Why do you eat raw eggs?  You know that only 50% of the protein is bioavailable in the raw form, while all of it is available when cooked.  Eating cooked eggs is far more efficient.

I disagree and my answer is simple, which I’ll get to in a moment.

I’ve heard for years about how cooking eggs increases biotin availability and also makes the protein itself more digestible and bioavailable.  Essentially, the argument is that the human body can only process 50% of the protein in the raw form of an egg, while it is completely available in the cooked form.

However, this is one of those situations where my results – and the results of countless others – simply don’t back up there being a significant difference.  It is, in my opinion, one of those subjects that skinny guys like to quote as scientific truth, while bigger guys silently disagree while eating their raw eggs.

I have had periods where every single egg I ate was cooked.  I have had periods where every single egg I ate was raw.  And I have had periods where some eggs were cooked, and some were raw.

And the truth is, my best results consistently come when I’m consuming most of my eggs raw.  I seem to have an easier time losing fat, and an easier time gaining muscle.  Simply put, I, for whatever reason, look better when I’m eating raw eggs.

(Not to mention food preparation time is cut down significantly when my eggs are just thrown in the blender with other foods.  I’d rather be eating bio-unavailable eggs than no eggs at all.  And, one more thing: my raw egg drinks are DELICIOUS.)

To all the guys out there looking to put on muscle: be your own scientific experiment!  Don’t just take all the studies floated around on the web as absolute final truth and dogma; that’s not the scientific spirit, anyway.

If you aren’t putting on muscle, you should be questioning why not.

Eggs may be more bioavailable in a cooked state, but my body responds better when I eat my eggs primarily raw.  I don’t know why, but I know that that’s just how it is.

Oh, I should probably cite my sources on this one.

Sources: my body and my experience from experimenting on myself.

The Anabolic Diet got me started in the high fat, high protein, low carb lifestyle, but I feel it has some major flaws.  The biggest flaw: I’m not a big fan of re-feed days, let alone entire re-feed weekends.  The re-feed days help the Anabolic Diet sell (”you can eat WHATEVER you want!”) but, in practice, will just make most people fat.  There is also very little other than strict diet information — nothing on training guidelines, best practices for muscle gain or fat loss while eating this way, etc.  (Again, this is just based off of what the real Anabolic Diet is, based on the book by the same name.  Most of what I write about on this site is based on my own experiences, which is why some of my guidelines and recommendations go against what the actual Anabolic Diet recommends.)

It’s for these reasons that I want to pass on a web site — and an entire related community of sites above.  In other words, this site is a perfect companion site to what I write about here.

You can check it out here: Mark’s Daily Apple.

These guys have the high fat, high protein, low carb lifestyle down perfectly.  Their recipe archives are unbelievable, too.  Check it out.

I’ve experimented with every post workout nutrition recommendation around.  My verdict?

Just something with protein after a workout is fine.  Carbs are absolutely unnecessary.

My absolute best results came when I drank two glasses of raw milk after my workouts.  (Like I’ve mentioned in previous articles, I only drink raw milk — if raw isn’t available, I leave the milk out of my diet.)  Although raw milk has carbs in it, it is almost all lactose which is digested by the bacteria and enzymes present in the raw state.

I don’t always have raw milk, though.  If I have BCAAs, I just take in about 15 or 20 grams of them post work out and then have a whole meal 40 minutes to an hour later.  If I don’t have BCAAs, I just eat three or four whole eggs (usually raw, in a shake with half a cup of water and a quarter or half scoop of protein powder for taste), still followed by a whole meal 40 minutes to an hour later.  The main idea is to get about 20 to 25 grams of protein immediately post-workout — this is all it takes to help your body optimally recover.  I feel best when my immediate post-workout nutrition is relatively light as well, but the meal 40 minutes to an hour later is huge.  I would rank the big meal after the post-workout meal as nearly almost as important.

My results eating carbs post-workout vs. not eating carbs shows absolutely no difference.  This is also the experience of many other lifters I’ve met, talked to, or read online.  Try it out yourself — you’ll get the exact same results leaving carbs out of your post workout shake.

Losing weight with a high fat, high protein diet is relatively easy, but takes lots of determination and will power. If you really want to lose weight fast, you can’t giggle about “accidentally” pigging out on a box of Honey Nut Cheerios or a few donuts. If you show self restraint and follow a basic diet very, very low in carbs, you can shed the majority of your unwanted fat in about a month or less.

An Anabolic Diet-style diet, high in fat and protein but VERY low in carbs, is, in my opinion, the absolute best way to lose weight, and surprisingly this is also the opinion of much of the fitness industry.

Avoid any and all carbs you can and you will lose weight even faster. This means no fruit, no “low-carb” wraps (that secretly are full of carbs), no nothing like that. Just meats, veggies, and fats.

Some diets recommend “re-feed” days, where you eat junk in moderation. For your sanity, I think this is a good idea, but I don’t think it’s entirely necessary for your body to have an ENTIRE day dedicated to eating bad foods. I usually just have one day every week and a half or two weeks where I eat some fruits and maybe have one “cheat” meal, and that’s it. I’d rather get my weight loss over with ASAP than delay it with a big, gluttonous “cheat” day.

To calculate calories for a weight loss diet, I usually start by multiplying my body weight by 15 and slowly move my calories down from there if I’m not seeing results within the first week or two. I’ll go as low as my body weight multiplied by 12, but I like to start with a higher amount of calories first. This is because, if you choose your foods intelligently and do your regular workouts along with daily uphill walks for 20 to 30 minutes, then you’ll have no problem losing fat with a little extra food.

If you want the fat to almost melt off in front of you, combine this style of diet with heavy uphill walking every day. You can perform it any time — in the morning, after a workout, or on its own any time during the day. I personally prefer after workouts or sometime in the afternoon if I don’t have a workout that day.

Finally, the diet is usually more protein than fat — I aim for about 60% protein, 40% fat.

And On To The Sample Diet

Here’s a sample diet that I would follow if I wanted to lose some weight right now. Take note of the size of the breakfast — it’s almost the same size as my breakfast in weight gain and maintenance diets. Breakfast, to me, is absolutely the most important meal of the day, and my body can handle eating up to 33% of my daily calories during breakfast every day. Try it out — the energy and feeling I get from eating giant breakfasts is amazing.

Meal 1
Six eggs scrambled
Three tablespoons heavy raw cream
Chopped up veggies
Salt and pepper to taste

Meal 2
Giant salad — as many vegetables as I can handle eating at once, with spinach instead of lettuce
Two hard boiled eggs
Small amount bleu cheese dressing
Quarter pound chicken breast

Meal 3
Quarter pound Chicken breast
Hummus
Tomato sauce made from whole tomatoes
12g fish oil

Throughout workout, I drink BCAAs. If BCAAs are not available, I just drink water.

Post-workout
Two eggs, raw
Two tablespoons heavy cream
Half scoop protein powder to taste
Handful of spinach
Frozen broccoli
(All ground together in a shake)

Meal 4
Same as meal 2

Meal 5
Half cup full fat cottage cheese
One tablespoon peanut butter

Most of the year I find myself on what I call a maintenance diet.  This means I eat enough food and maintain enough activity that I either stay the same body weight, or slowly put on muscle.

On a maintenance diet, I actually eat more carbs than usual, but almost all in the form of fruits — blueberries and navel oranges, mostly.  This is because, through trial and error, I’ve found that eating these foods at the right time actually gives my body more benefits than drawbacks.  (As per the original Anabolic Diet, I still don’t combine carb foods with fat foods — I try to eat an orange before a workout by itself, for example.)  My diet is still very low carb, though.  You need to experiment and see what you react to best.

I also don’t overload on protein on this diet.  While trying to quickly gain muscle, I eat lots and LOTS of protein because my body can take advantage of it.  However, your body does adjust to the amount of protein you feed it after a period of time, meaning that the only way to take advantage of the protein and build more muscle is to eat more of it.  People who eat extremely high-protein diets (2x body weight in grams or more) year-round are only hurting their progress.  I eat roughly 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight while on a maintenance diet, give or take 20 grams.  Yes, I have built muscle with this much protein, but it is a much slower process.  In the long run, though, my results are better because of this.

Finding your maintenance level of calories might actually take a bit of work and trial and error.  My body is happy with around 3.000 calories every day, but it took me a couple weeks to discover that.  A rough way to find your maintenance level is to multiply your body weight by 18 and aim for that many calories or slightly lower.  This should be done only if you already have a relatively low bodyfat level — eating this way while your bodyfat is too high will likely only result in fat gain, and you should follow a weight loss diet first. My rule of thumb is that if my stomach is not flat with relatively defined abs, then I have too much bodyfat.

The breakdown of this diet is again roughly 50% fat and 50% protein, with a little bit of fruit thrown in on the side.

The Sample Maintenance Diet

Meal 1

6 omega 3 eggs, scrambled

Half a banana

Half cup blueberries

3 tablespoons heavy raw cream

One tablespoon ground flax seeds

One tablespoon psyllium husks

(All mixed together.  So delicious.)

One cup raw milk

Pre-workout

One navel orange

Post-workout

One or two cups raw milk (I only drink raw milk — if I can’t have raw, I’ll have something else in its place, like a few eggs)

Meal 2

(All mixed together in a blender for shake.  Blend until creamy and smooth.)

4 omega 3 eggs (raw)

2 tablespoons heavy raw cream

Half cup water

Handful of spinach

1 cup frozen broccoli

Half scoop vanilla protein powder (just for taste)

12g fish oil

Meal 3

Half pound lean ground grass fed beef mixed with broccoli, hummus, flax seeds, psyllium husk, and tomato sauce made from whole tomatoes

12g fish oil

Meal 4

Same as meal 3

I try not to eat anything directly before bed — meal 4 usually is eaten about two hours before sleep, which I prefer to do on the maintenance diet.  I don’t lose any muscle in my sleep because of this.  If I stay up too late, though, I’ll try to have something small before bed, like full-fat cottage cheese.

I also mix up the foods.  Some days I’ll make chicken dishes instead of grass fed beef dishes.  Some days I’ll avoid the heavy meats altogether and just eat dairy-based proteins, like cottage cheese.  Some days I even go extremely light on protein, giving my body a bit of a rest.

Final Words on Maintenance

I’ll be absolutely honest — I really “wing it” on this diet.  I establish the baseline amount of food that my body can use to maintain bodyfat and/or build muscle slowly, and then just eat based around those staple foods.  Some days I’ll eat more, some days I’ll eat less.  The idea is that, by the end of the week, I’ve eaten (on average) my maintenance foods and calorie levels.

I advocate spending only a maximum of 8 weeks at a time in a heavy muscle building phase.  The reason for this is that your body becomes accustomed to the amount and type of food you put in it and eventually your gains will taper off, and worse yet, will become fat gain.  Just ask anyone who has gone on an indefinite “bulking” phase — the first few weeks bring amazing results while the rest of the time is a wasted effort resulting in only extra bodyfat.  Also, if you really work out hard as hell during this phase, you won’t be able to do much more than 8 weeks.

For these reasons, it’s best to do no more than 8 weeks at a time in a heavy mass building phase.  You’ll avoid unnecessary fat gain and still get the biggest muscle-building results.  Think of it as the Pareto, or 80/20. Principle in action — you’re spending 20% of the time to get 80% of the results.

Of course, while eating like this, you’d better be working yourself to the bone in the gym.  You should struggle to move properly after your workouts, and make sure to get some cardio in.  I’m a big fan of uphill walks, either outside or on a treadmill, after weight training sessions and in free time if possible.  If your body has a propensity to putting on bodyfat, cardio is a necessity all year round, even if it is just 15 minutes a day maximum on an uphill walk.

How I Calculate How Much Food To Eat

I’ll be honest, I don’t really count calories anymore.  I go for a baseline amount of protein and fat (in grams) and add more items of food weekly from there.

Of course, I have a rough idea of how many calories I want to eat at first.  I find this amount by multiplying my body weight by 20.  I aim for roughly this many calories at first, maybe a tiny bit less in the first week.  I try to split it between 50% protein and 50% fat, although the percentages get skewed (higher percentage protein, lesser percentage fat) as I add more calories simply because I feel like my body reacts poorly with more than 215 grams of fat in a day.  Always listen to your body — if you feel lethargic, bloated, and just generally gross after eating a particular food or amount of food, then that’s your body’s way of telling you it’s not completely happy.

I calculate an initial amount of food based on the calorie equation and splitting it between proteins and fats.  When gaining muscle, my diet is really revolved around nothing but eggs, red meat (grass fed if possible), cream (raw, unpasteurized cream if possible), and as many green vegetables as I can eat.  As the weeks progress, I just add a couple more eggs or a little more meat into my daily diet.  I don’t calculate precise numbers at all — I just aim to up the calories by anywhere from 250 to 500 calories a day, and I do it by adding three more eggs daily, or another quarter or half pound of meat.  This continues until the end of the muscle gaining phase.

On To The Sample Diet

Here’s an example of how I ate on my last muscle gain phase.

Meal 1

6 eggs

3 tbsp heavy raw cream

Half a banana (not enough carbs to cause any trouble)

Two slices bacon

1 cup raw milk (I don’t drink milk unless it’s raw)

Meal 2

Half pound grass-fed beef

Vegetables

Meal 3

4 eggs

2 tbsp heavy raw cream

5 grams fish oil

Meal 4

Half pound grass-fed beef

Vegetables

5 grams fish oil

Meal 5

Half pound grass-fed beef

Vegetables

5 grams fish oil

Meal 6

2 eggs

1 tbsp heavy raw cream

5 grams fish oil

As the weeks went on, I simply added 250 to 500 calories more of meat or eggs daily so that, by week 8, I was eating almost 5000 calories a day, with more than 3 pounds of meat and two dozen eggs.  (For example: week 1 I was eating the above diet, then weeks 2 and 3 I was eating 3 more eggs a day, weeks 4 and 5 I was eating three more eggs and another half pound of meat, weeks 6 and 7 I was eating another half pound of meat a day, and week 8 I was eating another 6 eggs every day.  I slowly worked up to these amounts, so it wasn’t like a calendar date hit and I was suddenly eating an extra 500 calories.)

Yes, it seems extreme, and most people would scream bloody murder about how they couldn’t handle that.  Whatever — it’s only a couple weeks, and you’ll get ridiculous results from it.  I’m completely healthy with incredibly healthy cholesterol levels and didn’t die from eating this way.  If you don’t want to pile on a lot of muscle really quickly, then don’t do this.  And regardless, as long as you are absolutely working out like a fiend, then your body will put all this food to work.

(WIth that said: I’m not a doctor.  If there are any possibly complications with you eating this way, consult a doctor first.)

That’s The Muscle Gain Diet

Note that I don’t ever call this a “bulking” diet (except for the title of this post).  Again, you wouldn’t be doing it for any more than 8 weeks because, after that long, your body will adjust to it, will stop allocating the food to building muscle, and instead you’ll just get nice and fat.  This is a muscle gain diet, where the goal is only to build muscle — not to “bulk up”, which is really just bodybuilder code for “eat like a pig and get way too fat.”

I think that’s a pile of crap.  In fact, my own personal experiences have led me to know that’s a big pile of crap.

Here are what I find to be the most effective techniques for changing your body composition.

1. Bring your bodyfat down before anything else!

Before anything else, if you’ve got some fat on you, lose it.  Get as low as you can in bodyfat with effective cardio (uphill walks are unbelievably effective on a low-carb diet) and a good weight loss diet.

If your only goal is fat loss, then you’re set when this is done.  If your goal is muscle gain, this is, in my mind, probably the most important step to take since the body will be more likely to convert excess energy (meaning, lots of food) to fat when bodyfat is higher.  Conversely, when bodyfat is low, excess energy is more likely to be put to use by your muscles.

Really, your results will be screwed over big-time if you don’t drop as much bodyfat as you can first.  My general rule of thumb is that if I can’t see my abs clearly, I’m not ready to put on any weight.

2. Find your maintenance level of calories and stay at the same weight or gain muscle slowly

Spend a couple weeks finding a “maintenance” calorie level.  This is the amount of food you can eat daily and stay the same weight and bodyfat indefinitely (combined with your normal exercise).  If you work out like an absolute fiend, this is a level where you can easily build muscle as well.

3. Put on muscle very quickly

This one is for if you’re interested in putting on as much muscle as possible.  Once you know your maintenance caloric intake, jack it up bit by bit over the course of 8 weeks while absolutely working yourself to the bone in the gym.  I’m talking making it hard to walk after your workouts every single day.  When I say “jack it up bit by bit” I mean add an extra 300 to 500 calories to your daily diet every week or two, however comfortable you feel doing it.  By the end of the 8 weeks, you’ll be eating a TON of food, and it’ll even be hard to get it all down, but just remember that you’ll be slowly tapering back off to “maintenance” level as soon as it’s all over.

I don’t recommend any more than 8 weeks of adding muscle at a time (spaced out with a few months of maintenance).  This is simply because your body adjusts to whatever caloric intake you give it, so if you eat piles and piles of food over a period longer than 8 weeks, your body will start to just turn it all into bodyfat.  The more bodyfat you have, the more you put on, as mentioned above.  Anyone who has done a “bulking” diet probably already knows this — the first few weeks you have PHENOMENAL results, and then as time goes on, the results sort of just go away as you put on more and more fat.

Also, if you really eat like a king and work yourself to the bone in the gym, then only 8 weeks will bring you absolutely amazing results.  Trust me.

The main idea, though, is that as long as you vary the amount of food you’re eating, then your body will be kept guessing and won’t reach a plateau.

4. Go back to maintenance calories

After the heavy muscle building phase, you’ve probably seen a small rise in bodyfat.  (If you ever see yourself gaining lots of bodyfat, immediately pull back on your food intake.  This is your body’s way of saying that you are eating too much, and your muscles aren’t getting any kind of special benefit from it.)  Losing that fat and getting absolutely ripped again shouldn’t take any more than a month.  In fact, at this point, going back to your maintenance diet will likely get you shredded pretty fast.  This is because your body had to increase its metabolism in order to match the amount of food you were eating previously, so jumping down over 1,000 calories daily will give you big fat-burning benefits.

How does the yearly cycle work?

I have reached a point where I’m gaining a little bit of muscle on my “maintenance” level of calories and staying at the same low bodyfat.  For most of the year, I’m eating this amount of food, with little variations here and there.  One or two times a year, I’m trying to hit the hard core, 8 week muscle building phase.  I won’t be doing this much into the future since, eventually, I’ll hit the size I want.  The last time I did the 8 week phase, I put on about 10 pounds of muscle, but also wanted to kill myself when it was all over based on how tired my muscles and mind were from the work-outs and excessive food.

Oh, and a quick note: I never judge my accomplishments by my weight.  I almost never weigh myself.  I go by the mirror, weekly progress pictures, and measurements.  Weight is a horrible way to measure your progress since it can vary day-by-day, depending on water intake, carb intake, and so on.

Coming soon: sample weight loss, maintenance, and quick-muscle-building diets.

I am really not a big fan of supplements like many people are.  Fish oil and protein powder are the only two that I keep in my arsenal at all times.  Sometimes I use creatine, but I generally get enough of this nutrient through the red meat that I eat.  BCAAs are a luxury that I enjoy, but don’t always use.

Supplements simply provide an easy way to get nutrients you should otherwise be consuming in your daily diet, but maybe struggle to attain.  If everyone had access to non-grain-fed eggs, 100% raw milk, and lots of grass-fed beef, then we would have little to no need for fish oil, but as it is, our modern diets are horribly deficient in the omega 3s that are so easy to consume from fish oil.  Our supermarket eggs and grain-fed cows contain trace amounts of the omega 3s we need for optimal functioning.

Protein powder, to me, is simply used as a way to flavor my shakes.  I prefer to get my protein from raw eggs and meat.  However, when using a high-quality protein powder in conjunction with raw eggs and cream, you will have one of the most delicious shakes you’ve ever constructed in your life.  Use a cheap-o protein powder and it’ll taste like crap.  You’ve been warned.

People who take a horse-load of pills every day to “get big” are wasting their time.  My greatest gains ever came while I was eating 20+ eggs a day and 2+ pounds of red meat without touching a single supplement.  However, I had access to farm-fresh foods and feel this was a huge determinant in my results.

So, with that said, here are the highest-quality, best-tasting, and ONLY supplements you will need if you are following a high-fat, high-protein diet like the Anabolic Diet.  Each link leads to the best prices I’ve found to buy these items (usually just at Amazon).

• Fish oil: Carlson’s Fish Oil is easily hands-down the highest quality and best tasting fish oil available on the market.  Buy two or three bottles at a time and use two tablespoons a day, for about 20 grams of fish oil total.
• Protein powder: I swear by AtLarge Nutrition’s Nitrean these days.  Like I said, my protein powders are primarily used to flavor my egg and cream shakes, so the flavor and texture is very important to me.  Nitrean easily is the best-tasting, creamiest, and healthiest protein powder on the market.
• BCAAs: like I said, I like BCAAs a lot as an after-workout drink.  Just buy a plain BCAA powder like Optimum Nutrition’s plain BCAA powder here and flavor it with something like Crystal Light.  However, BCAAs aren’t necessary, and a shake made up three eggs and a tiny bit of protein powder will do just fine post-workout.
• Creatine: as long as it says “Creapure,” it’s a high-quality creatine.  I recommend buying a giant tub of Prolab’s Creatine and using about 10 to 15 grams a day, spread throughout the day.  Remember that if you’re eating 2+ pounds a day of red meat, you’re likely already getting enough creatine naturally.

And that’s it.  Like I said, these supplements aren’t necessary on the Anabolic Diet if you’re getting enough healthy foods, but sometimes it’s hard.  Use these as an aid, not as a means to an end.

I struggle to get my veggies down.  I used to be far worse, never eating a single green, leafy bite, but now I’ve conditioned myself to sometimes even crave a small salad.  I never thought I’d see that day.

I largely focus on eating spinach, broccoli, and carrots.  Those are my primary veggies, and I really don’t deviate more than that, although I should.  I will often mix up a large salad for the day made up of those three, along with two or more chopped up hard boiled eggs, and a tablespoon or two of bleu cheese dressing.  I will also often cut up an avocado and toss it in as well.  I will have some of the salad before every meal.

I also, as mentioned in a previous post about how to fit more vegetables into your diet, like to grind frozen broccoli and spinach into my shakes.  Frozen cauliflower blends well, too.

HOW TO COUNT CARBS FROM VEGETABLES

The answer here is simple: don’t!  I don’t count a single carb from my vegetables.  Even if I’m eating slightly more carb-dense veggies — like carrots — the nutritional benefits I get far outweigh the harm of eating a couple carbs.

If I ate over 30 grams of carbs a day from the vegetables I listed before, then my body would be very happy.  Honestly, if you’re eating that many veggies, then you are going to get far more good than bad from such an insignificant carb intake.

THE FINAL SAY

Eat as many fibrous vegetables as possible on the Anabolic Diet and don’t count them toward any carb total.  Coming up with an excuse not to stuff yourself with healthy, beneficial veggies is unnecessary.

My love for raw eggs troubles a lot of people, but it shouldn’t. It’s almost comical to me the mass hysteria that surrounds every facet of eggs — salmonella poisoning, high cholesterol, egg whites versus whole eggs. There are legitimate concerns over eggs, but most are over-blown. This is to the detriment of those who are looking to improve their bodies, because raw eggs are, in my opinion, the greatest tool I’ve got in my arsenal for the Anabolic Diet.

Why raw eggs are safe

Recent data from the U.S. Department of Agriculture reveals that roughly one in every 30,000 eggs is contaminated with salmonella, or 0.003% of all eggs. If you eat a dozen eggs a day on the Anabolic Diet, five days a week when excluding carb up days, then you have eaten 3,132 eggs in the course of one year.

Now let’s assume you’re a smart consumer and don’t waste your money on tons of unnecessary supplements. The money you save can be invested toward higher-quality eggs, which are less likely to be infected with any virus. The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s numbers are highly skewed by low-quality, commercially-produced eggs, because these eggs record the highest incidence of salmonella poisoning. We can assume that, if eating high-quality, farm-fresh eggs from a source like Trader Joe’s or Whole Foods, far less than 0.003% of all eggs you consume will be infected.

In other words, getting salmonella from a raw egg is an absolute anomaly. If eating responsibly, you have well less than a 1 in 30,000 chance of contracting any kind of disease. Statistics show that every time you hop in your car, there is a 1 in 5,000 chance of being in a fatal crash. Almost everything you do carries some sort of risk. Why small, harmless eggs have built themselves to be a great fear for our society, I will never know.

Eggs to avoid

If you still want to be absolutely safe, I can assure you that you can avoid most contaminated eggs fairly easily. These “sick” eggs will be an abnormal color once cracked open, and often contain tell-tale signs around the shells, like cracks or abnormal patterns. I once cracked open an egg that I was going to dump in a shake and it was an abnormal greenish hue. Needless to say, that entire shake got dumped into the drain immediately. (As a side note, this egg came from a bulk batch purchased from Costco. I now only buy fresh eggs from Trader Joe’s.)

Why raw eggs are good for you

There is controversy around whether an egg is healthier cooked or uncooked. I consume mine both ways. At least half, if not more, if my eggs eaten every day are raw, while the rest are either soft boiled (with a soft or runny yolk) or lightly scrambled.

The idea is that when you cook a yolk until it hardens, you are killing a number of nutrients and enzymes inside the yolk. This is the case any time you heavily cook fats, although saturated and monounsaturated fats hold up to heat better than their counterparts. I always eat my omega 3-enriched eggs raw because omega 3s do not hold up to heat, and cooking them negates any benefits I’ll receive from eating them. Most other eggs contain fats that stay stable at higher temperatures.

When I cook, I only cook with fertile eggs.

Eat both the yolk and the white

Raw egg whites contain high levels of avidin, which when consumed in large numbers, can cause a biotin deficiency. Biotin deficiencies can cause all kinds of nutritional problems. Consuming raw egg whites then can pose a problem.

However, the yolk of the egg contains high levels of biotin. When consuming the whole egg, a biotin deficiency is not an issue because the white and yolk counteract each other.

The take-home lesson: don’t take my advice and then consume just raw egg whites! I want you to be eating the entire egg.

The convenience of raw eggs

You could eat all soft-boiled eggs, but when you start to eat lots of them — which, if you want great results on the Anabolic Diet, you will — it will become too difficult to fit that many in, as well as the time to prepare them will be astronomical. Raw eggs provide a convenience that no other food does. Dump a bunch of eggs into a container, put in other anabolic shake ingredients, mix it together, and you have a healthy, calorie-dense, Anabolic Diet-friendly meal!

What kind of eggs to buy

I eat a mixture of omega 3-enriched eggs and fertile eggs. Vince Gironda believed fertile eggs to be the best and most bio-available, while omega 3 eggs help me get more of the essential fatty acids in my diet. Although I mentioned that I will cook with fertile eggs, I still eat both types of eggs raw more often than not.

How to prepare raw eggs

I don’t put my raw eggs into a blender anymore. I used to, but read that Vince Gironda advised against it, since it was essentially homogenizing the eggs, making them into particles too small to be digested and assimilated properly by the body. I don’t know if this is exactly the case with a consumer blender, but I follow the advice regardless.

I use my raw eggs primarily in shakes, like Vince Gironda’s Hormone Precursor Shake.

I put my eggs into a shaker bottle with the rest of my shake ingredients and just shake vigorously, which is enough to get everything to mix together. You can also use a fork to mix the eggs together. I also am a big fan of creating Anabolic Diet Pudding, by mixing one scoop of protein powder with a raw egg and some heavy cream.

Any famous raw egg consumers?

Although it’s taboo these days to admit to eating raw eggs, many top bodybuilders from the 1970s swore by them. (I’m sure many of today’s top bodybuilders are big fans of raw eggs, too.) VInce Gironda was the biggest proponent of raw egg consumption, and the bodybuilders he trained would sometimes eat up to 36 raw eggs a day!

Eat up!

The preceding hopefully will spell out why raw eggs are beneficial to someone looking to pack on more muscle. The convenience and nutrition raw eggs provide are too good to pass up. Raw eggs and the Anabolic Diet are naturally a perfect match.