I like marion jones fat loss method. Just skip breakfast. Eat lunch after working out. Tons of water and light protien rich dinner. Take all your supps in the morning (if that works for you). Simple but it works. I lost a few pounds in a week doing this.
I’ve tried all sorts of diets, calorie counting, fasting, the warrior diet from t-nation.com yada yada yada. This is the only thing that I can stick to. It’s simple and it works.
where did you hear this?
i tried the only carbs post workouts during week with refeed on the weekends, and i lost more muscle then fat despite getting lots of protein, and i felt lethargic and performance went down. If i load a few carbs in the week (i dont eat much carbs anyway) i have enough energy to last me through the week, and my fat and weight stays the same no up or down. I am aware of what is posted, i will see in the end of the year where i am off, im waiting for the body to let go. Things can change as im training more then ever now that i am alone. Fortunately im not worried about this as i improve anyways, i only care to get faster. If anything i usually show my buddha belly in track meets to make blinky and hawaiian surfer envious that a buddha man is beating them. However upon first sight of me you wouldnt think of me as someone with excessive fat.
this intermittent fasting is interesting as the issues this guy had to deal with to get results is what im suffering from. My nutrition habits seem to be me obsessin on the right time to eat, making me sacrifice time invested elsewhere cause i would be thinking of when my next meal might be.
This seems like a refined versian of the warriors diet with fasting, however im still having hard time grasping his concept. How would one incorporate this on the weekends? Also fasting for 16 hours, so breakfast followed by pre workout meal, and then post workout meal then fast?
how was your performance after doing this nyc?
Is it possible to please give a brief overwiew of this method Davan??
PMSF is a fast where you eat a lot of proteins (only) and veggies without carbs and fats (only small amount and mostly flax seed and omega3). Additional mineral/vitamine consuption via supplements is also a must due low food intake. Caloric consuption is around 800kcal per day. I gotta check in the book btw.
Davan correct me if I missed something here.
Check ‘Rapid Fat Loss Manual’ from Lyle McDonald to read about it. It is great read also
That’s right. Most athletes won’t need more than moderate dieting with their intensive training, so a lot of this stuff hasn’t been looked into with power/speed performance athletes in mind. But yeah, do a pseudo-IF or PSMF if you must lose some BF and normal approaches are not working. You could just do PSMF and have a big refeed 1x a week or go IF style and PSMF during the day and have a 2-3 hour refeed period where you try to get like 75% of your calories (after your workout as well). Keep in mind a more moderate approach is likely better, but it obviously isn’t something that is either working for oyu or you can stick to.
what about on tempo days you have for breakfast a protein shake some vitamin supplements and then you have your post workout shake and any carb meal within an hour after exercise? During your workouts you are taking BCAA as well. After that then just take in lots of protein and veggies only till bed? This PSMF could have consequences on my performance, because i have done something similar.
what about on tempo days you have for breakfast a protein shake some vitamin supplements and then you have your post workout shake and any carb meal within an hour after exercise? During your workouts you are taking BCAA as well. After that then just take in lots of protein and veggies only till bed? This PSMF could have consequences on my performance, because i have done something similar before.
What did you do before?
You either do it or you don’t–not really anything similar to a strict PSMF @ like 1000 calories.
You could, as you seem to describe, go with fewer calories on tempo or non-training days and more calories on hard days. Most people tend to do this naturally.
Her book life in the fast lane. But it’s nothing fancy or scientific just eat less and do more. Its the same thing as the slimfast diet.
Fine. It actually feels good to be starving every once in a while. It’s liberating too. No calorie counting BS. Just watch what I eat. I dont deny myself stuff any more I just moderate. If I have desert I just do it on the weekends. The other days I have coffee in the morning with 1 splenda that’s if Im really draggin ass. Other wise I just have water and supplements. I’ve been taking jarrow’s lcarnitine. Good stuff. I take lcarnitine and glutamine in the morning Jarrows (the brand) gets is lcarnitine from sigma tau which supplies perscrition grade lcarnitine to dialysis patients so the lcarnitine is a good grade (I hope). Lcarnitine is good stuff. Its used on races horses too 
Here’s some interesting info on lcarnitine
how long would you starve for. By starve do you just get in protein rarely throughout the day? Or starve for over 6-8 hours?
Try one of this approaches:
a) do PSMF during tempo days and do tempo in the morning plus some bw circuits to deplet muscle and liver glycogen (which will increase fat burning during the rest of the day). Also, raising bLA too much may decrease fat burning DURING the workout, so lower the tempo speed. On hard days CHEAT! Eat what you want but first get same ammount of proteins (2g/kg), a lot of veggies and then, and only then throw as much carb as you can get. During this period avoid eating too much fat (fat + high carbs tend to promote fat storage). Get a lot of omega3. Also, try yohimbe, EC stack (but not both at the same time) etc. After 4-6wks return to normal dieting.
b)Train normal for 4 weeks (maintenance calories- follow Berardis 7 habbits plus pre-post workout shake or something with higher GI). Unload for 1 wk but keep maintenance calories (this will allow you to recover and supercompensate). Lower the training volume, not frequency. Then do PSMF for one wk. On the first day of PSMF (morning) do depletion workout (to deplet glycogen from muscles and liver). Continue doing strenght training ONLY for lower volume (what builds muscles keeps muscles) and avoid cardio and tempo (additional 300 kcal lost with cardio will yield small benefit over already excesive caloric restriction via food intake and may increase muscle loss). During the weekend do ‘refeed’, 10g/kg of CHO on the first day and 5 g/kg on the second. Follow the cycle.
You can also decrease the duration of first cycle from 4 wks to 2 or something.
Hi everyone, I am new to the site, I joined because I heard about the great training “conversations” on the forum so as I new member, I have purchased the majority of Charlie’s products and have been reading alot of forum threads. I have a background in human nutrition so i had to jump in here because I have been reading the anecdotal methods to losing bodyfat, kind of like a person who is new to strength training, joins a gym and ask the biggest, strongest person in the gym what their program is and then expects it to work for them… not likely.
I have a few comments about bodyfat loss, first it is individual, what works for one person, might not for you. Yes you can spend your life trying diet after diet and hopefully you find what works for you. I would recommend finding a sports nutritionist who looks at you as an individual, putting the whole picture together, training, rest, nutrition, etc. and then recommending a plan to follow.
Second, the concept of starving yourself to lose weight: how do you expect to be at your peak when you are depriving yourself of nutrients? Starving yourself works in the short term, I have a great pamphlet “Keeping your Brain Happy” that one of my old college professors wrote that explains the processes your body goes through while starving to include (in the extreme) kidney failure in wrestlers who starve themselves to make weight while maintaining a workout program. To me this is the quick fix mentality that is common to my American culture, I could lose alot of bodyweight, (notice I do not say bodyfat) in a short period of time by starving myself.(But it’s not healthy).Figure out what works for you. I cannot tell you how long I had been eating a high carb diet and while I looked healthy on the outside, I was always tired and did not recover well. Bottom line you have to figure out the proper nutrition for you, if you are as serious about body fat loss as you are about training, I think you owe it to yourself; they go hand in hand, along with rest, lifestyle, etc.
Third, Counting calories to lose weight: Although diets that focus on counting calories are still popular, counting calories is pretty much a waste of time. I inserted a few paragraph’s from Dr. Michael Colgan on the “Calorie myth” I am curious to see your reaction as the mainstream weight loss " experts" generally jump up and down about this…
THE CALORIE MYTH:
I get many questions about counting calories, so here is the truth. It is a common belief that the human body burns food to produce calories of energy. This schoolboy fairytale, taught to children to keep things simple, is a problem to anyone trying to teach the real science. Most adults still believe calories count, and their continuing emphasis in popular media and even officially on food labels is a warning that we should be careful what tales we teach our children, for they become what the public believe. For optimum health you need to abandon the calorie myth entirely.
Calories are a measure of the heat produced when food is burned in a crude instrument called a bomb calorimeter. The human body is not a bomb calorimeter. It doesn’t “burn” anything. Our flesh is only marginally related to the notion of calories, as anyone who tries to lose weight by counting them quickly discovers. Simply put, your body works by nuclear power. The stored energy of sunlight is released from foods by a complex process of electron transfer, which occurs at the inner membrane of the mitochondrion. When you get this process working properly, it requires very little food to maintain a healthy, low-fat body, without hunger, and with ample energy for life.
When you count calories you either become neurotic or you get so bored at counting that you tend to eat the same bland diet so you don’t have to count.
Fourth, I am a believer in supplementing, but their intent is just that to “supplement” your diet, you have to get your nutrition right first before maximizing their benefit. It scares me to hear about people eating supplements for breakfast, instead of eating something good for them.
I have to run to work so I will cut this short, my recommendation is that each of us are individual and what i have found to be effective is a “Metabolic typing” which looks at your physical, dietary and psychological profile and provides a custom nutrition program and lifestyle recommendation to achieve optimum health to include bodyfat loss. I benefit from lower carbs for body fat loss, while my wife can eat as many as she wants and keeps her bodyfat low, as long as they are not processed. I will end with a couple of recommendations:
“ If it does not fly, swim, run and is not green do not eat it.” or another way to look at it " if it comes in a bag or a box do not eat it."
Charlie
I think this thread brings up an important issue in sports training. To what extent is body composition a goal of training and nutrition versus merely a side effect?
The strength training/bodybuilding/fitness/nutrition/supplement/etc. industry is geared primarily toward aesthetic body composition as the primary goal of training and nutrition. There’s certainly nothing wrong with this per se. But to what extent does training/eating deliberately for body composition goals conflict with training and eating for maximum sports performance?
There was another recent thread regarding the low bodyfat of elite sprinters and the appearance of extreme muscularity it produces. Ben Johnson is of course a prime example of this visual effect. I think Linford Christie is another standout example. But I doubt any of these elite athletes were specifically trying to drop body fat as a training goal.
yeah flash it got me thinking, it really doesnt bother me to have 15%+ bodyfat, as my performance keeps on improving, trying to figure out losing bodyfat can derail me from the primary goal.
I don’t think anybody suggested counting calories, though it is an effective means towards an end. The neurotic factor would only be in place with people who could not succeed with portion control in the first place.
The kidney failure is likely from some other things not mentioned here. I hardly think comparing somebody who is likely using diuretics, not drinking water, and probably working out a lot is a valid comparison to somebody using the methods described here.
Modified fasts are very successful and do work–plain and simple. Look at shows like the biggest loser. They are essentially starving the obese individuals. They eat less calories than they probably burn through exercise alone and probably well under 50% of maintenance calories a day–a bare minimum to allow someone to live basically.
Change things to a protein sparing modified fast and you likely lose far less, if any, lean mass while attaining the maximum caloric deficit. Probably not necessary for somebody who is under 10 or 12% without even trying, but if someone trains a lot and tries to check their diet, then perhaps it is something to consider.
Great point… I guess body recomposition is of secondary importance in sports training. It is a byproduct of smart training and eating and good performace IMO, but I guess we could ‘push it’ a little if it ‘limits’ performance…