I reach my goal, HOW TO MANTAIN IT?

[OgJohnSmith]

As far as hunger goes, get used to it, again if you are not genetically predisposed to be big and lean you will be hungry. Go read some modern day Frank Zane, I think I read he consumes about 1800 cal/day so I’m sure he’s hungry too but he looks fantastic for an older guy. Ha! He looks fantastic to anyone at any age.

Anyway in the first few chapters of UD 2.0, Lyle goes in to detailed explanation on how all that works. Under 10% your body thinks it’s starving to death and there are a whole host of hormones in your body screaming “FEED ME!”.

I coined a new term “Comfortable Starvation”, and just learned to structure my meals and food to make starving manageable. Example: On my low carb/cal days I Intermittent Fast for 20 hours and then consume half of my maintenance calories (1500) in 4 meals for 4 hours. After my last meal I’ve forgotten all about starving for the last 20 hours and go to bed satiated and stay full through the night and most of the morning.

If I were to space the 1500 calories all throughout the day, I’d be starving all day, I’d go to bed starving, and wake up in the middle of the night starving. So you see the way I do it with the 20 hour fast is make starving more “comfortable”.

I know it may sound a bit extreme, but I’m almost 50 and I want to be/stay lean 24/7/365 until the box goes in to the ground and this is what it takes for me so I'm learning to deal with it.

You may be able to take a bunch of gear and accomplish the same, but you can’t do that forever…

 

[warlock]

As far as hunger goes, get used to it, again if you are not genetically predisposed to be big and lean you will be hungry. Go read some modern day Frank Zane, I think I read he consumes about 1800 cal/day so I’m sure he’s hungry too but he looks fantastic for an older guy. Ha! He looks fantastic to anyone at any age.

Anyway in the first few chapters of UD 2.0, Lyle goes in to detailed explanation on how all that works. Under 10% your body thinks it’s starving to death and there are a whole host of hormones in your body screaming “FEED ME!”.

I coined a new term “Comfortable Starvation”, and just learned to structure my meals and food to make starving manageable. Example: On my low carb/cal days I Intermittent Fast for 20 hours and then consume half of my maintenance calories (1500) in 4 meals for 4 hours. After my last meal I’ve forgotten all about starving for the last 20 hours and go to bed satiated and stay full through the night and most of the morning.

If I were to space the 1500 calories all throughout the day, I’d be starving all day, I’d go to bed starving, and wake up in the middle of the night starving. So you see the way I do it with the 20 hour fast is make starving more “comfortable”.

I know it may sound a bit extreme, but I’m almost 50 and I want to be/stay lean 24/7/365 until the box goes in to the ground and this is what it takes for me so I'm learning to deal with it.

You may be able to take a bunch of gear and accomplish the same, but you can’t do that forever…

Thank you for explaining.

From what I can see, the book has 2 approaches, one for fat loss, the other for mass gains?

Does the book give you exact macros and calories to follow depending on your age, body type, weight etc...?

Does it provide diet samples?

When you use it for fat loss there are no carbs 4 days of the week?? Does he allow fats though or is it straight protein?

During the mass-gaining phase, are carbs included on a daily basis?

Does the ebook include workouts for both phases?

The approach looks interesting. I might look into getting the ebook.

 

[OgJohnSmith]

Lyle is old-school and his work is an accumulation on the last 20 years of diet science and bodybuilding and gives much credit to the legend Dan Duchaine and his book Bodyopus. He goes in to elaborate detail on how the human body works with hormones, macros, calories, fat loss, and muscle gain, I’d say the information is indispensable for anyone in our sport.

Example: most everyone knows that a pound of fat is 3500 calories but did you know the body has to burn extra calories to metabolize that pound of fat. So burning a pound of fat from your body in reality takes about 3700-3800 calories of exercise not the 3500 we think we know.

He doesn’t provide diet samples, he states right off this isn’t a recipe book but he does give diet guidelines. For fat loss no more than 60 grams/day of carbs, but for mass gain he recommends 100grams/day on the low-carb days. Fats are allowed but not preferred if you are wanting to get/stay lean because they are the easiest for the body to convert to FAT!

The diet is tightly integrated with the training so workouts are provided for both stages, actually there is an endurance phase as well.

What I like the most is the integration of diet and training with the days of the week. Once you get a few 7 day cycles under your belt (you will need to do some tuning along the way) you can almost predict how you will look on any given day 1 week, 2 weeks, 10 weeks from now and I like that sense of control.

In my past attempts to get under 10% I couldn’t tell you what I’d look like the next day much less next week on any given day. However I can tell you I'm not a naturally lean person.

I use a spreadsheet to track my progress and you’ll need something like MyFitnessPal to track your diet, good luck with it.



I'm 5'10" and last year I was this lean at 201, this time I'm 210. Not too bad for an old man on HRT and diet is the biggest factor in the equation.

 

[warlock]

Lyle is old-school and his work is an accumulation on the last 20 years of diet science and bodybuilding and gives much credit to the legend Dan Duchaine and his book Bodyopus. He goes in to elaborate detail on how the human body works with hormones, macros, calories, fat loss, and muscle gain, I’d say the information is indispensable for anyone in our sport.

Example: most everyone knows that a pound of fat is 3500 calories but did you know the body has to burn extra calories to metabolize that pound of fat. So burning a pound of fat from your body in reality takes about 3700-3800 calories of exercise not the 3500 we think we know.

He doesn’t provide diet samples, he states right off this isn’t a recipe book but he does give diet guidelines. For fat loss no more than 60 grams/day of carbs, but for mass gain he recommends 100grams/day on the low-carb days. Fats are allowed but not preferred if you are wanting to get/stay lean because they are the easiest for the body to convert to FAT!

The diet is tightly integrated with the training so workouts are provided for both stages, actually there is an endurance phase as well.

What I like the most is the integration of diet and training with the days of the week. Once you get a few 7 day cycles under your belt (you will need to do some tuning along the way) you can almost predict how you will look on any given day 1 week, 2 weeks, 10 weeks from now and I like that sense of control.

In my past attempts to get under 10% I couldn’t tell you what I’d look like the next day much less next week on any given day. However I can tell you I'm not a naturally lean person.

I use a spreadsheet to track my progress and you’ll need something like MyFitnessPal to track your diet, good luck with it.



I'm 5'10" and last year I was this lean at 201, this time I'm 210. Not too bad for an old man on HRT and diet is the biggest factor in the equation.

Man, you look incredible, very lean in that photo and if you are that lean now and a few pounds heavier, kudos to you. That's a nice look.

Thanks for all that information. I am going to look into his approach.

Last question, he does not provide diet samples but diet guidelines? Does this mean, he provides you with the starting macros and calories you should consume based on weight, age etc..?

 

[Elvia1023]

As mentioned being on your blast doses (especially tren) brings a certain look you can't duplicate when off. But 100% you could maintain all your size and most of your condition on trt and some peptides/hgh and a great diet. You could even get leaner but drop alittle size but nothing too dramatic. But you are not gonna have the same look off like you would in the middle of a tren cycle.

 

[Designbuilt]

i'd keep doing what i'm doing, but personally i take an extreme cheat day once per week, sometimes every five days... otherwise, i get too skinny, i was a 119lb boxer at this same height, so even though i get fat, i can get too thin if i diet too long and feel weak and like shit... trust me, you must cheat, you will feel and look way better...

 

[OgJohnSmith]

Man, you look incredible, very lean in that photo and if you are that lean now and a few pounds heavier, kudos to you. That's a nice look.

Thanks for all that information. I am going to look into his approach.

Last question, he does not provide diet samples but diet guidelines? Does this mean, he provides you with the starting macros and calories you should consume based on weight, age etc..?

Thanks! That pic I just shot yesterday in the office while writing that post, last year I was a bit smaller and not quite as lean.

Well anyway on the 4 low carb/cal days (mon-thur), calories are .5 of maintenance, protein is minimum 1 gram per pound of lean body mass (LBM), carbs are maximum of 60g, fat makes up the rest. My profile for the 4 days looks like this; 1500 calories, pro 210, carb 55, fat 45.

On the carb up day (fri), calories are twice maintenance, protein minimum is 1 gram per pound of LBM, carbs are 12-14 grams per pound of LBM, keep fats as low as possible because the carb/fat combo is conducive to fat storage. My profile for the day looks like this; 6000 calories, pro 300, carb 1100, fat 60.

Saturday is maintenance calories; 60% carbs, 30% protein, 10% fat.

Sunday is maintenance calories; Isocaloric 33% carbs, 33% protein, 33% fat.

On Monday you start all over again. I’m on week 7 now and like I said I dropped 3% BF and gained a pound or 2 of LBM. It’s a lot of time an work to lose only a few % BF but it’s better than losing the BF and the LBM too! I’m not like some of these guys that have tons of LBM to spare when cutting.

These guidelines are primarily based on LBM and for cutting at any age, for mass gain you’ll have to read the book.

 

[warlock]

Thanks! That pic I just shot yesterday in the office while writing that post, last year I was a bit smaller and not quite as lean.

Well anyway on the 4 low carb/cal days (mon-thur), calories are .5 of maintenance, protein is minimum 1 gram per pound of lean body mass (LBM), carbs are maximum of 60g, fat makes up the rest. My profile for the 4 days looks like this; 1500 calories, pro 210, carb 55, fat 45.

On the carb up day (fri), calories are twice maintenance, protein minimum is 1 gram per pound of LBM, carbs are 12-14 grams per pound of LBM, keep fats as low as possible because the carb/fat combo is conducive to fat storage. My profile for the day looks like this; 6000 calories, pro 300, carb 1100, fat 60.

Saturday is maintenance calories; 60% carbs, 30% protein, 10% fat.

Sunday is maintenance calories; Isocaloric 33% carbs, 33% protein, 33% fat.

On Monday you start all over again. I’m on week 7 now and like I said I dropped 3% BF and gained a pound or 2 of LBM. It’s a lot of time an work to lose only a few % BF but it’s better than losing the BF and the LBM too! I’m not like some of these guys that have tons of LBM to spare when cutting.

These guidelines are primarily based on LBM and for cutting at any age, for mass gain you’ll have to read the book.

Thanks a lot for taking the time to explain and post all this information. After seeing your photo and hearing your thoughts, I believe this is a solid program. I will be looking into it

 

[Growman]

90 minutes of cardio a day is a lot, you can scale that back and add in some calories.

But Kinglewy and Mytreefiddy are 100% correct. You can never maintain how lean you are when you drop some gear and add in some calories, you have to be willing to accept the fact that you are trying to do something different (gaining mass) No matter what your not going to look as lean, as long as you dont go nuts and completely come off your diet and completely drop cardio you should be ok, you should stay somewhat lean, but not 6-8%.

Last winter I finally stayed lean year round, not single digits, but pretty lean. I could see my abs in Jan and Feb and I come completely off gear from Sept through March. I just ate really clean. I went from about 225 when I was on to 215 when I was off and lean, and I'm also 5'11.