How detailed an answer do you want? And what are your goals/reasons for taking up intermittent fasting?
As detailed as possible haha, and I'm trying to cut excess fat while trying to maintain/build lean mass.
Keep in mind through reading this that I have a wierd relationship with food. I hate eating. It's boring, it takes up a TON of my time, and after I do it I always feel slightly nauseous and absolutely exhausted. If Soylent ever takes off and becomes a feasible alternative to real food, I would be one of their earliest adopters. I had the best success with that set of goals on leangains, but that's probably the strictest protocol I ever ended up following. I would attribute the progress that I made more to the macronutrient partitioning and the calorie cycling that you do on leangains, than i would to the actual intermittent fasting. By the end of my (~1 year) span with leangains I was pretty much doing carb backloading and twice a week protein sparing modified fasts, and it was working wonderfully for me. Then I got lazy. Honestly the benefits to IF for me were more mental and convenince wise than they were actually fitness or Bodybuilding related. For one thing, it matched up with my schedule REALLY well. Most college students or young adults will wind up feeling this way. Highschool students might find it harder, but still doable. Professionals who have boring jobs might find themselves more focused on being hungry in the morning, so it will be more difficult, and people with manual labor jobs will have a harder time adjusting, but once they get used to it should be fine. People with families or similar responsibilities are going to find it the most difficult. IDK if I would even call it "worth it" for these kinds of people. For the mental benefits, I was much more focused in the morning, and I was in general happier starting my day. It's a great feeling to be able to wake up, shower, and go get started without having to worry about making time to eat. There's a lot of information out there about the placebo effect of fasting, and about the actual hormonal effects, both of which were probably contributing to the focus and energy, but either way it most certainly worked. On this note, one thing that will absolutely DESTROY IF for you is morning coffee or tea and especially sugar free energy drinks. If you're the kind of person who needs your caffeine in the morning, invest in caffeine pills because any of these are going to wreck you very quickly. As far as the "drop body fat and maintain mass" goals.... it's there and it isn't. You can make this diet as strict or as lose as you want it. If you're still eating shitty quality food, too many calories, and a poor macronutrient ratio, then condensing that diet into 8 hours of time isn't going to give you any more results than it was eating it around the clock. It may make you feel as if you're doing more, but at the end of the day, calories in vs. calories out is still king, followed by macros, followed by sleep, followed by waaaaaaaaaay down the list things like nutrient timing. If you've got the basics of your diet in check, IF will make things easier on you (you'll have a reason to say "no" to yourself beyond just saying "no") and more convenient (it's easier to cook 2 meals than 4 or 5) and it will give you a little boost to the progress you're already making. Maybe an extra 10% - but 10% of 0 is still 0, so you MUST have the basics down first. This isn't a magic bullet. Things to be concerned with: 1- if you're not a good fasted trainer, you're probably going to have to shake up your schedule. Not too many people besides college students can work out between and hour and three hours after lunch. Three hours after lunch you want to be having your second (larger) meal. 2- you will feel as if you are in a thanksgiving day food coma on a daily basis. Every single time you eat your larger meal (or meals) you will be useless for the next three hours or so. In my experience, your performance after eating is as much decreased as it was increased before eating. 3- it's not socially convenient. IF makes going out and having drinks incredibly difficult, unless you cheat, and if you cheat it makes you miserable the next day. It makes the already difficult process of ordering fitness-friendly foods at a restaurant even more difficult. Your friends might be able to laugh and pick on you about eating cleanly, but this one they probably just wont understand at all. 4- you won't look at food the same way again. Your ideas of portion sizes will be shot to hell. If and when you go back to bulking, you'll have to completely retrain yourself. I already look at a dinner plate and see a pie chart of macronutrients, but if you don't already, you will soon. 5- the longer your fast and the more calories you're eating at once, the harder it is to do and the worse you will feel afterwards. This seems like common sense to me, but you'd be surprised how many people it doesn't occur to. Things to consider: 1- IF and stimulants. Stimulants are god's gift to intermittent fasters. If you like stimulants, you'll notice magnified effects, and fewer side effects. Yohimbine HCL (not yohimbine bark, but the extract) is particularly awesome, as it is inactivated by insulin, but it functions to decrease the body's ability to store new fat, and preferentially metabolize already stored fat over gluconeogenesis for energy. It is a diuretic to a pretty major degree, so it will have you drinking a LOT of water. For me at least, that's not a bad things. I used to wake up at 8 am, take 9 mg (3x3mg pills) with some water, go about my day, take another 9mg at noon, continue on, eat from 3-4 and take my creatine (because insulin spike) and work out at 5. I don't work out well fasted. 2- fasting has an appetite supressant effect after a certain point. Stimulants also have that, so they will help some. insulin has the opposite effect, which is why morning coffee/tea, even if you use artificial sweeteners, and to a greater degree things like BCAAs and protein shakes are going to make you MUCH more hungry. 3- IF isn't going to make you drop weight if what you're doing isn't already dropping weight. It may speed the process up just a bit (again 10%) and for certain types of people, it makes the process of cutting easier mentally, but it is NOT magic, and it will NOT make up for you not having your basic diet in check. Basics first. Overall I would say I enjoyed IF while I was doing it. It was fun to experiment with, and I made some good progress. In the end though I got a bit lazy, stopped seeing the same progress and wanted to try something different. It's not going to work for everyone, and even for those it works for it may not work well. It's certainly something to give a shot to though. If you have any specific questions post them up and I can try to answer.
Why can't you write stuff like this pertaining to the have. This would help my headaches on creating guide
First of all thank you so much for the detailed reply, got a lot of useful stuff from it, I have tried intermittent fasting a few years ago for about 3 weeks but never really stuck to it. I do agree with you though that it's more of a convenience thing, I am a college student so I typically don't have time to go out of my way and cook food sometimes so it'll benefit me there, I completely quit coffee a few months ago so there's no problem there. I usually do have bigger meals as I believe I tend to eat more per meal than the average person, today was my first day and I've had no issues so far, I'm starting off with the 18 hr fast/6 hour eating window for now, this definitely will not be a permanent regime, just to cut the fat that I need to, I've been paying attention to macros more recently which helps tons, I do plan on taking pre-workouts soon (as soon as it arrives in the mail) I've heard that it's better to train while you're on the fast, should I take the preworkout and train an hour or two before my eating window begins? Or is it better to train during my eating window?
I've always trained fasted and haven't had ant issues with it. I've some research on whether you'd enter a catabolic state if you were to train fasted, but that's not the case for the most part.
I won't say nutrient timing doesn't matter, but I will say it doesn't matter to that extent. iGF-1, insulin response, the mTorr pathway, your cortisol levels, the mediating factors for protein synthesis, etc. are all endocrine responses. Endocrine responses take time to activate, more time to be carried around in your blood, and then more time to have their effect on receptor cells. Eating an hour in one direction or the other isn't going to cause any significant degree of catabolism. In my experience and in talking with people that I've trained/trained with through IF, two weeks is generally the time it takes to get fully adapted to your new pattern. If you lasted in to three weeks, then you're probably mentally "up to it" and you're good to go on giving this type of program a real run. Macros are super important. There are lots of great resources out there about how to partition your macros for any given thing, though. I found I run pretty well with ketosis, so I've done a lot of cyclical ketogenic diets, as well as more moderate things like carb backloading which I mentioned (and which is FANTASTIC on IF in my opinion) and more extreme things like protein sparing modified fasts. Don't take anyone's word as law when it comes to macros, whether that be for rest days, training days, or even for individual meals. That's something to figure out for yourself through trial and error. What pre workout are you planning on taking? I just finished my tub of cannibal ferox, so I purchased a tub of Mr. Hyde today, as it seemed to be the best stimulant-based preworkout product in my local store, and if you couldn't tell already, I like stims =p. Always looking to hear people's thoughts on these though. It's generally accepted that on IF you should train fasted, if you're a person who is capable of going into a fasted workout and hitting it with 100% energy and making the weights you are supposed to. My understanding is that it magnifies the insulin sensitivity, the catecholamine response, and the growth factor benefits, which are the #1, #2 and #3 reasons to partake in intermittent fasting. However if you go at it that way for two or three weeks, and notice that you're unfocused in the gym, feeling tired and/or chronically underperforming (and you weren't doing this before starting IF, so it's not a program thing) , it's more important that you get in your workouts when you're able to give it 100% for the day than it is that you train fasted.
I've never actually used c4, although it's obviously quite popular. Let me know what you think! http://articles.elitefts.com/nutrition/carb-back-loading/ John kiefer (the guy who wrote that article) has a bunch of books out on the subject if you'd like further reading.
*Disclaimer*- I am in no way trying to show off, just simply sharing my results Didn't want to be a tool and post this to facebook so here is my 90 day, P90x3 results. Day 1 vs. Day 90. I ran cross country my senior year of high school and at the end of the year I weighed 145lbs. Going into college my freshman year I did not work out at all, I simply went to class and played video games. At the end of my freshman year in college I weighed 130lbs... the freshman 15 was in reversed for me. Over this past summer (July) I decided to try to gain some weight and become a stronger me. I started p90x3 in July and just now finished up my first 90 days, and am going to start another 90days next week, (1 week break of only working out 3 times instead of 7). These past 90 days have been awesome I can not only see myself getting stronger but I can feel it to. Maybe this can be a motivator for anyone who is thinking about starting to work out, trust me its worth it. Day 1- Weight -130lbs Day 30- Weight -135lbs Day 60- Weight -140lbs Day 90- Weight -143lbs (current) #RoyalsFitness 10/13 -reached a goal of mine, 20+ consecutive pull ups no kipping. (Did 22)
i'd bulk but pretty sure we have different goals so w/e. good job nonetheless lmfao based as fuck dom
Nice one, Lomo. Seeing the gains makes it all worthwhile. How's your nutrition? Did you change much from what you were ordinarily doing? Maybe I should throw some photos up.
Ha mate, I've got photos logging my progress back about 2 years ago however I'm still not happy with where I am so I hate sharing photos. Where people say things are good I always look straight at the flaws! As they say, the day you start lifting is the day from which you are forever small..
The only thing I changed about my diet is that I eat more and also drink protein shakes after work outs. Personally gaining weight is hard for me (something about having a high metabolism rate). I did not go on a diet or anything, I eat what I want when I want, if I am hungry I eat, if I am not I don't. But everyone is different so it's hard to follow someone else's plan and expect the same results.
