting carbs from my cadida issue for a while but I kind of just ignored it; like the pain in my lower back when I squat or deadlift.

When we first got to Cali I didn’t have a water filter installed yet so I ended up foolishly drinking over a half gallon of tap water per day. Unfortunately the tap water here is of horrible quality. So that could have been the cause.

On top of that I wanted to do a test to prove the effectiveness of The Renegade Diet so I ate dessert every night for thirty days straight, kind of like that Super Size Me movie. I’m talking 2-3 slices of organic pumpkin pie, raw cream and honey chocolate mousse, etc. I ended up keeping visible abs and proving how powerful the diet is but was making my digestive health a lot worse all for the sake of the experiment.

You see parasites and fungus feed on sugar. The more sugar you give them the worse the problem gets.

After 30 days of eating pie on The Renegade Diet

I’ve also been experimenting with some raw dairy and there was one time where I took a little too long getting home with it. They warn you right in the market to put it on ice on the car ride home if it’s going to be longer than five minutes. So that could have also been part of the issue.

The bottom line is I don’t know where it came from but now I have to get rid of it. I dropped 15 pounds in 28 days from the time my “heavyweight champ” picture to the right was taken! I obviously didn’t want to drop weight that quickly but was forced to as I will explain in just a bit. Luckily a good deal of it was fat.

Sucks For Me, Good For You
As with all of my bad luck that I have had over the years from one injury after another to destroyed digestive health, to weakened immune system response, to high cortisol and estrogen to low testosterone this is once again another blessing in disguise.

How? Because it makes me a better coach and prepares me more effectively to help you guys. If I grew up with great genetics I would never have gone into this field and none of you would be reading this right now. I would just be one of those guys who goes to the gym and gets bigger and stronger no matter what I did. So taking an interest in learning more about training would never even occur to me.

That’s why the majority of great strength coaches and trainers are usually guys who had shitty genetics.

It’s also probably the reason Phil Jackson makes a better coach than Michael Jordan.

You become a good coach when you have to struggle to overcome things. If everything came easy to me I would never have had that undying, burning desire to continually get better and learn as much as I could about training, nutrition and health.

I always say you can’t ask your clients to do something you can’t do yourself. Over the years that has included squats and deads, sprint and conditioning workouts and various eating protocols.

But to really get my “in the trenches experience” I have also suffered numerous injuries, hormonal problems and digestive issues. Most of these things could have been avoided and were the result of my own stupidity or ignorance.

Now, of course, going through all that stuff sucked big time. But it makes me a better coach because I know what it’s like first hand and can help you in a way I never could if I hadn’t experienced it myself. You name a problem you are dealing with and there’s at least a 50/50 chance that I have experienced it first hand.

Since I’ve lived the experience of training around injuries, overcoming shitty genetics, fixing low testosterone and high cortisol, etc. personally I am better suited to help you than if I just read about it.

Parasites?!
Everyone has parasites living inside them. You need them to be healthy. But what you probably don’t know is that, according to Doug Kaufmann, 90% of people have an infection and a serious parasite/fungus problem. I always used to think fungus was just jock itch or athletes foot. But it’s so much more than that and can be responsible for almost any and every health problem you can imagine.

In The Fungus Link, Doug Kaufmann discusses how serious diseases such as cancer can even be caused by fungus. I have read all three volumes of the Fungus Link along with Doug’s other books and highly recommend them.

There’s a very good likelihood that you have fungus or parasite problems if you:
•    Have ever taken antibiotics
•    Have ever been given anesthesia
•    Have a lot of stress in your life
•    Eat a lot of sugar or even just consume any amount of sugar regularly
•    Have dandruff
•    Have athletes foot
•    Have mercury fillings in your mouth
•    Have any kind of skin condition
•    Have mood swings
•    Have a tough time focusing and concentrating
•    Have low energy levels
•    Experience bloating after eating
•    Have gas
•    Have trouble sleeping
•    Have vaginal yeast infection
•    Have consistent loose, hard or foul smelling bowel movements
•    Have headaches
•    Have difficulty losing body fat

If you have one or more of these symptoms I would recommend an anti fungal diet for prevention.

The first thing you have to do is cut out all sugars immediately. That is the most important.

The only fruits that are allowed are dark berries, green apples without the skin, lemons, limes and grapefruit. At first you may not even be able to tolerate those.

Right now as much as a single blueberry can cause extreme bloating and abdominal discomfort for me so I’m off all carbs altogether (which would explain at least half of the 15 pounds I lost so rapidly).

The only thing I can comfortably eat right now is meat, chicken or fish and leafy greens. Anything other than that causes stomach problems. So I’ve been on less than fifty grams of carbs per day for over a month now.

I also stopped any type of hypertrophy work and am focusing solely on lower volume strength work at the time. That would be responsible for small size decreases as well.

Obviously, all grains and starchy carbs are out as well, including my beloved sweet potatoes.

All artificial sweeteners except for Stevia are banned.

Coffee, tea and alcohol must also be removed along with mushrooms, pickles, green olives, soy sauce, peanuts and pistachios (another one of my favorite foods).

All dairy except for goat yogurt and kefir, cream and butter are banned as well. So no cow’s milk or whey protein while fighting fungus.

Below is a list of what is allowed on an anti fungal diet plan:

•    All organic meats, fish and poultry
•    Eggs (although some people may find them problematic, as I do)
•    Most vegetables
•    Raw juices
•    Carrot juice with onion, garlic and ginger should be consumed daily as it is a very strong anti fungal cocktail. Eight ounces straight carrot juice alone is fine if you don’t want to add the other ingredients.
•    Dark berries, avocadoes, lemons, limes, grapefruit, green apples
•    Apple cider vinegar (strong anti fungal)
•    Black olives
•    Raw nuts (except peanuts and pistachios)
•    Olive oil, grape seed, flax see, hemp, pumpkin, fish oil, etc.
•    Coconut oil in large quantities (It contains caprylic acid which is a potent anti fungal)
•    Raw goats yogurt and kefir
•    Cream and butter

So essentially we have the Paleo Diet with the omission of certain fruits and very little leeway for cheating or the post workout carbohydrate. It’s really not that difficult to be quite honest. You just have to find the foods you can tolerate. If I could eat more fruits and veggies I would have no problem with it at all.

The only thing I would change would be adding in some raw, grass fed whey protein and some post workout sweet potatoes, along with the occasional organic dessert made with real, raw honey. And some pistachios and pickles.

Right now I break my daily fast with a juice each day around noon consisting of carrots, kale, spinach, garlic and ginger. Then I have a lunch consisting of some type of meat or fish with greens between two and four. Dinner is the same thing around 7 or 8. Most days I’ve been training on nothing but a juice, or completely fasted and my energy is incredible. Before fasted workouts it’s recommended to have some BCAA’s, as long as they are free of harmful artificial ingredients like this one HERE. You never want to be ingesting dyes, sweeteners and other chemical poisons.

If I were trying to gain size it would be necessary to add one more meal in.

The no alcohol or caffeine thing really doesn’t bother me in the least as I have had zero desire to drink recently. I’m sure it will get to me when summer rolls around and we’re going out more but for now it’s fine.

It is recommended to be on this type of diet for six months to ensure that all symptoms have cleared up. After that you can reintroduce the yams and some of the other foods you have cut out. Or you may realize that you don’t even want those anymore. It will be your decision.

It’s also strongly advised to take some kind of yeast cleansing probiotic. That’s why I highly recommend that everyone get on the Floracor –GI. This is an awesome product that I have all my clients on. It’s one of the few supplements that I believe is a must have.

Click HERE to order and use the coupon code JASONF at checkout for a 10% discount.

Eating raw goat’s yogurt or kefir on a regular basis will help heal and recolonize the gut as well.

As for me, I’m feeling incredible. It’s weird but every single time I think I can’t feel any better I change something else and I do. Now I have even more energy than I did a couple months ago when I thought things couldn’t get any better. My sleep is much improved and everything across the board keeps getting better and better. My goal is to keeping getting better and be in the best shape of my life when I hit 40, three years from now.

When you look up the word “healthy” in the dictionary I want my picture next to the definition. So I still have to undo years and years of damage I did to myself in my quest to get big and strong. But I’m definitely on the way.

There have been a few bumps in the road when I’ve eaten the wrong foods but overall everything’s working out well. A couple weeks ago I ran a three day water fast which seemed to help as well. During the three days after fasting I felt like death, but supposedly that’s due to toxins being released. Who knows for sure? I figured it was worth a try.

Training is going incredibly well and believe it or not I actually love the way I feel at this lighter weight. My knees haven’t felt this good in years. I have to keep in mind that I am not meant to be more than 155 pounds naturally so anything over 200 on a long term basis is putting a lot of stress on my joints and internal organs.

I went from 147 pounds at my high school graduation (and the same height I am now) up to 231. All the years I spent over 220 probably weren’t the best thing for my health when you take into account all the eating extra pounding on the knees, etc.

Of course the meat head in me misses being called “big guy” wherever I go, but Id’ say it’s a small sacrifice.

I was just discussing this with my buddy, Dr. Sam Visnic recently and he said that being big and healthy are too completely opposite goals and it’s nearly impossible to be both. He’s right, unless you have freak like John Cena genetics. In that scenario you could be big and healthy. Even then if you are 30-50 pounds above your natural weight of 220 it’s still a ton of extra stress on the body and not healthy.

That’s why I recommend that everyone work on getting down to single digit bodyfat. If you are carrying very minimal bodyfat then getting bigger won’t be as “unhealthy.” The reason will be that you will weigh a lot less at the same size. For example, with the exact same amount of muscle you could weigh 170 and look like GSP or you would weigh 195-200 and look like the average fat ass on the street (please don’t miss the point and start talking about what weight GSP “walks around at.”).

Why not weigh 170? You’d have the same amount of muscle, only your relative strength, conditioning, joints and overall health would be significantly better. Then slowly work your way towards that 190-200 range. For a genetically average, drug free guy that’s a very impressive physique, and as I’ve mentioned in the past, what a lot of jacked NFL running backs weigh.

Don’t get too hung up on scale weight as so many of us have over the years. (Guilty as charged!)

I miss the look of 230 but definitely not the feeling.

Going forward I will slowly recomp, gain back some size, lose some more bodfat and end up somewhere around 190-195 at single digits. That’s probably where I will remain going forward. At this point in my life it’s not worth it to me to be bigger than that anymore and I feel much better at a lighter scale weight.

There’s nothing wrong with wanting to bigger than average. But let’s try to do it in the healthiest way possible. One of the first ways to do that is to fix our digestive systems. After that get as lean as we can and stay that way forever. The American Cancer Society has said that one of the best ways to prevent cancer is to stay lean.

There’s nothing that staying lean doesn’t help improve; be it your chances of remaining cancer free, your ability to last in a fight, the number of chin ups you can do or your success in picking up girls.

Get healthy, get lean, get strong. And then work on the getting big part.

In the mean time start killing those damn parasites and fungus!

Let me know if you have any questions or if I can help you out in any way.

Thanks for reading, my friends.

Stay healthy.

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Give it a shot and let me know how you like it.

Ingredients •    8 oz salmon, cooked •    1 tbsp olive oil •    ¼ cup chopped onions •    ¼ cup chopped red peppers •    ¼ cup chopped green peppers •    1 [...]]]> Here’s a tasty recipe from Dave Ruel’s brand new Metabolic Cooking guide. This recipe, as Dave says, is good when you have leftover salmon. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m obsessed with sweet potatoes. So when you combine them with one of my favorite sources of protein you get what I think is  a pretty delicious meal.

Give it a shot and let me know how you like it.

Ingredients
•    8 oz salmon, cooked
•    1 tbsp olive oil
•    ¼ cup chopped onions
•    ¼ cup chopped red peppers
•    ¼ cup chopped green peppers
•    1 clove garlic crushed
•    1 medium sweet potato, skinless, diced and cooked

Directions
1)    Heat oil in skillet over medium high heat
2)    Sautee onion, bell peppers and garlic in oil
3)    Stir in potatoes and salmon
4)    Cook uncovered, stirring frequently until hot

For more awesome recipes from Dave and his partner Karine, check out Metabolic Cooking, which is brand new and on sale for 52% until Friday.

Click HERE for more info.

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I honestly believe that it’s not really fit for human consumption.  That is, of course, if optimal health and maximal performance are something that interests you.

It’s been said that one teaspoon of sugar lowers your immune system response for four hours.

Hell, just about anything physical ailment you can think of is made worse by sugar.

Do you have any [...]]]> My first hand experiences, coupled with all the reading and research I’ve done on sugar the last couple of years has me really down on it’s consumption by anyone at any time.

I honestly believe that it’s not really fit for human consumption.  That is, of course, if optimal health and maximal performance are something that interests you.

It’s been said that one teaspoon of sugar lowers your immune system response for four hours.

Hell, just about anything physical ailment you can think of is made worse by sugar.

Do you have any of the following?

•    A cold
•    Joint pain
•    Adrenal fatigue
•    ADD,
•    Cancer
•    Kidney or liver problems
•    Osteoporosis
•    Chronic fatigue
•    Fungus or parasites (as over 90% of all people do)

Sugar will only increase your suffering and make it harder to get better, no matter what it is you are dealing with. Literally every single organ in the body is negatively affected by sugar.

Like just about every other manmade food, sugar is unhealthy. Now, I know some people think sugar is natural, but it isn’t. Four hundred years ago sugar wasn’t even available. There was no such thing. We ate nothing but wholesome, nutritious foods that came from the earth naturally. The only food that came close was real, raw honey (which looks nothing like the stuff you get in most grocery stores).

One hundred years ago, the average person used to eat four pounds of sugar per year. Today, the average person consumes over 150 pounds of sugar per year, on average, with some people going as high as 295 pounds per year!

No wonder people are fat and sick.

For all of these reasons and countless others, I can no longer, in good conscience, recommend the consumption of sugar anymore. It’s too dangerous and causes far too many health problems.

That means no more pre, during or post workout shakes containing any sort of sugar like dextrose, waxy maize, maltodextrin, etc. People may think and even argue that these aren’t the same as table sugar. But once they get inside the body the adverse health reactions they cause will be the same.

You could still have a high quality, organic protein shake from grass fed whey or brown rice. But skip the sugar. If a guy looking to gain weight needs to add carbs to a protein shake throw a mashed sweet potato or some oats in there.

About a year ago I took the majority of my coaching clients off sugar. I also recommend that most members of the Renegade Inner Circle do the same.

What we have been doing is what everyone from Arthur Saxon to Vince Gironda to Arnold did post workout; simply eating some carbs like rice or potatoes. That’s a far healthier and better option than slugging a big glass of man made sugar.

You could go with something like sushi or some chicken and a sweet potato. Sure, the white rice in the sushi is technically a “faster” carb but I don’t think it will really make any difference in the end. As long as you refill your glycogen stores between the end of your last workout and the start of your next one you’ll be fine. All the crazy hype about the fastest acting carbs and all that is wildly exaggerated.

Truth be told, from what we have learned about the body, pre workout carbs really won’t hit the blood stream for a few hours anyway, so that whole practice is counterproductive and useless. It’s all just marketing hype to sell workout drinks.

I actually have all my coaching clients go into a workout on little to no carbs and then consume the majority of their carbs later in the day after training. There’s literally zero difference in performance. The added benefit is increased GH secretion and improved fat loss over the course of time.

The one situation where I still recommend a simple sugar is in the rare case of the painfully skinny ripped guy who just needs more easily consumed calories. For a few months, just to get the first 15-20 pounds on him, I’d let him do a post workout shake with some Swedish oat starch, then eat a meal with rice or potatoes an hour later. The skinny fat guy (aka a TRUE hardgainer) doesn’t get the same treatment simply because sugar will only make him fatter. Yes, even if it is post workout. Sugar is sugar.

How to Satisfy a Sweet Tooth
I love me some sweets. I can’t lie. So of course I need to find some way to get my fix. That’s why my favorite carbs are organic Garnett yams. When picking them make sure you get the reddest ones you can find. The redder the better. If they’re too yellow they will taste like carrots.

Wrap them tightly in tinfoil and bake in the oven on 450 for 90-120 minutes. When they’re done they should be like baby food and taste like sweet potato pie. I just scoop them out and mash them up with cinnamon. It’s like a dessert.

If you really wanted to get crazy you could mash them up and put them in a bowl in the freezer for a while. Then whip up some raw cream and top them with that for even more of a dessert.

Organic, raw honey is really the only healthy sugar alternative. It has prebiotic, immune and health supporting qualities to it. It can’t be cooked with since it’s unstable in heat. But you can make some delicious raw desserts with it. Something simple like mixing raw honey, raw cream and cocoa powder makes an incredible chocolate mousse.

Organic maple syrup is okay for occasional use in a dessert (like some of the delicious ones we have in the Renegade Recipe Guide) or on pancakes. Agave is not.

The Reality
Listen, I know that not everyone reading this is going to banish sugar from their diets instantly and never touch it again. We’re all going to slip up once in a while at a holiday gathering or a party. Knowing that, I think it’s doubly important to eliminate the regular consumption of workout drinks and other forms of fake sugar. Save it for the special occasions when you want to have a slice of organic pumpkin pie or chocolate cake. That makes a lot more sense. Ideally you’d never even want to do that but that’s probably asking a bit too much. I know I won’t be able to never have another slice of pie from now ‘til eternity.

Just remember, that it’s not remotely healthy and some forward thinking doctors have even classified sugar as a poison.

Let that sink in for a minute and go dump out your bottle of dextrose in the meantime.

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