Intermittent Fasting

First off, I know exactly what your impressions will be after glancing at the title of this post. The word "Fasting" will hit you first and everything else I speak of after the title will be taken with a grain of salt that is the size of someone's testicle who has elephantitis. My advice to you...read the rest of this post and follow it as if it were the word of God being given to you by divine intervention.

Intermittment Fasting (IF for short), what is this you ask. Well IF is a personal eating choice of mine that consists of me fasting for 16 hours of the day while only consuming calories, vitamins, and nutrients during an 8 hour window. Now for those of you that are familiar with this approach I'm sure you will recognize this eating style from Martin Berkhan and his extremely informative site Leangains.com. I would recommend anyone who wants to see countless results from implementing IF to go to this website and take a look at Martin's client before and after pictures. Some of the transformations are truly amazing and quite mind-blowing. I really don't have the time or effort to go into all of the science behind IF so I'll let you read Martin's blog to see that, but what is key about this style of eating is that it allows you to do something fitness gurus thought never was really possible...Gain muscle without gaining tons of fat, and cut fat without losing muscle. Most of you are calling bullshit on this as you read this but let me give you this tid bit of information about my own experience. When I first began IF I was 180lbs, Shoulders 46.5 inches, Arms 14 inches, chest 40.5 inches, forearms 10.25 inches, and waist 34 inches. After four weeks of IF I weigh 175 lbs, Shoulders 49 inches, Arms 15.5 inches, chest still 40.5 inches, forearms 12.25 inches, and my waist has shrank to around 32.75 inches. Oh and I forgot to mention that my BF% during that time went from 12% to 9%. If those numbers don't speak volumes to you then I have no idea what you are doing reading my blog since you are obviously too mentally retarded to understand simple math. So there were my results after only 4 weeks and I'm continuing to use IF as we speak and will continue to update you all, but here is the kicker...IF is not a diet fad. You can use IF as a lifestyle all year round. Don't believe me, well let me explain to you a typical day on IF:

Monday - Eating period 12pm - 8pm, fast from 8pm til 12pm the next day
                Workout day
Tuesday - Monday - Eating period 12pm - 8pm, fast from 8pm til 12pm the next day
                Rest day
Wednesday - Eating period 12pm - 8pm, fast from 8pm til 12pm the next day
                Workout day

Thursday - Eating period 12pm - 8pm, fast from 8pm til 12pm the next day

                Rest day
Friday - Eating period 12pm - 8pm, fast from 8pm til 12pm the next day
                Workout day

Saturday - Eating period 12pm - 8pm, fast from 8pm til 12pm the next day
                 Rest day

Sunday - Eating period 12pm - 8pm, fast from 8pm til 12pm the next day
               Workout day
Monday (Start the workout routine all over)

I work with an 8 day routine that consists of only about 10-11 sets total within each workout day. If I do cardio its only 30 minutes of moderate cardio to get my heart rate up just enough to start burning fat. Depending on your age your ideal heart rate for burning fat could be higher or lower than mine. Mine is around 135-145ish.

I am currently a huge fan of Reverse Pyramid Training as well which you can learn about on many different sites but Martin's site really goes into great detail (Leangains.com). Basically its the notion that the most amount of muscle fibers are stimulated on the first set of your workout for a particular exercise. So with this in mind you would start with your heaviest set (ie Deadlifts 345 X 3) then work your way up by increasing the reps and lowering the weight (Deadlifts 310 X 4, Deadlifts 280 X 5). You should keep in mind however that the first set should be your hardest and where you give everything you have since it is when you will be able to stimulate the most muscle fibers. Also each time you do that lift which should be every 8-9 days you will attempt to increase that first set's weight by 2.5%. If you can't get it that week then do the same amount weight as the week before just more reps until you read upwards of 6-8.

I'm sure many of you saw I said when you do each lift 8-9 days later after you initial lift, and your thinking oh dear lord that is way too much rest time. However studies show that most of us overtrain like a bitch and wonder why we never continue to excel over our plateaus. I too myself was very skeptical of all of this but after trying it out myself and seeing how this methodology can be replicated I am a true believer.

So now that we have discussed that actual lifting and rest days that are involved we should probably talk about the part of working out that has to do with about 80% of our success. Yep thats right your DIET. When I say diet I don't want you all to start thinking I mean diet in the sense of don't eat any red meat or poultry you have to cut your calories by extreme amounts to drop weight. No the way of eating with IF and this weightlifting regimen is simple. On the days you are working out you should eat more carbs and tons of protein. On the days  you are resting you tone down your caloric intake and keep your protein high but your carbs lower than your working out days. Doesn't sound too hard ehh? thats because it isn't, and I'm living breathing proof of it as well as Martin and everyone he has ever consulted with (by the way I didn't consult with him, I just read his information on his site and followed suit). So there you have it a quick rundown of IF and my eating and lifting regimen. Enjoy