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 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’ve got a few weaknesses based on my measurements.  My biggest?  My arms.  This is rare in most guys, but is a by-product of reading in my early training days that your arms will get enough stimulus from back and chest work.  As a result, I ditched direct arm work.  My back and chest grew, but my arms never did.  (As you can see, I very strongly disagree that your arms will get worked hard enough through back and chest training alone.  And if your arms are getting a hard workout from this kind of training, you’re likely not targeting the chest/back combo very well and need to work on your form.)

In an effort to build a more proportional body, for the past four weeks I have been focusing specifically on my arms.

When you specialize on a muscle group, you will want to focus on that one group — and hard — for a period of about four weeks.  Assuming you do this right, your body will want to give up about partway through the fourth week, and you’ll likely even see a drop in the amount of weight you can lift.  This is completely normal, and will result in a big “rebound” effect when you let that muscle group rest for a week after.

For my arms, I’m working them hard three days a week — Monday, Wednesday, and Saturday.  My other body parts get worked out once a week — again, until failure, but only once a week.

My arms are not given much time to rest and recuperate.  The result of this is that, after the four weeks are up, I’ll rest them for one week and they’ll experience the majority of their growth then.

This isn’t to say they aren’t growing right now.  I’m eating a 4000+ calorie diet — based on a high-fat, high-protein, low-carb protocol, but not exactly the Anabolic Diet — and I’ve put on a good amount of size already.  But I do expect to grow a lot more once I give my arms a week to rest.

But if you want to bring up a lagging body part, I recommend focusing on that one body part for four weeks at a time until you have it where you want it.  Take some rest, re-measure yourself to see what needs work next, and continue the cycle.

I can’t tell you what a wake-up call it is when you see your picture and realize you aren’t big, you aren’t cut — you’re just fat.

But I used to always look at my pictures and scratch my head.  When I look at myself in the mirror, I like what I see.  But in my pictures, there’s always something missing.  And I just couldn’t figure out what that missing something was.

Focusing on my body’s measurements, rather than my weight, revealed what I was missing.

Finding Your Weak Points

I am a big fan of symmetry and proportions when body building.  Steve Reeves, one of the old time “physical culture” body builders from the 1950s, had one of the most proportional, aesthetic physiques ever, in my mind.  He attained this by using precise measurements to reach his goals.

Basically, instead of focusing on your body weight like so many weight lifters do, you focus on how proportioned your muscles are to each other.

I bought a tape measurer for $1.00 and measured my parts.  I found that my arms were severely out of proportion with the rest of my body.  According to the “ideal” measurements, my arms were way, way too small!

After discovering this, I looked at my pictures.  Sure enough, yep, that was one of those “weird” points.  My arms indeed look too small comparatively to the rest of my body.  But in the mirror, my mind always told me, “Hey, they’re looking good!”

Right now, my focus is on building up my arms.  I am eating a little more than 4,000 calories a day, primarily all coming from eggs, cream, and beef.  I do one big “carb-up” meal every four or five days, to see if I get better results than a full-day carb-up every week.  (My body really does not react well to huge carb intakes.)

I have not weighed myself in months.  All I do is measure my body once every week to make sure I am on track to create a proportional physique.

The “Ideal” Proportions

Here are the guidelines I follow.  These are the guidelines proposed by Steve Reeves.

The biggest focus for me right now: calves, neck, and arms should all be the same size.

Here are Steve Reeves’ exact “ideal proportions”:

Muscle to bone ratios:
Arm size= 252% of wrist size
Calf size= 192% of ankle size
Neck Size= 79% of head size
Chest Size= 148% of pelvis size
Waist size= 86% of pelvis size
Thigh size= 175% of knee size

Try Measuring Yourself

• I respect Thibaudeau and all the work he has contributed to T-Nation.
• I’ve used the HSS-100 template to much success in the past.
• My back has been my most neglected part for the past few months, so I’m focusing on it so as not to over-stress my other muscle groups.

One thing you’ll note when reading up on the HSS-100 Back Program is that there are two workouts — chest and arms & legs — that do not have a specified regimen. On the chest and arms day, I’ll be performing Gironda-style 8×8 — eight sets of eight reps with minimal rest — for two sets of chest exercises, two sets of bicep exercises, and one set of tricep exercises. Leg days will follow roughly what Thibaudeau recommends — about 3-4 sets of 6-8 reps. I will be using heavier leg volume later in this transformation process.

My ultimate goal with each workout is to get through each set as fast as possible. My HSS-100 workouts thus far have lasted, maximum, about 30 minutes. I am experimenting with very little rest between exercises, and will have reports back on its success or detriment to me later.

I am also trying to fit in as much extra exercise as possible — walking in the mornings, walking after weight training, high-intensity cardio on off-days, etc — and will try to document it as I go.

My “Workouts” page will always reflect my current routine, as well as outline previous workout routines. I am going to try to document weights used, as well as my “miscellaneous” (non-weight) training.