Carb Cycling. We have all heard this nutrition plan a thousand times, if not more. However, there’s another nutrition plan which I happened to stumble upon through a friend of mine: Protein Cycling.
This guy is apparently thinking about beginning a program called Optimum Anabolics. Wondering what it is, I looked at the ebook. It is THE most horribly, inconceivably awfully laid out weight lifting ebook I’ve ever seen (Rather resembling a 2nd graders doodling on Microsoft Word).
Getting past the shitty layout, there were pages of classic advice that everyone can find free on the web (muscle magazines suck, you need rest, concentric should be explosive eccentric controlled blablabla) and a royally retarded workout as if designed to defy every principle mentioned beforehand (a 5 day split with everything pre-exhaustion and a 50-50 isolation/compound ratio, 12 supersets per workout of 8-12 reps taken to positive failure. Speak of how muscle magazines suck!).
Anyway, on to the main point, getting past the first facepalms, there was something radical in the program. Its nutrition section was based on something called “Protein Cycling”. Long story short, you cycle between high (1.14 grams/lbs of bodyweight. No, seriously, 1 point fucking 14) and low (30 grams a day) protein phases. In a 24 week cycle, it’s 6 high 3 low 6 high 3 low 6 high).
The idea behind this is roughly the same as how when you enter a very low fat diet, your body rebounds by clinging onto its fat sources and getting even fatter as a result, though there are some more technical details outlined. To quote the book:
â??Thatâ??s rightâ?¦you can actually GROW massive amounts of muscle
WITHOUT all the mountains of protein youâ??ve been brainwashed into
thinking you need!
As a matter of fact, during short periods of extreme protein
restriction, increases in growth hormone ALONE have been known
to rise up to 1000% above their normal levels!
No, thatâ??s NOT a typoâ?¦â?¦â?¦â?¦up to ONE THOUSAND PERCENT!â??
(Anderson, 20 (I seriously fucking did this on a forum))
The genius/madman/cretin behind this idea is Jeff “Muscle Nerd” Anderson. I seriously think that this advice can lead to devastating physiological effects, but we’ve all been heard of the adaptive nature of humankind, yet I doubt that I’d be an eager guinea pig of this experiment.
What do you think of this?