If you have the time, I really recommend trying to follow a four-to-eight week training phase while eating a heavy Anabolic Diet-style menu in South America.

I’m traveling through here for a few months and the food is amazing.  I’m buying a pound of grass-fed steak for $2.13 US.  I think my local Whole Foods in the USA charged $18 for the same thing.  I can find neighbors who sell eggs rich in omega 3s, simply because their chickens eat worms off the ground and nothing else.  Cream, butter, everything I need is here, and it’s cheap and high quality.

The best part?  If you can get to Ft. Lauderdale, FL (check Kayak.com for flights there) you can fly out from Spirit Airlines for dirt cheap.

I know this isn’t feasible for most of you, but I just wanted to throw the idea out there.  Hopefully it’ll inspire someone.

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

The Anabolic Diet is just another take on these high protein, high fat diets.  It features the same foods, in the same ratios, in the same amounts, with just a few tweaks here and there, like the idea of weekend carb loading.

I want to present to you another take on this type of dieting, that of Vince Gironda.  When entering a muscle gain phase — NOT a “bulking” phase, which most people associate with gaining lots of fat as well — Gironda would recommend a diet very similar to what we know as the Anabolic Diet.

Vince Gironda’s trainees would have 24 to 36 eggs a day — usually all raw eggs in shake form — mixed with heavy cream and protein powder.  This was his Hormone Precursor Shake, and it was consumed all throughout the day.  For whole meals, one would consume a pound or two of beef, totaling two or three pounds for the day.

Every fourth day, a trainee would have one very big carbohydrate meal to replenish glycogen.  Then the cycle continued.

Trainees would follow this for about six to eight weeks, then back off it for a while.

If you do the math on those foods listed above, this comes out to roughly the Anabolic Diet’s recommended 55/45 ratio of fat to protein.

This is simply to show that the Anabolic Diet is not the ONLY way to diet when one is sensitive to carbs.  It is just one of many ways to eat high protein and low carb.  Experiment and find what works best for your body.

I have it side-by-side with one of my earlier pictures, from January 8 of this year.

(Side note: oh, how I need a tan!)

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.

I highly recommend using some kind of cardio activity while on the Anabolic Diet.  The most effective cardio, for me, might surprise you.

Walking.

That’s it.  Vigorous walking.

When I walk is more important, though.  I will either walk in the mornings on a near empty stomach — filled up by only about 5 to 10 grams of BCAAs — or after a heavy workout, while my heart rate is elevated and I’m already breathing very heavily.  The length of the morning walks are usually around thirty minutes or more, depending on my goals.  Post-workout, I aim for about fifteen to twenty minutes.  I prefer walking on a treadmill, elevated anywhere from 8% to 12%, at about 3.5MPH.  I will walk outside if a treadmill is not available — I just have to make sure that I really go hard when I don’t have a treadmill to force me!

Other forms of cardio are very effective as well.  Many lifters prefer sprinting, and I too am a fan.  Some prefer jogging, but I limit how much jogging I do; I once lost lots of weight using mostly morning jogging, and a lot of that weight ended up being muscle.

I have found that, for me, the most effective cardio on the Anabolic Diet is vigorous walking either in the mornings or after workouts.  The combination of the high-fat diet with this lighter form of cardio seems to provide the best fat-burning, muscle-gaining environment for my body.

I dose pretty heavily on BCAAs before, during, and after workouts.  I will also sometimes have some BCAAs throughout the day, depending on my current goals.  The drawback to all of this?

BCAAs are expensive.  Unless you know the trick to getting them cheaper.

There are two different kinds of BCAA supplements used: capsule and powder.  I opt strictly for the powder.  I buy a combination of generic BCAA powder, which is absolutely retched and putrid in taste but very cheap in price, and Scivation X-Tend flavored powder, which tastes like grown-up Kool-Aid.

What I do to lower the price of my BCAAs should be fairly obvious now.  I use one small scoop of the X-Tend — which, again, is VERY sweet but also zero-carb — and mix it with a tablespoon or more of the generic powder, all in a shaker bottle of water.  The X-Tend masks the disgusting flavor of the generic powder and, in fact, makes it somewhat palatable.

This makes mega-dosing BCAAs very easy, very cheap, and in fact, pretty tasty.

I buy the generic powder from BulkNutrition.com.  It is available here.

I buy the Xtend from BulkNutrition.com as well.  It is available here.  I recommend the watermelon flavor.

Eating on high fat, high protein days

Through the majority of the week, when you eat high fat & high protein meals, if your activity levels don’t match your calorie consumption, you will gain fat! Just because you’re avoiding carbs doesn’t mean you’re going to magically avoid any fat gain from excessive calorie consumption. This is a common misconception on the Anabolic Diet.

Simply keep an eye on how many calories you consume during the week. The Anabolic Diet is amazing at getting your muscle-building hormones cranking, so if you drop your calories a bit, it will likely not hurt you at all.

Eating on high-carb, medium-fat “carb-up” days

Most people become de-railed when they enter their carb-up days. This is where I stumbled the most.

The original Anabolic Diet calls for two carb-up days per week, usually Saturday and Sunday. I followed this plan of action for some time. The Anabolic Diet worked, but with one flaw: I gained way more fat than I wanted.

My personal recommendation is to listen to your body. Most people who go on the Anabolic Diet will be those whose bodies respond poorly to carbs — I know that is the case for my body. My body absolutely loves when I eat lots of meat, lots of fats, and lots of proteins. But my body also loves a carb-up day — and only that.

That’s right, my recommendation for those who find themselves packing on a little too much pudge: just one carb-up day per week.

On this subject, the great Vince Gironda used to suggest one carb-up meal every four days. That kind of frequency would probably provide amazing results, too.

The bottom line on fat gain while on the Anabolic Diet

Monitor how many calories you’re bringing in and how your body is reacting. Take measurements week-to-week. If you start to notice that you’re gaining more fat than necessary, there are a couple steps you can take.

First, lower your calories during the week. If your activity does not match how much you eat every day, then you don’t need a ton of calories. If you are engaging in one weight training session every other day and nothing else, then you don’t need 4000 calories!

Second, try limiting yourself to just one carb-up day per week rather than the originally-recommended two. If your body is sensitive to carbs, then two days per week will only result in extra fat and not much extra muscle.

Third, try ramping up your activity. Go for a thirty minute walk in the mornings, walk for fifteen minutes after your weight work-outs, or do some calisthenics before bed. Just get moving and get more active!

Fat gain on the Anabolic Diet is very, very real. There is a mystique surrounding the Anabolic Diet that somehow you will never gain fat on it, but that is junk. If you are lazy and do not plan your days well, you are guaranteed to build a decidedly unimpressive body.

Yeah, right.

I like to eat between 20 and 40 grams of fish oil every day. It’s funny, when I see that amount, I don’t think twice, but the average person absolutely freaks out. “That’s crazy! Isn’t that way too much!?” And then they go back to eating their slice of pizza containing 20 grams of fat alone.

What I’m trying to spell out is: 20 grams of fish oil is not much at all. 40 is the maximum of what I’ll go to, but it’s really not that much more — especially when you’re on a diet that requires eating 200-plus grams of fat a day.

My reasoning behind eating this much fish oil is simple. Evolutionarily speaking, we ate a diet much higher in omega 3s than what is consumed today. Not only were wild meats naturally much higher in omega 3 content (as is the case with any naturally “grass-fed” meat sold in a supermarket), but our eating habits led to consuming more omega 3-rich parts of animals. Our early human ancestors would often be subjugated to eating the scraps left by other predators, which included bone marrow and brains, both very high in omega 3.

We would consume from 300 to 400 grams of omega 3 fatty acids every week as hunter-gatherers, all from natural sources. Corn-fed meats today, as well as farm-raised fish, contain a miniscule fraction of the omega 3 content of their natural, grass-fed (or wild) counterparts. What this means is that, now, naturally occurring omega 3s in our diets are very, very rare.

And most people scoff at supplementing with more than 20 grams of fish oil per week?

When I eat 20 to 45 grams of fish oil a day, I feel absolutely fantastic. My body reacts very well. You can’t go anywhere on any nutritional web site without reading about the benefits of omega 3s, so I won’t spell it out here, but I will tell you this: eating what are considered large doses of it will only benefit you, not harm you. I personally argue that eating small doses is more likely to cause you harm than anything else.

I recommend using Carlson’s Fish Oil, which is a lemon-flavored oil, not a capsule-based product. I use two or three tablespoons of it a day. Without Carlson’s, I would be having to down a lot of capsules.

My thoughts on fish oil are based on material I’ve read by the great coach Charles Poliquin. Much of this post is paraphrased from some of his material found here.