What Alien-modification ray shot you in the woods three weeks ago? I never even heard anything CLOSE to gaining that much in that short a time before, not even Edward Norton in American History X (Schwarzenegger actually called Norton to ask what steroids he was on because of his massive change for the role). I'm not calling bullshit, but that's pretty crazy. It sounds downright hazardous.
Again, I will concede that some of my weight may be water weight, and there's a possibility some of it has been fat. I won't know about the fat part until I get another BF assessment on the 8th. I was 14% on 1/11. Beginning of last year, I dropped from 201 to 174 in 2 1/2 months. The rest of the year, I gained a lot of strength but didn't work out consistently due to moving twice and traveling for work, among other excuses, so no real size increase. The month before I started this program, I didn't lift weights but kept a pretty "clean" diet. I was 172 the day I took my before photos, 1/10. As of yesterday I was 189. I always weight myself first thing in the morning, and usually only do it on Mondays. The difference between now and the last time I tried to add size is my diet, which I'm now in complete control of. I really don't have any reason to lie to you people, and I'm honestly pretty shocked that this has (seemingly) worked this well. I don't give a shit if you buy the book or not.
Well, I guess realistically you could gain 17 lbs in 3 weeks if you ate an extra 2800 calories a day on top of your normal diet, but that sounds terrible. I gained 17 lbs in the past year, and I thought that was impressive.
Did you know that eating a big hefty bowl of horse turds in the morning makes your ejaculate taste like chocolate? Think how popular you'll be with the ladies, and fresh horse turds are probably cheaper than cereal for breakfast - it's an all around saving! I mean it completely contradicts the entire existing body of knowledge about how the human body actually works in the real world, and is so utterly implausible that it just doesn't make sense... But who wants to be blindly cynical? We don't know everything, start munching turds. And send me your credit card information to help continue my revolutionary research. 17 pounds in three weeks with little if any functional strength gain isn't something I'd be raving about. I'd be quietly ashamed of my gullibility and pretending the whole incident never happened while I went back to a sensible program. But my blind cynical belief in science is probably holding me back.
I don't see how 17 lbs in three weeks seems so unlikely. Especially since he said that it's weight he lost, so a lot of it is weight rebound. I gained 10 lbs in a week when I returned from Morocco a couple years ago, I had withered down to 155 lbs after eating mostly bread for three months. I also gained 18 lbs in a month last year when I went on the GOMAD diet. I put on muscle so fast that the skin on my legs and shoulders had stretch marks. Yes, some of it was fat, I never had myself calipered so I don't have measurements, but I still had a six-pack so I must have been less than 15%. And my strength gains were phenomenal, I added over 100 lbs to my squat in six weeks, largely as a result of that diet.
If it was at all unclear - I certainly don't think it's impossible to gain 17lbs in 3 weeks. Especially if your first weight was taken at a dramatic low point (dehydrated at the end of a fast springs to mind) - Especially since the guy admits that he had very little functional strength gain, despite adding presumably something like 10% or 15% onto his body weight. I'd be fine with the guy being a fan of the program if he was taking a reasonable approach. But Is just blatant douchebaggery, especially when you're dealing with the ludicrously implausible supporting claims claims of a guy who admits to having a history of juicing. Read through the program with any kind of critical eye and a basic understanding of physics - and you'll see some pretty serious flaws. To put it another way, for an average adult male 175cm tall, 75kgs, light gym session 3 or 4 times a week and working an office job) - you'll burn about 2500 calories a day just breathing and maintaining body heat/heart beat. Assuming that you're consuming about that and neither gaining nor losing weight, you'd need to boost your daily calorie consumption from about 2500 calories to about 6750 calories to put on an additional 34lbs in 28days. Body weight doesn't just come from the air. You consume and lose calories just keeping yourself alive and you need calories beyond the necessary fuel to keep yourself moving to gain weight. No matter how awesome your exercise program is - you'd still need to consume a fuck load of food at a minimum to gain that kind of weight. To believe that you could go from 2500 calories a day to 6750 calories a day and with a relatively small amount of additional exercise - not only capture all of those calories for weight gain instead of just hitting your bodies maximum calorie absorption capacity, and that you'd get 100% of that weight gain as muscle requires more than a suspension of disbelief. It requires willful denial of reality. A juicer, or someone with a freak one in a million genetic make up who busts their fucking ass 6 days a week with a very heavy work load, MIGHT be able to make that kind of gain - but to cope with the increased physical work load that you're putting your body under? You'd be talking about a HUGE calorie load. Capturing that weight gain as muscle, and not as fat or water weight is incredibly unlikely - even for a juicer or someone with mutant genetics. As a rough guide, to get 8000 calories you're talking about 15 quarter pounders or 30 new york strip steaks with the fat left on, four and a half pounds of cheddar cheese, 12 liters of full cream milk, you get the idea. Imagine eating that much food every single day for a month. Imagine for a moment how much it would fucking cost. Then just try and imagine not only actually managing to eat that much fucking food - but heavily exercising at the same time? And seriously, try and imagine yourself ending up healthier at the end of that sort of program than you were at the start.
I don't know where you're coming up with 8K calories, but here was the diet I was on when I put on all that weight: 10 eggs (800 calories) 6 strips of bacon (240) 1 gallon whole milk (2400 calories) 1 lbs ground beef (1000 calories) pasta, vegetables, miscellaneous (500+ calories) So, that is approximately 5K calories per day. I was weightlifting 6+ times per week (still taking full rest days, but sometimes going to the gym twice per day). All that said, I really disagree about your argument that weight gain is strictly about counting calories. See Winterbike's posts earlier in this thread about why weight gain and loss has more to do with metabolism.
Wait... So if you're not gaining weight from calories consumed - where exactly do you see the weight coming from? Do you think that additional muscle mass (keyword being mass) is coming from the simple joy of a juicer flexing his biceps in the mirror after doing preacher curls? Your metabolism certainly influences how efficiently your body processes calories and your genetics will have a huge influence on how much your calorific intake ends up as muscle, fat, consumed fuel or bodily waste. But there is absolutely no way to gain muscle without consuming calories at a sufficient rate. You will NEVER, under any circumstances, in the physical universe that we live in, gain more mass in muscle (or fat) than you consume as food.
The area is poorly studied and I can't find any published research. Some dude at the "Colgan Institute of Nutrition" is quoted all across the web as doing a study that found you can't synthesize more than an ounce of muscle mass per day. Specifically, It's not even about calories. Since muscle is 75% water, there's only 114g of protein in a pound of muscle. But you can't go eat a porterhouse and expect to lay down a pound of lean body mass. Creating a pound of muscle and a pound of fat are totally different processes. You just can't synthesize muscle that fast, unless maybe you're taking horse steroids. It's science.
True dis. You can't drive 500 miles if you only have one liter of gas. You can't light a fire without oxygen. You can't gain weight without eating. When it comest to stuff like this, am I'm going to put my trust in the collective knowledge of thousands of scientists dating back to Leonardo who have taken the time to study these things with proper scientific method or am I going to put my trust in some jackass named Tim who based his claims off the Colorado Experiment which was so flawed it rivals Scientology in it's level of bullshitness? I think I'll go with science. And don't get me started on Ferriss' bullshit. That dickhead makes my blood pressure rise every time I hear his name.
Nutrition wise, yes you guys are correct in that weight gain or loss is completely dependent on what you eat. The problem I have with the program is that Tim Ferriss claims to have done this all with four hours of gym time. Total. That claim coming from a guy who has been shown to be a fraud with regards to some of his claims makes me wonder how legit the program is. I'm sure you could add the weight but the lack functional strength and the need for all those extra substances is my issue. And again, the fact that all of it was gained from 8 30-minute workouts. As for the fraud part, hit up the Bullshido forums about Tim's MMA claims and those of him being a world champion. The guy has a history of being a liar. Hey, if you're happy with the gains you have then I guess that's all that matters.
I would be one of the last people to believe that slow-cadence reps to failure would work at all for adding size, but for whatever reason it works for me. Again, is doing sets of 10-12 slow count squats going to do shit for my 1, 3 or 5RM? of course not. Nor do I think a workout comprised solely of kb swings is going to melt away fat, but maybe it will work for someone. I actually can't wait to get back to a plan where I'm increasing weight on the main lifts, but for the time being this accomplishes the size goal. No, I shouldn't have responded in such a douchetacular fashion, but when I ask a simple question, I expect better than an "attack the source rather than discuss the material" on this board. This isn't Digg.
Google "sarcoplasmic hypertrophy vs myofibrillar hypertrophy" You'll see the difference. Just know that all those nice, slow reps are only producing sarcoplasmic hypertrophy.
What's an ideal number of reps and sets to build strength, then? Personally, I do 8 reps in sets of three, but a lot of those sources claim somewhere between 2-6 reps is optimal.
I build strength in a hurry by doing three sets of ten, increasing weight each set. Maxing out your flat bench and leg press I find gets you strong fast because they are primary cores, but don't do it every workout. I do it every three or four, but as always results can vary. Especially with size. You're tall. I'm 5'9". Another, bicep supersets with a 45 lb. bar. 6 rep, 8 rep, 10 rep, rest.
Anywhere from 5-8 reps will work for you. The really low reps like doubles, triples, clusters, etc are for the guys that are really only concerned with 1RM. That's great, but it's extremely specialized and it limits your abilities in other areas.
I went in for a physical last week and blood tests just came back- they said my cholesterol was a little high (222) but my good cholesterol was a good number, as well as my bad cholesterol number. Could this be because I eat 3 eggs every morning? Also, they said my triglycerides were a little high and to watch my carbs and make sure I'm doing cardio. Doesn't really make sense, since I work out 4 days a week and eat very clean, the only carbs I usually consume are cereal in the morning, and either whole wheat pasta or rice for dinner. It's not like I eat bags of potato chips all the time.
I got a gym membership yesterday and went for my first time today. I jumped on an elliptical machine and quickly found out that is death after 10 minutes. I literally can't even walk the correct way right now, my knees feel like they want to buckle. I spent the next 50 minutes or so on a treadmill with a slight incline. I think I'll just stick to the treadmill for awhile.
Alot of cholesterol is heredity. Nothing you can do about that. The exercise is probably what is raising your good cholesterol. I don't know if you are a boozer, but that can raise your triglycerides.
I'm no dietician, but three eggs every morning is definitely high. I was always told that you can eat up to 3 eggs 2-3 times a week, but any more, and it's too much cholesterol. As for them saying to do more cardio, was that the result of a stress test? If your heart rate is high when running on a treadmill, that's a pretty objective indicator.