The myths hindering your massive gains!

[satyricon1]

First of all, I hate reading a ton of sources in posts, I also hate reading long studies in posts, I find it boring and like stuff to be put to the point by those who has read it etc. So I am therefore leaving out the references, I am sure people will be good with posting a lot of them as this thread progresses. And if I have to, I will do the digging and posting =D.

Now, the Dieting myths hindering your massive gains!

I read a lot about how people say to eat all day long, 6, 7 or 8 meals. The logic is that the body needs amino acids available for musclegrowth at all times, or you can risk not building as much or worse.. YOU CAN LOSE MUSCLES!!!! The argument continues with the benefit of Insulin being stable throughout the day, by ofcause keeping bloodsugar stable. In addition the very same people will not hessitate to inject HGH to increase their levels, more about this later. The story continues with the commonly used phraze; you should not be worried if you gain a few pounds(or 10) of fat, its part of Bulking. You can cut later..

There is basicly an ocean of different diets for doing this and that, supps and an endless highway of information or missinformation for that matter, all depends on who reads it.

My proclamation is that all of the above is nothing but Gym-Myths and outdated knowledge that claws itself to the walls of every gym out there and has been halting peoples gains for a line of different reasons for years. This in combination with excessive excercising or simply spending WAY TOO MUCH TIME IN THE GYM!!! (Yes, thats possible!)

Ofcause the rules seems to be different when your on cycle compared to when off, but is it really so?

Without ruining this thread with giving away everything at once, let me continue my provocations by the following highlights.

* Constant stream of food leads to release of insulin, wich supresses the production of HGH.

* Every hour 7-10g of protein is able to transfer from the intestants to the bloodstream, at the very most. If you eat 50g of protein, it takes from 4-6 hours before it is all digested.

* After receiving microtrauma a muscle is in an anabolic state for 48 hours. This means that working the same muscle before 48 hours has passed is overkill and is counterproductive. Results in a higher calorie demand, more fat storage, without a greater musclegrowth. If off cycle, this will result in reducing muscle volume, on cycle you will still increase, but you see the connection.

* Cortisol levels does not rise to musclebreaking concentrations over a course of a few hours. Being hungry is not the same as atrophic state.

* You can eat all your daily callories in 3 meals and reap more benefits than eating the same ammount in 6 to 8 meals. Reason is simple: 16 hours of elevated HGH production, fat reducing hormone number 1. If you manage to eat all these callories in a 8 hour window. This results in lean gains.

* Recent studies of high protein diets, with low inntake of quick carbs and fat shows that daily callories are less important when dealing with this sort of diets, because the body spends quite a lot of energy transforming protein to muscleburning fuel, actually more energy than the protein yeilds, resulting in the body prefering to burn bodyfat, as it is less callorie craving.

* Another recent study indicated that lifting light weights vs lifting heavy weights, lifting light weights (30% 1RM) to failure (=<25 reps) resulted in greater ammounts of proteins in the muscles than after lifting heavy weights (90% 1RM) to failure (4-6 reps). The most likely reasoning for this was the fact that the total volume of work performed by the muscles was greater with light weights than with heavy weights. This may or may not be significant for this case, but it is an interesting find.

The bottom line is
* Eating your daily callories in a 8 hour window, reducing your workouts to 3-4 days a week, focus on a high protein diet, you will put on lean gains, burn fat and not have to risk losing your muscles while dieting or ripping after a massive bulk, losing even more than you have to. Bulking is old thinking, you do not have to get fat to get big and you dont have to rip down for the summer.

 

[joe13]

Good food for thought bringing fresh insights into our lifestyle. Thank you.

 

[C0LUMB0]

Good post-up bro, nice to see some of the basics being put out there again but i dont agree that eating 3 meals a day is better than 6-7 IMO that is seriously flawed...

 

[stevesmi]

good post and whether we agree or not with it atleast it spurs discussion... i love threads like this but there is always a dikhead who comes in and thinks he knows it all and bashes the thread starter cuz their gym buddy said blah blah blah. my opinion is as follows.

what you write about 3-4X week workouts and moderate food intake is true. ASSUMING you are 40 years old and not on AAS and looking to mantain.

but most of us on here are not doing that. most are trying to build muscle and we are on AAS. cycling, or cruising... when I'm on cycle I go hard. 5-6X per week working out.. and the days i dont work out I have a long sex session/play tennis/bicycle/ etc etc. something active. no sitting on the couch. not gonna waste my cycle. and I eat throughout the day. with deca for example, you need a lot of food for it to work. or you are wasting your time.

as for the food intake.. i've heard from certain guys who eat hot dogs, or slop and still gain muscle. the main problem is once you get older and you eat like that its gonna add fat to your body and we don't want that. hence i eat very clean. once you come off cycle I reduce my calories cause I know my workouts aren't gonna be as intense.

overtraining is not a myth, but when you are ON CYCLE you must train hard and eat hard or your gains will be substandard. JMHO. oh and get plenty of rest. no 3 hours of sleep after partying all night.. the muscles need rest. if you workout in the mornings and can sneak in an additional 1 or 2 hour nap afterwards you will gain rapidly, thats been my experience.

 

[zedhed]

"* You can eat all your daily callories in 3 meals and reap more benefits than eating the same ammount in 6 to 8 meals. Reason is simple: 16 hours of elevated HGH production, fat reducing hormone number 1. If you manage to eat all these callories in a 8 hour window. This results in lean gains."

This is exactly what I preach to all the peeps on here that say they cant gain weight. Look at mainstream America. How do they look? They look fat. How do they eat? They eat (as a general rule) 3x/day. So this leads me to believe that for creating and maintaining a racing metabolism eating 5-8 times per day is correct. However if you want to gain weight (muscle) you must slow down the metabolism and you do this by eating larger less frequent meals. If you eat clean you should not get fat. If you eat properly you get all the goodies that your bod needs.

Good post bro, waiting for the next installment!

 

[satyricon1]

About meal frequency.
When ON cycle or OFF cycle, the nutritians will take so long to move accross from the intestents to the blood stream. This will not change. When we know the time it takes for 12g of protein to be bio available in the bloodstream, 1-1.5hours, we know that it will take 10-15 hours for 120g to be bioavailable. If you eat all your food in a 8 hour window, and you eat a total of 300g protein, you will spend a total of 24 hours to digest what you ate, and at no point will your body be running without amino acids for musclebuilding. The access will be "shit out" the next day. For the rest of the nutritions, lets focus on the carbs first. The carbs have mainly three purposes in our body when we think about musclegrowth.

first and foremost, the brain needs sugars to function. Lack of carbs for the brain, can result in brain dmg over time. The brain needs not a lot, around 150 kcals a day. (38grams) This is the bare minimum for a normal brain function.

Secondly we need to refill the glycogen storages in our liver.

Thirdly we need to refill the storages in our muscles.

Outside of this, the rest will goto fat. FAT. FAAAAAT!

Now lets look at the fat inntake from our diets.
First and foremost, the body can not burn body fat without getting fatty acids supplied through the diets. Without any fat from diet, no fat loss will be happening in our bodies. Eventually it will happen, but then we will first have to sacrifice quite a bit of muscle and the broken down muscleenergy is then used for breaking down fat storages. (Described in short terms).

The main reason for fat to be very important in our diets is the fact that we are constantly showing proteins into our muscle cells. In order for this protein to stay within the cells, we need to rebuild the cell membranes. A Cell membrane is like an eggshell, holding everything in the cell on the inside. Whenever you goto the gym and cause micro trauma to your muscles, you break down the cell membranes. The protein inside slips out and into your bloodstream, these includes igf-1 and other growth factors. Your body then supplies the muscles with protein to strengthen then muscle and now, if you do not have the required fatty accids to be used to create a new cell membrane, the protein will simply leave the muscle and the muslces will remain the same size as they were. In scientific terms, the muscle is now weakened. In addition to this, there will be a fibirine layer build outside of the cellmembrane. This fibrine layer is resistant to reistance, meaning that the muscle is now protected from ever receiving dmg from the similar ammounts of strain as you used causing the micro trauma in the gym on your last workout.

If you goto the gym 6 days a week and work out every muscle group every time, you will reduce your gains quite a bit. You may compensate by eating a ton of food, but the intestant to bloodstream ratio remains the same. By reducing your workout to 3 times a week for the entire body, you will have 6 anabolic days a week and 1 "rest day".

If you goto the gym 6 days a week and split your body in 2, you will be doing the exact same thing as a person doing it all in 3 workouts, the benefits are the same, the callorie inntake however must be quite larger.

Now if you set yourself up for a situation where you must eat tremendous ammounts, you will also gain quite a bit of fat, this is impossible to avoid in this setting. When you go off cycle you will lose quite a bit of your muscular gains, but you will not really lose a lot of your fatty gains, they will often remain the same or even increase more. Later on you have to go on a diet to reduce you fat pct, and you now yet again risk losing your hard earned muscles. The alternative is to go on a heavy cutting cycle, however, this would not of been neccessairy had you done things a bit different while ON.

In the scenario I am explaining, you will have absolutely amazing gains, but lean gains. You will not put on much fat at all, you will actually experience losing fat. When you get to the summer, contest or whatever your goal is, your fat pct will be pretty low to begin with. Running your next cycle will not be a cutting cycle, no need, you run another "bulk" cycle with lean gains, resulting in also burning fat, resulting in fantastic year around lean and hard look.

I have previously written a post about the No workout during PCT = Keeping more gains. In this article I explain the basics of the HST training program. If you combine these two you will be put in a situation that I promise you, once you run a 10 week course, you will NEVER go back to anything else.

Finally I want to post a link to a person that has made these ideas into a complete lifestyle and way of living. Intermittent fasting diet for fat loss, muscle gain and health
His site has a much more scientiffic approach to the eating habbits and reasonings behind it.

 

[Arabian]

Great information.. thank you