Man 2.0 Engineering the Alpha (36 page)

  Return to the starting position and repeat with your right leg.

  Continue alternating for the prescribed number of reps or time.

 

Perform B1–B3 in a circuit fashion, resting no more than 30 seconds between exercises. Perform 4 circuits, resting 90 seconds between each. After your last set, rest 2 minutes and proceed to the next circuit.

 C 
Pull-Up
20 reps

 

Perform 20 total reps on the pull-up. It doesn't matter how many sets it takes as long as you get all 20. For some people, this will be 3 sets, for others, 6. Just do as many pull-ups as you can, then rest, then do more. Continue in this fashion until you get to 20. If you can get more than 10 on your first set, add some weight using a belt.

CHAPTER 10

Phase II: Adapt

EMBRACING METAMORPHOSIS

“The snake which cannot cast its skin has to die. As well, the minds which are prevented from changing their opinions, they cease to be minds.”

—
FRIEDRICH NIETZSCHE

P
hase II of Engineering the Alpha
is where things start to get really interesting, in terms of both diet and training. We'll cover diet first because, as we mentioned, you get to partake in cheat days, otherwise known as the most awesome thing to hit food since . . . well, food. It's time to master the cheat day.

But before we get to that, we want to talk about the hormonal components of Phase II. This phase is called Adapt for a few reasons: You have readapted to carbs in your diet. Your insulin receptors have adapted to a higher level of sensitivity. And, of course, your body has adapted to the workouts and dieting, making you more proficient overall.

Adapt will also be highly concerned with testosterone, a hormone so awesome that Roman got its chemical structure tattooed on his forearm.

As we explained in the hormonal breakdown discussion, testosterone is involved in everything from fat loss and muscle building to sex and confidence. During Phase II, you will notice the first results of increased testosterone. This will happen by way of your newfound friendship with insulin. When you're insulin resistant, you store more fat, which increases estrogen and lowers testosterone; when you're insulin sensitive, you flip the switch so you lose fat, increase testosterone, and lower estrogen. Win-win.

Additionally, testosterone production will be enhanced by your training efforts. All weight training increases testosterone, but studies have shown that when you train with increased density, the effect is exacerbated. During Adapt, the training will be entirely dedicated to increasing density—and thereby testosterone.

Finally, we'll look at the hormones primarily responsible for your metabolism: leptin, T3, and T4. In order to create the context necessary to fully explain these things, let's take a look at what happens to you while you're on a diet—even an intelligent one, like the one you followed in Prime.

Overall, Adapt is about increasing your training intensity and volume so you'll not only be working harder on each set, you'll also be doing more total reps and sets. On the diet side, compared to last phase, you'll be eating
more
on training days and
less
on non-training days. And then, of course, there's cheat day, when you'll eat all types of foods that you never thought would be suggested as part of a fat-loss plan. But we not only suggest—we require you to indulge.

 

WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU DIET

The human body is amazingly proficient at adapting to the various stressors in life, including severe caloric restriction. The body quickly recognizes the caloric deficit and then promptly makes the necessary adjustments to maintain homeostasis.

This is an evolutionary adaptation that has helped our species survive in times of famine—awesome for that, but not so desirable for people who want to get lean. If you cut calories, your body will eventually adjust and hold on to more fat, which is exactly what you're trying to avoid.

We just told you that you'll be training harder, eating more on those training days, and eating less on your off days. As with everything in this book, there's a reason for our madness. When you follow a traditional diet of just eating less, this is what typically happens inside your body.

Decreased Levels of T3 and T4

T3 and T4 levels (thyroid hormones that play a major role in the regulation of metabolism) in underfed individuals mimic and can actually cause sick euthyroid syndrome. In short, low levels of these hormones are anything but desirable for individuals seeking to lose fat mass.

Decreased Basal Metabolic Rate

The overall decrease in metabolism, or basal metabolic rate, is largely due to the aforementioned decrease in output of T3 and T4; however, a host of other factors also contribute to the downregulation of the basal metabolic rate. In essence, metabolic rate is decelerated in an attempt to balance energy expenditure with caloric consumption, thus preserving more fat mass. So if you eat fewer calories, your body does what it can to burn fewer calories.

This effect, combined with the one above, is the reason for what we colloquially term
starvation mode
—your body thinks you're starving, and it does its best to keep you alive.

Increased Levels and Half-Life of Cortisol

Severe dieting both spikes and
extends
the half-life of cortisol. We mentioned that cortisol is a catabolic agent—when elevated for long periods of time, the catabolic effect will be directed toward your muscle. This is clearly not optimal for individuals who wish to retain lean muscle mass while attempting to lose fat. Interestingly, the serum cortisol levels associated with malnourished (underfed) individuals parallel those linked to individuals suffering from clinical depression.

Decreased Serum Leptin Levels

Generally speaking, there's a positive relationship between leptin and the amount of fat mass you're carrying. However, certain studies have shown dramatic decreases in leptin when caloric intake is highly restricted, independent of fat mass. When low levels of leptin are transmitted to the associated receptors of the hypothalamus, the hypothalamus then begins to send out various regulatory signals to the rest of the body in an attempt to decelerate fat loss and decrease energy expenditure. Or in English: low levels of leptin slow your ability to lose weight by turning your metabolism down a few notches.

It almost seems backward: the better shape you're in, the harder it is to look even better. In other words, the more you move away from the weight that your body is used to (called your set point), the more your body adapts to resist your transformation. Even though individual set points can vary greatly, one thing remains constant: the leaner you get, the worse the aforementioned problems become. But if you can change your set point by staying at a lower body fat for a longer period of time, your body will adapt and make fat loss easier—at least compared to when your body constantly lives in an overweight state.

The main reason lean people have extreme difficulty shedding that last bit of stubborn fat is that their metabolisms have hit rock bottom. Cortisol is freely running its course while T3, T4, and leptin are all slowed to a trickle, like blood to the nether regions of an eighty-year-old man in the days before Viagra.

However, there is hope—and that hope lies in cheat days.

 

THREE HORMONAL BENEFITS OF CHEAT DAYS

“All you need is love. But a little chocolate now and then doesn't hurt.”

—
CHARLES SCHULTZ

1. Increase in thyroid hormone output

When your body is in a caloric deficit, you produce less T3 and T4—both important thyroid hormones that play roles in the regulation of metabolic rate. A cheat day or strategic overfeed can help increase these hormones.

2. Increase in twenty-four-hour energy expenditure

A caloric surplus from a cheat day causes your body to increase your basal metabolic rate, which is the amount of calories you burn throughout the day. Studies have shown an increase of nearly 10 percent, and it's hypothesized that an even more significant increase is possible.

3. Increase in serum leptin levels

This might be the most important perk of cheat days from a fat-loss standpoint. Leptin levels drop when you're in a caloric deficit (lasting as little as seventy-two hours), and a periodic bump in leptin coming from a cheat day has several benefits, including increased thyroid output, increased energy expenditure and basal metabolic rate, and overall increased thermogenesis (aka fat burning).

 

 

The benefits of the cheat day are twofold. On one hand, you have the physical and physiological benefits (see “Three Hormonal Benefits of Cheat Days”). But cheat days also provide a mental and emotional break from dieting so you don't feel like you're on a diet. Most people quit diets out of frustration that they can't eat what they want. And while we're confident that the intermittent fasting structure gives you much more freedom to eat great foods, the cheat day ensures that no stone is unturned. There is a certain psychological benefit when you are able to take days off from your diet, eat whatever you want, and be confident in the knowledge that it will not make you fat.

And during the Adapt phase, you get a cheat day every single week. While there are a lot of diets that rely on cheat days to be successful, nearly any nutritional plan can, under the right set of circumstances, benefit from cheat days. So without bogging you down too much, here's a primer—the cheater's cheat sheet, if you will:

 

1. Do not gorge; stop eating before you feel stuffed.
You are allowed to eat what you want but not to gorge yourself until you feel like you want to throw up.

2. Only buy your cheat foods on your cheat day.
Then after the day is done,
get rid
of them. Remember: if it's there, you'll eat it. So throw your cheat day foods in the trash once the cheat day is over.

3.
Eat your meals and make them as cheat-y as possible.
Leave no stone unturned. Eat what you want. You certainly don't have to eat junk food; if you adhere to a gluten-free diet, you don't need to eat cookies—or you can obviously just eat gluten-free cookies. The most important things for cheat days are carbs and overall calories, so as long as you're consuming plenty of those, you can have foods that fall in line with your regular nutritional practices.
Just eat more of them.

4. Have fun with it.
Eat what you want without any thought of guilt. It's strategic, and it needs to be done so you can prime your body to burn more fat.

 

FEAST/FAST MODEL

The feast/fast model was originated by Roman in 2004, and he's been using it with his clients and his own diet ever since. The feast/fast approach is his contribution to the fasting community, although its inception had nothing to do with the benefits of fasting.

Roman noticed that while he was getting a ton of benefit from cheat days in terms of fat loss and mental reprieve, the digestive aftermath wasn't pleasant. Many people report the same thing: if you cheat on Sunday, you may be paying for it on Monday in terms of intestinal distress. Not only are you likely to be in the bathroom more than you'd like, but also eating will feel like a chore.

As you can imagine, after a night of eating pasta, ice cream, brownies, and steak (yes, all at once), the last thing anyone wants to do first thing in the morning is eat. Eventually, Roman discarded the bodybuilding rule to eat a big breakfast, and he started pushing his first meal of the day back by a few hours . . . then a few more. Ultimately, he stopped eating altogether on the day following his cheat.

The results were impressive: Increased fat loss. More leanness. And better muscle definition. And, of course, a much happier tummy.

 

WHY IT WORKS

It almost seems too good to be true: trade one day of gluttony for one day without food and be better than where you started. Researching this concept has led us to stumble across a few different reasons why the feast/fast model works so well; some have to do with fasting, obviously, but some benefits are a direct result of cheating.

Like any style of fasting, removing food for an extended period of time can lead to fat loss because it often leads to lower caloric intake. Pretty simple. However, the reason this works well is because it's coming on the heels of a cheat day.

Remember, dieting causes leptin levels to drop, which slows down fat loss; strategically
overfeeding
boosts leptin levels back up, increasing the rate of fat loss. Putting a fast day after a cheat day, therefore, does two things:

 

1. Prevents any fat gain from the caloric spillover of eating, oh, we dunno, 14,000 calories worth of ice cream
^*
by creating an immediate deficit

2. Prevents stagnated fat loss, allowing the hormonal benefit from the fast to proceed uninterrupted

 

More than anything, though, this is just a practical approach created to alleviate discomfort.

While the feast/fast model is undoubtedly a potent fat-loss technique, it's not a perfect system. The main drawback is that you're really looking at a thirty-two- to forty-hour fasting period. If your last meal on your cheat day is before bed (say, ten p.m.) on Sunday, and you don't eat at all on Monday, your first meal is breakfast Tuesday. And if you want to stick with your 16/8 schedule (which we recommend), that meal may not be until one p.m.

As you can probably guess, this has proven to be challenging for a number of people. That said, we believe that with some practice, just about anyone can abstain from food for an extended period of time with very little discomfort. Remember, when you fast, you're training decreased frequency of ghrelin secretion, meaning you control hunger, instead of it controlling you.

Still, for a lot of people, the idea of going without food for up to a day and a half is a bleak proposition. If you fall into this category, we're going to let you keep the training wheels on for a few weeks. So instead of the full-day fast, you can have a small dinner (up to 400 calories) on Monday night to take the edge off the hunger. This won't detract from any of the hormonal benefits (you still fast), but it does add some calories where there weren't any before. While this won't stop fat loss, it might slow the speed at which you can change your body.