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Men’s Guide to Eating for Muscle Gain
December 5, 2012 by
Here’s the next episode of the UNCENSORED Podcasts Season 2.
Today’s topic: Eating for Muscle Gain and Fat Storage
How much do you need to eat to build muscle?
How Do You Store Fat?
When we eat more calories than our body can use we begin to store those extra calories as fat. Although this process occurs in both men and women, the primary locations of fat storage differs betweeen the two genders. For example, men tend to store fat in the stomach region while women in the hip/thigh region. This genetic predisposition of fat storage leads to a variety of body types or shapes: “Apple, Pear, Banana” just to name a few.
As a person begins to exceed the standard Body Mass Index (BMI) range their body shape eventually balloons into a rounded appearance. Nevertheless, there is a popular belief amongst people that even if they are below the BMI range known as obese, their body shape is dictated by their genetic predispositions for fat storage. However, this is only partially true.
There is no category of body shape that will restrict you from building muscle only in a certain area.
Once you lose the fat necessary to achieve the lean, ripped look we begin to look very similar to one another. What will make the biggest difference is the size of your muscles. Everyone will look different at their ideal numbers of course, but the overall body shape will be the same. Once you lose the fat, your body’s fat storage patterns become irrelevant.
So it’s up to you, you can choose whether to let your genetic predispositions dictate how you store fat or change your physical appearance through strategic training and add more size to your frame.
How Much Do You Need to Build Muscle
The second part of this podcast (maybe the more important to you) is about the amount of food/calories you need to consume to build muscle.
We’ve already explained why bulking is a bad idea, hell even Pilon tried bulking up slowly in the last podcast.
So it would seem that overeating doesn’t help. So what’s the answer then, how much do you really need to eat to avoid undereating, but also overeating? What do you have to do?
If you are asking yourself those questions you are missing two critical factors to your success.
The two factors that must be taken into consideration are birth and/or training age.
A 17 year old guy who just started training is a different case compared to a guy who is in his late 40s and has been training hard for the last 15 years.
Which is exactly what Brad Pilon and John Barban are going to discuss today. So, if that is something that interests you, just scroll down to log inside the AI cockpit and listen to this episode.
In today’s UNCENSORED training, you will also discover:
- Whether there is anything you can do to improve your physique besides fat loss and muscle building
- What BMI/BF% range you will need to be under to allow your muscles to dictate your body shape
- What waist percentage of your height is still safe for “bulking“
- Whether there is actually an amount of calories you need to eat to build muscle
- What determines how much you need to eat to build muscle at the rate you want
- Learn what stubborn fat is and whether it’s any different from the rest of your body fat
- What it means when people store fat in as opposed to around the muscle
- What it takes to add more muscle if not bulking
- What role does birth and/or training age play in your diet if your goal is building muscle
- What do you do after you get to your ideal numbers? Do u need to keep training or Is it possible to grow even more?
- How to eat for muscle gain according to your waist and shoulder measurements, when to stop and when to eat more to avoid under eating
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Not an Adonis Index IMMERSION client? Click here to find out more… and hear a weird story too
Phi-Life Series: Super Hero Marketing
November 26, 2012 by
Today we bring you a podcast from our phi-life series.
Today’s topic: The Danger of Super Hero Marketing
Do you think you can get as big as the Incredible Hulk? A lot of guys certainly believe they can even though they logically know it’s impossible.
So can you get as big as the Hulk?
Deep down we know we can’t get this big, but that certainly doesn’t prevent us from trying. This never ending journey of aiming to get as big as The Hulk includes steroid intake, falling for the myth of bulking and mega dosing supplements.
We have been exposed to Super Heroes our entire life. From a young boy reading comic books to a grown-up watching the latest Super Hero movie. Then finally, once we begin to explore the world of fitness we are introduced to the real Super Hero – bodybuilders. These “Super Heroes” may not be able to fly, but their physique’s certainly reminds us of The Hulk.
This is where things start to head down hill for the “Average Joe.”
When we get into the fitness and bodybuilding community we (for some bizarre reason) wanna live like bodybuilders. We want the lifestyle of Mr. Olympia, so even though we are not him and never will be, we still live to train and eat…We’ve all been down that road. Which is completely contrary to what we now here at Adonis Lifestyle teach – Eat and train to live.
This is a dangerous path to be on, because suddenly it becomes your identity, you are the weird “fitness guy” who never goes out, doesn’t know how to have fun and often times isn’t even in such a great shape (shirt on big, shirt off average or fat).
Well, today we will look into this mindset and determine where it all began. We will discuss what influences cartoon Super Heroes have and how they actually shape your your fitness goals and the perception of your own body.
Also in today’s podcast, John talks about his experience with a salesman trying to pitch the very supplements he developed!
You will also learn and discover:
- What type of environment the supplements stores create which always compel you to buy more supplements
- The difference between “online” supplements store and supplements stores that are “brick and mortar”
- There are only 3-4 important supplement ingredients that are used and sold… so why are there so many “other” supplements?
- How people make billions by selling products that aren’t effective
- Why people buy supplements even when there isn’t any scientific evidence it actually works
- Whether you can actually look like guys in the fitness/bodybuilding magazines
- What specific documentary movie you can watch to get a clearer picture about the fitness industry
- Why supplements sell
- Why guys wanna be larger than life
- Why you continue to buy the newest supplements even though the last one’s didn’t work
- What is a “Pipe Dream” vs. what is actually attainable & How this makes a world of difference in terms of marketing and driving sales
- How supplements advertising works
Listen to the podcast here:
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DEXA Results from Slow Bulking and Muscle Imbalance Correction Training
November 21, 2012 by
Here’s the next episode of the UNCENSORED Podcasts Season 2.
Today’s topics: Body Composition Analysis – DEXA Results
You can use DEXA scan to track down effectiveness of your training and diet.
From season one of uncensored podcasts you already know how you can use DEXA to track your progress.
But did you know that it’s also a very useful tool for experimenting with your body?
Check out how John and Brad used DEXA scan to measure effectiveness of the things they were trying in the last couple of weeks. Each of them tried a different thing.
John’s Experiment – Muscle Imbalance Correction Training
As you may already know know John can’t do barbell bench press, because off his shoulder issue. The last time he got his DEXA the results were astonishing, on his right side there was almost 2 pounds less lean mass (shoulder and arm). That’s a pretty big difference, it was obvious that the right side was significantly weaker and less developed.
Because of this, he decided to try to bring the right side back to normal, so both of his shoulders and arms would be balanced.
Now this is tricky, because if you just do barbell based exercises, one arm will work harder than the other and you will only make the problem worse.
So how would you go about it?
And how do you track such is small difference?
You can’t even go just by feeling and strength, you need to get another DEXA done to confirm the results.
John decided to create a specialized plan for himself and get another DEXA scan done at the end of this test to see what he could do about this.
As it turned out, you really can affect one side of your body and bring your lagging part back to normal to balance them out.
Surprisingly the answer wasn’t more weight, but more work and better muscle activation – as John shares in today’s episode, he had to take more time to warm up the right side to achieve the same activation throughout his regular workout.
Listen to the podcast for more information on this experiment.
Brad’s Experiment – Slow Bulking
As Brad confesses in today’s episode, he really wanted for bulking to work and I mean who doesn’t, eating more for more muscles? Sounds like a bodybuilder’s dream.
Well, the reality is different and rather boring.
In the past Brad has tried every way you could think of (and more) to make bulking work. He tried the standard 6 meals a day, 300 grams of protein, cheat days and even cheat weeks with 10 000 calorie intake and no result at all…well he did gain fat, but that’s not what he was really after.
So, it’s safe to say that bulking doesn’t work.
Then a couple months ago he thought about another way of trying bulking. He realized that each time he would try it, it would be a very quick process, never slow. So he decided to go about bulking up slowly, just a couple hundred calories here and there, he didn’t change his workouts, recorded everything and did a DEXA scan after the experiment was after.
If you wanna find out about the whole process and more importantly the results, go down and listen to the podcast.
In today’s UNCENSORED training, you will also discover:
- How to prepare the muscles that you have hard time activating for the workout
- How can you bring up a lagging part back up to balance it with the rest of the body if lifting heavier doesn’t help
- What is slow bulking and whether it can work for you
- How you can get your goals hijacked with focusing on strength gains
- Why it’s important to stop chasing weight at some point and what’s more important when the goal is muscle growth
- How if you are not careful “body building” can turn into weight lifting and power lifting and why this is dangerous to your physique goals
- Is there a relationship between being well trained at a certain movement/exercise and looking good? (The answer to this might surprise you)
- How DEXA can help you see clearly through fitness disbeliefs and help you discover what truly works for your body and what’s just BS you should avoid
IMMERSION Clients May Login and Download Podcast Here
Not an Adonis Index IMMERSION client? Click here to find out more… and hear a weird story too
Getting Closer to Your Ideal Body
November 19, 2012 by
Today we have an interview with Gavin Rennison.
Gavin has been following Adonis Index for about 12 months now and today he has decided to share with us his astonishing progress.
He is definitely among the more experienced and muscular guys in our community.
Check out his picture:
The ideal body shape – Lean muscle mass, no excess body fat.
It Doesn’t Have to Be Complicated
Gavin got into weight lifting at the age of 25, so right after juvenile muscle growth. You would say that he could not build lots of muscle after the age of 25, but then he has pictures that show otherwise. This is a proof that you can still gain lots of muscle mass even if you are not starting with your training in your teens or early 20s.
However, Gavin as most of the guys who go to the gym wasn’t very consistent with his workouts, it was on and off training throughout the years. He also lacked any knowledge in how to structure his workouts, so he just did basic splits like everyone else. Since he tried increasing weights on regular basis he got some results.
However, then he felt into the whole bulking, 6 meals a day approach, gained lots of weight as a result and got up to 200 pounds.
After finding out about Adonis Index he was shocked at the contrast between bodybuilding diet and Anything Goes Diet we preach here at AI. The bodybuilding diet is very strict, but doesn’t provide linear results compared to freewill eating with the AGD principles were the results are linear.
And that’s the issue with the traditional bodybuilding and fitness approach – too much hassle for little results. It doesn’t have to be that way, getting in shape and achieving an ideal body shape isn’t as difficult as people think.
You can make it simply, and quite frankly you should, because the chances of you getting achieving your ideal body with perfect measurements are ten times higher if you keep things simple. Once you overcomplicate your approach, start to read dozens of diet books, you will second guess yourself, you will try various approaches like 6 meals a day, bulking or whatever is hot right now and for no results.
Gavin decided to keep it simple and stick to his approach and he got amazing results.
Here are a couple more of his pictures:
Gav’s awesome photos from his photoshoot.
More Tips from Gav:
- Know your boundaries
- Be consistent
- Don’t make it your lifestyle
- If you have some fat to lose, lose it first, because once you do you will never have to do it again, you will get lean for life and as a bonus you’ll finally see how much muscle mass you have
- Don’t try to get big at every cost
- Don’t obsess over supplements
- Do a photoshoot after your transformation (you can use it as a deadline)
- Don’t ever try the traditional bulking, it doesn’t work and it’s stupid
- Get a workout program that keeps changing, because that will keep you interested longer
- Bounce back when you push it too far
Gav’s measurements:
- Waist: 31″
- Shoulders: 48.25″
- AI score: 1.56
Links from the interview:
- Adonis Index Workouts
- The “Photo-Shoot Ready” Recipe – Article from Allen Elliott about preparing for a photoshoot
- If you want to get in touch with Gavin, talk to him about his approach and get more tips, here’s his profile in our community
Read Gav’s experience with Adonis Index in his own words:
Well, where do I start in thanking all at Adonis for what they’ve achieved in creating such a simplistic approach to all things diet and fitness?! The Adonis Index has been a truly and literally life changing find for me. It has…Continue Reading Here
Listen to the interview here, and please “like” it when you’re done:
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Do You Have to Give Up Alcohol to Get Ripped?
November 12, 2012 by
Here’s your new interview with one of the winners from the 8th Adonis Index Transformation Contest.
Today John talks to Rodrigo Caceres who placed 3rd in our last 12-Week Transformation contest.
Check out his transformation pictures:
Rodrigo’s 12 week progress with Adonis Index.
Rodrigo wanted to place in the top 10 and he did, he placed third, let’s look at his story and what he did that brought him this results.
Until recently Rodrigo wasn’t doing any sort of training. He was stuck in the rut of gaining weight after getting married. .
One day he decided to get back in shape. So he got a routine from a personal trainer and started going to the gym. He got a bit leaner, but also got annoyed and bored with his routine, so when he stopped training he fell back into the rut of weight gain.
He once again got back on track by attending some spinning clases combined with a “whole foods” diet.
But as he got leaner, he had no muscle mass and started to receive comments that he was “too skinny.”
In response to these comments he decided to join the bodybuilding community and adopted the usual approach – eat more, eat every 3 hours.
The result? Fat Gain yet once again.
Over the years this became a never ending cycle of weight loss and weight gain.
Rodrigo truly believed that if he leaned out he would have more muscle.
So in an act of desperation, he went online to find a way to lean out and that was when he stumbled upon Eat Stop Eat, which lead him to Adonis Index.
At first he didn’t want to accept the ideology, but listening to the podcasts and the grand opening of a new gym near his home convinced him to get started.
Before we get into his transformation, there is something you need to know about Rodrigo, let’s consider his educational background.
Rodrigo studied philosophy, so his perspective is a bit different than most. He was used to self-analysis and introspection and was always consciously aware of his feeling at any giving moment. Posessing this knowledge he expected to have very little trouble with the mechanics and assumed that the mental part of the transformation would be fairly simple.
However, quite the opposite happened.
Truth is that the mental part of any transformation is tough, no matter what your experience or expertise is. Even though some people have it easier, everyone will have to overcome inner challenges that’s why we call it a transformation, because at the end of it, you are a different person, both physically and mentally.
Rodrigo was very motivated, but like everyone he had moments when he felt a bit depressed.
He told us that this was actually one of the hardest mental challenges he’d ever went through.
It all seems superficial, but it’s really not and even despite the fact that the contest is only for 3 months it’s still very challenging. It’s just not what people expect it will be, you have emotional ups and downs, and the process is far from straightforward.
It will definitely push you out of your comfort zone and force you to break old habits.
We always say that it’s simple but not easy, however this doesn’t mean it’s not doable. A successful transformation is indeed possible and as you can see here, lots of people have gone before you. It’s important to realize that the promises you see on TV are false, it’s what the marketers wants you to believe to be true. Nothing worth pursuing in life is ever easy.
Can You Drink Alcohol and Cut?
As you have read previously from the Naughty Guide post, you can have alcohol and still get ripped, the key is moderation, as with anything.
Rodrigo decided that he won’t give up alcohol and that’s something he wants to enjoy even during the contest prep and he did. You can too if you want, it’s up to you whether you want to enjoy your calories in meal or drink.
What Rodrigo realized was that with drinking comes a lot of eating, so he limited himself to only a couple of glasses and refrained from eating. This allowed him to stay within his weekly calorie budget and continue to lose fat.
If you keep your eyes on your calories, no diet is impossible for fat loss.
Summary Rodrigo’s advice:
- Stick to the workouts, they work and are fun to do
- Always think of your form first to stay injury free
- Treat your workouts like a meditation, you should relax your mind and stay fully focused on the training
- Be strict with the rest periods (use stop watch) – Timing is important, people fail to get results when they don’t follow the workout plan exactly
- Don’t worry about your bodyweight or how much you are lifting
- Listen to all the podcasts and interviews
- You don’t have to do cardio if you hate it, diet is what matters for fat loss
- Get involved in the AI community, use the support there and help others
- Expect to have bad days
- Don’t be afraid to experiment
- Be aware that the process isn’t nearly as glamorous as the end result
Links from the interview:
- Main Adonis Index Workout
- If you want to get in touch with Rodrigo, talk to him about his approach and get more tips, here’s his profile in our community
Read Rodrigo’s experience with Adonis Index in his own words:
In one of my first blog posts, I wrote: “I’m thinking of entering AT8. This way I know I’ll just get there, get to where I’ve never been before, travel the road I’ve travelled so many times, but getting to the end this time.” I never expected what was coming.
This is the first time I stuck with a program…Continue reading here
Listen to the interview here, and please “like” it when you’re done:
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