Intermittent Fasting: Leangains

Diet and Nutrition
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[quote]JJSchmidt wrote:
Glitch.e, foods were good quality… the best, really. lean beef, chicken, turkey, oats and brown rice, green veg and a little fruit. Simple carbs post workout, with a isolate protein. I was eating every 2-3 hours, felt lethargic some days and bloated too. I seem to gain weight, but the few kg’s are clearly around my mid section.

I know one should not care about abs during a bulk, but when they are well hidden behind a layer of fat, and no noticeable muscle gain in other areas, well that’s just depressing… i’ve tried 8 week bulks, 12 week bulks, god, I’ve even tried a full year bulk, only to feel like shit for most of the year… (maybe it’s a hormonal thing, that is a separate issue altogether) Because my experiences of bulking have been so poor, the IF or Carb backloading sounds interesting…

I might follow your advice, and try CBL for a couple of months. Thanks.

[/quote]

What I have highlighted in bold sounds like me a couple years ago. The problem? Eating so many meals. You are never really burning fat and are always storing it. I used to feel really tired after lunch when I was eating throughout the day. It was quite miserable trying to bulk this way.

If you have fat to lose I recommend Leangains to start (IMO to teach the body how to burn its own fat stores) and then transition to Carb Backloading as you get leaner. If you are already happy with your leanness and want some muscle and recomp then go with CBL.

I am now convinced that the body (at least my body) needs periods without food in order to maximise fat loss.

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[quote]JJSchmidt wrote:
Interesting Vince, interesting. How do you find (heavy) lifting without food? and when you say; 1pm eat - 9pm stop eating, do you mean one meal at 1 and another at 9? OR you eat shit loads between the hours of 1 and 9? Just curious.[/quote]

Well I am lifting heavier and heavier but I am not benching 315 raw… I noticed working out fasted helped me to focus. I just take a cup of coffee + BCAA before training. Another thing I noticed is that after 20/30 min workout, I always had a stimulating, exciting feeling, and when training fasted, this feeling is stronger and last longer.

It would be interesting to see if the heavy lifters here have tried this and if they feel that they can lift heavy. For some reason, I do believe that at one point, you will need more carbs if you want strength / hypertrophy, before the workout.

For the meals, I basically start eating at 1 PM. I take a big meal (1500 to 2000 cals, 70 to 100g prots) then I eat a protein snack at something like 4 PM, with 50g protein + some carbs on training days, or some fats on rest days, and at evening, another meal (1000 to 1500 cals on training days, less on rest days, but always a lot of prots). Before closing the feeding window at 9 PM, I usually have a casein shake or some cottage cheese.

I noticed a very slight increase in weight and a very noticeable appearence of abs, very fastly.

I have done 3 bulks in my life :

  • The very first one (6 months), I gained something like 60% muscle, 40% fat, and was quite happy
  • The second one was the cleanest, and I gained 50% muscle, 50% fat
  • The third one is very recent, it was not so clean and I gained 30% muscle 70% fat

I got ectomorph skeletal : my bones aren’t wide. My strength gains are slow, I am injury prone and I learnt two things in the past :

  • I can gain fat around my waist and on upper legs, very fastly, despite was I believed when kid
  • My gains will be slow

Now, I am not jacked. I plan to be, but I cannot stand having a huge round belly when I work out 3 to 4 times a week. And I cannot eat 6 clean meals a day because I work 50 hours a week.

The only thing I don’t like about leangains is that a lot of guys in the report just want that Tyler Durden style. That’s not my plan. But I will stick to it for some weeks and see what happens.

23

Some of my best training sessions are fasted - though if fasted for too long then they can take a hit. Before I squat I rarely have any food, just some coffee with heavy cream (mainly because we start squatting at 10:30 and I tend to roll out of bed at 9:45 so no time for food). If I’ve had a big meal the night before it doesn’t really bother me much and lately I’ve been hitting some PR’s while dropping weight as I prep for this meet on Saturday. I tend to be affected more if I’m lower on calories and it’s a late training session - say 7:30 PM or so.

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Appreciate the feedback guys… Gli:tch.e, your advice is great, thanks.

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I was on the warrior diet and gaining muscle.

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[quote]Tech-Junkie wrote:
I was on the warrior diet and gaining muscle.[/quote]
Cool story bro…Had to

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Fasting is catabolic… there is NO WAY you can grow while doing that…

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The PWO recovery period lasts up to 24 hours
I dont think waiting 1 hour is going to be harmful

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[quote]eightohfive wrote:
Fasting is catabolic… there is NO WAY you can grow while doing that…[/quote]

Lol. I’m IFing AND not running a traditional bodypart split… I think that means I’m just going to waste away and die or something.

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no, you’re already dead, and this is your mother posting, having gone mad with grief

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[quote]eightohfive wrote:
Fasting is catabolic… there is NO WAY you can grow while doing that…[/quote]

I always wondered how bullshit this catabolic thing was. I remember fearing being in a catabolic state if not feeding every 3 hours. Catabolismophobia sucks.

Anyways, iirc, catabolism is fuel for anabolism. Using my brain, I can just think of fasting a way of burning fat to release energy and using this energy to build muscle when that good amino acids are feeded to the body.

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[quote]caveman101 wrote:
no, you’re already dead, and this is your mother posting, having gone mad with grief[/quote]

Lolol.

… :cry: MOM WHY ARE YOU WITH HIM???

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[quote]Vince_fr wrote:

[quote]eightohfive wrote:
Fasting is catabolic… there is NO WAY you can grow while doing that…[/quote]

I always wondered how bullshit this catabolic thing was. I remember fearing being in a catabolic state if not feeding every 3 hours. Catabolismophobia sucks.

Anyways, iirc, catabolism is fuel for anabolism. Using my brain, I can just think of fasting a way of burning fat to release energy and using this energy to build muscle when that good amino acids are feeded to the body.

[/quote]

The idea of fasting being too catabolic to allow gains is absolute horseshit, especially if you are pulsing with casein hydrolysate or EAA’s during the fast (I suppose BCAA’s are cool too, though EAA’s have given me substantially better results).

I feel like most people who lose weight when they don’t eat ten meals a day end up doing so at least partially due to psychologically sabotaging themselves (excessive preoccupation/stress or simply the expectation that they will drop weight). This is just speculative though.

34

[quote]bigmac73nh wrote:

The idea of fasting being too catabolic to allow gains is absolute horseshit, especially if you are pulsing with casein hydrolysate or EAA’s during the fast (I suppose BCAA’s are cool too, though EAA’s have given me substantially better results).

I feel like most people who lose weight when they don’t eat ten meals a day end up doing so at least partially due to psychologically sabotaging themselves (excessive preoccupation/stress or simply the expectation that they will drop weight). This is just speculative though.[/quote]

Well I don’t how about losing weight. I seriously doubt that a serious lifter getting his 1 g/ lb protein a day will lose muscle easily… I mean, you could even fast 1 or 2 days before your body seriously start to eat muscle.

However, I have serious doubts on the ability to really bulk doing IF Leangains. All that I saw on LG.com & Rippedbody were huge fat loss with weight stability (so lean mass gain), however, I never saw a big muscle gain and body transformation there…

35

[quote]gkeeper24 wrote:

[quote]Tech-Junkie wrote:
I was on the warrior diet and gaining muscle.[/quote]
Cool story bro…Had to[/quote]

I am really not sure what it is that you are attempting to say.

36

[quote]Vince_fr wrote:

[quote]bigmac73nh wrote:

The idea of fasting being too catabolic to allow gains is absolute horseshit, especially if you are pulsing with casein hydrolysate or EAA’s during the fast (I suppose BCAA’s are cool too, though EAA’s have given me substantially better results).

I feel like most people who lose weight when they don’t eat ten meals a day end up doing so at least partially due to psychologically sabotaging themselves (excessive preoccupation/stress or simply the expectation that they will drop weight). This is just speculative though.[/quote]

Well I don’t how about losing weight. I seriously doubt that a serious lifter getting his 1 g/ lb protein a day will lose muscle easily… I mean, you could even fast 1 or 2 days before your body seriously start to eat muscle.

However, I have serious doubts on the ability to really bulk doing IF Leangains. All that I saw on LG.com & Rippedbody were huge fat loss with weight stability (so lean mass gain), however, I never saw a big muscle gain and body transformation there… [/quote]

There’s a lot of criticism leveled against IF and similar approaches from dudes who either don’t think it’s possible to eat enough during a restricted feeding window or think that going for any real period of time without eating will be detrimental to the mass that they’ve built… you don’t have to look too hard to find it. I obviously disagree with those mentalities, I was just saying that they are out there.

Lol notice that I said ‘gain’ and not ‘bulk.’ Someone who is ‘bulking’ wouldn’t really have much need for IF anyway. Beginners who are trying to make their initial gains should be eating everything in sight at all times, so I wouldn’t really recommend IF for them anyway. They’re worried about building a foundation of muscle and maintaining a high level of leanness shouldn’t be a concern for them anyway because they won’t have any good muscle to show at their stage of development.

For someone who is BBing and trying to gain lean mass at a later point in their training career, I don’t think there’s a substantial difference between the amount of muscle that will be gained through bulking hard then cutting down vs. gaining more slowly while staying pretty lean. Also I’m failing to see how weight stability in the midst of fat loss, or recomposition, doesn’t constitute ‘body transformation.’

EDIT: Talking natty here BTW, though I think that was at the very least heavily implied lol. Just want to be clear.

37

[quote]bigmac73nh wrote:

[quote]Vince_fr wrote:

[quote]bigmac73nh wrote:

The idea of fasting being too catabolic to allow gains is absolute horseshit, especially if you are pulsing with casein hydrolysate or EAA’s during the fast (I suppose BCAA’s are cool too, though EAA’s have given me substantially better results).

I feel like most people who lose weight when they don’t eat ten meals a day end up doing so at least partially due to psychologically sabotaging themselves (excessive preoccupation/stress or simply the expectation that they will drop weight). This is just speculative though.[/quote]

Well I don’t how about losing weight. I seriously doubt that a serious lifter getting his 1 g/ lb protein a day will lose muscle easily… I mean, you could even fast 1 or 2 days before your body seriously start to eat muscle.

However, I have serious doubts on the ability to really bulk doing IF Leangains. All that I saw on LG.com & Rippedbody were huge fat loss with weight stability (so lean mass gain), however, I never saw a big muscle gain and body transformation there… [/quote]

There’s a lot of criticism leveled against IF and similar approaches from dudes who either don’t think it’s possible to eat enough during a restricted feeding window or think that going for any real period of time without eating will be detrimental to the mass that they’ve built… you don’t have to look too hard to find it. I obviously disagree with those mentalities, I was just saying that they are out there.

Lol notice that I said ‘gain’ and not ‘bulk.’ Someone who is ‘bulking’ wouldn’t really have much need for IF anyway. Beginners who are trying to make their initial gains should be eating everything in sight at all times, so I wouldn’t really recommend IF for them anyway. They’re worried about building a foundation of muscle and maintaining a high level of leanness shouldn’t be a concern for them anyway because they won’t have any good muscle to show at their stage of development.

For someone who is BBing and trying to gain lean mass at a later point in their training career, I don’t think there’s a substantial difference between the amount of muscle that will be gained through bulking hard then cutting down vs. gaining more slowly while staying pretty lean. Also I’m failing to see how weight stability in the midst of fat loss, or recomposition, doesn’t constitute ‘body transformation.’

EDIT: Talking natty here BTW, though I think that was at the very least heavily implied lol. Just want to be clear.[/quote]

Another point for LG is that damn, it feels GOOD. It feels good to work fasted the morning with coffee in blood, I feel a lot of energy, my head is clear. I cannot afford a bulk right now (I need one, but too much work to do), and doing 2 /3 meals with LG feels very good. I lost a lot of fat too.

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I don’t really give two shits what the nay-sayers believe. IF’ing works. Whether you want to cut or gain, it’s a legitimate approach. I myself serve as a good example, i’m almost 8lbs heavier than i was 6 months ago and the leanest i’ve ever been.

39

IF is a great system, which is increasing becoming known for its other health benefits separate from its ability for ppl to loss body fat whilst sparring lean mass. I disagree that you couldn’t increase lean mass with IF. I have, although it MIGHT be a bit slower than if I was just going hog wild all day, I am also eating below maintenance and 6 days out of the week I am eating less than 30 carbs a day. I am not a huge supporter of the traditional bulking most people do. LOVE ME SO IF!

40

To summarize :

Pros :

  • Fast fat loss
  • Do not impeded strength gaibs
  • Feeling great @ morning
  • Regulated insulin
  • Increased anabolic response
  • Slow lean mass gain
  • Ability to cheat / eat out easily sometimes
  • Fits well when you live a working life

Cons :

  • Not very fast mass gain
  • Have to eat a shitload of proteins in a 8 hours window, without mighty breakfast, can mean very huge meals

Not really proven but reported :

  • Some reported a weaker immunitary system ?
  • Not a lot of insight on the long run
  • Contradictory studies about insulin and skipping breakfast