Impact-ready” refers to the ranges your reflexes would choose in order to absorb high forces experienced in hard contact with the ground.) (Location 215)
findings also exposed the Achilles’ heel of weightlifting: Because the weight used is determined by the weakest range, there is a vast mismatch between the amount of weight lifted and our actual muscular potential. (Location 238)
when you want to grow muscle in the most effective way possible, there is no getting around HEAVY. (Location 250)
The most typical overloading injury we see is tendinitis of the elbow, also known as golfer’s elbow or tennis elbow. Shoulder and knee problems are common as well. These injuries are indicative of damaged cartilage and are cumulative and permanent. (Location 270)
Sustaining injuries and underutilizing muscle tissue are symptoms of weightlifting’s biggest weaknesses: it overloads joints and underloads muscles. In (Location 277)
After seven weeks, the group using variable resistance recorded twice the amount of improvement on bench press single rep max than the control group and triple that on squats, as well as posting a three times greater average power increase. (Location 318)
We’d just uncovered one large knowledge gap in fitness—the superiority of variable-resistance strength training over traditional weightlifting—when we discovered yet another. (Location 525)
cardio stimulates cortisol, the body’s natural stress hormone. (Location 543)
Cortisol can promote two effects to undermine your fitness goals. First, it has the potential to inhibit lipolysis, thereby protecting body fat. Second, it can promote proteolysis, including the breakdown of lean muscle tissue. (Location 544)
Testosterone is anabolic, so it promotes growth. It works well with the anti-catabolic protective properties of growth hormone. (Location 618)
We’ve already mentioned it, but it bears repeating: if you want muscle to grow, there is no getting around HEAVY. You have to use a weight where you are unable to continue repetitions after thirty to sixty seconds. (Location 630)
Sprinting, or doing high-intensity bursts of exercise with rest in between, does the exact opposite of prolonged cardio. Instead of keeping fat on the body by stimulating cortisol, this type of exercise optimizes hormone release by upregulating growth hormone. Clearly, if your desire is to be a champion distance runner, you don’t want to carry a lot of muscle because it will slow you down. But if you want to lose fat and build muscle, high-intensity exercise is the way to go. (Location 703)
That might mean eating three pounds of rib eye steak, five to ten eggs and two pounds of ground beef, or several pounds of dark meat chicken each day. (Location 1363)
Not all protein sources are created equal, however. The extent to which proteins are actually utilized by the body depends on the type consumed. In general, the body utilizes eggs best, followed by meat sources, then cheeses, and lastly, whey and vegetable sources, like soy or broccoli. (Location 1405)
Egg protein usage approaches the 50 percent mark, while 40 percent of ingested meat protein is used in an anabolic manner. Whey protein, which is quite popular in the athletic industry and is relatively well regarded, has been shown to achieve just 18 percent anabolic usage in human subjects. (Location 1408)
It has been proven in multiple studies that a calorie surplus is not what enables muscle growth. Instead, the appropriate level of higher quality protein does. Stated differently, a person can be at a caloric deficit and trigger body fat loss while at the same time growing muscle, given the proper level of protein.80,81 (Location 1421)
Both meats and plants can ferment. Because our ancestors were not able to refrigerate meats, much of what they ate began to break down before consumption and the resultant by-products of fermentation were routinely ingested. (Location 1433)
In general, steak and eggs already have enough fat in them, so there’s no need to add any extra to your diet. (Location 1442)
This includes eliminating processed grains, like anything made from flour, from your diet. The sole differentiator of carbohydrates in human nutrition is the ease with which they put on body fat. As an evolutionary response, this lines up with when things are available in nature. For instance, a bear comes out of hibernation and eats protein—say deer and a fish—until the end of the summer. (Location 1606)
The bottom line: if you’re looking to increase your body fat, eat carbohydrates. If you’re looking for optimal health, focus on fats and proteins. (Location 1611)
Interestingly, fasting has been recognized as an effective health intervention for thousands of years. It may well be the case that early humans recognized the benefits of fasting almost as soon as they developed agriculture and thereby the ability to engage in unhealthier habits of continuous food consumption. In the context of more recent history, Mark Twain once wrote, “A little starvation can really do more for the average sick man than can the best medicines and the best doctors. I do not mean a restricted diet; I mean total abstention from food for one or two days.” (Location 1620)
This diet was designed to be unhealthy, as it typically leads to insulin resistance, Type 2 Diabetes, and fatty liver disease in mice. Researchers then divided the mice into multiple different groups. (Location 1644)
Around twelve hours after your last consumption of food, the body begins to break fatty acids down into ketone bodies, which will become the new blood-borne chemical energy vector, replacing the glucose that your body is running out of. (Location 1670)
In fact, within twenty-four hours, the body will begin the process of autophagy, wherein it recycles and replaces old cells and cellular components. This process includes the destruction of misfolded proteins, the presence of which has been linked to Alzheimer’s and other diseases. (Location 1677)
Then, by the forty-eight-hour mark, growth hormone levels peak, on average increasing to five times one’s baseline levels. (Location 1680)
Finally, by the seventy-two-hour mark, the body has been triggered to recycle and replace all of its T-Cells, effectively regenerating a substantial part of the immune system and reversing immunosuppression. (Location 1685)
However, there is also a substantial body of research discussing the effect of fasting on testosterone, and we believe this information is much less publicized. (Location 1691)
This is the opposite of an effective approach. In reality, insulin slows testosterone production in the body, and generally food consumption is associated with insulin release. This discovery is the basis of the relationship between time-restricted eating/fasting and testosterone. (Location 1693)
Testosterone, a primarily male sex hormone, is responsible for the major male-associated characteristics, such as muscle growth, facial hair, bone mass density, and sexual drive. It is also upregulated during the fasting period. (Location 1697)
As we discussed earlier in this chapter, many nutrition “experts” have been saying for years that fasting is just the same as calorie restriction with different meal timing, and therefore should be ignored. (Location 1711)
The most basic way to implement intermittent fasting is to do a 16:8 split. This means eating within an eight-hour window and fasting for the remaining sixteen hours. In most cases, people choose to skip breakfast in this method. (Location 1788)
Breakfast actually slows you down. Anytime you’re digesting food, your cognitive function is diminished. (Location 1791)
In fact, we recommend exercising fasted to elicit the most efficient muscular and hormonal response. (Location 1792)
As we mentioned above, fasting begins to exert positive effects after approximately twelve hours in humans, so with 16:8 fasting, the participant enters the fasted state after hour twelve and then spends four hours benefiting from that state before ending the fast. (Location 1795)
The next obvious step in intermittent fasting is to move to one meal a day. That’s a 23:1 split, and the concept is simple. You just have dinner or a late lunch every day. (Location 1798)
Your goal is to eat enough and get the proper amount of protein in this single daily meal. Keep in mind, you can follow any sort of diet—for instance, ketogenic, carnivore, or others—while adhering to an OMAD eating pattern. There is no evidence the benefits of fasting are limited to any particular nutrition plan. (Location 1801)
If we’re correct, putting butter or MCT oil in your coffee—popularly known as Bulletproof Coffee—might allow you to maintain your fast while satiating hunger before your first meal of the day. (Location 1814)
Once we realized this after reading so much bad “ketogenic nutrition” information, it led us to our next conclusion: eating meat only is the easiest way to reach your daily protein requirements. (Location 1839)
There is a great deal of conflicting research out there. Some studies indicate certain nutrition programs may lead to longer life spans and others suggest the same programs result in shorter life spans. Other studies show certain types of nutrition decrease one type of cancer risk while increasing the risk of another type.123 So we asked ourselves a few questions: (Location 1850)
It quickly became apparent to us that the majority of the human diet should come from protein. What’s more, our recommendation of one gram per pound of body weight per day (2.2 g/ kilogram) doesn’t leave room in the intestines for much more—especially when we factor in the option of time-restricted-eating windows, another one of those few nutritional principles that has little to no conflicting research. (Location 1882)
In other words, only the fats or the carbohydrates you eat are stored as body fat, even when you are at a calorie surplus. Excess protein your body cannot use seems to contribute to increasing your body temperature and enables you to use the energy while digesting. (Location 1904)
So when an individual does a set, a thirty-second stretch of the target muscles will amplify this process and allow more blood flow into the muscle. (Location 2853)
In that thirty-minute window, you could eat simple carbohydrates. (Location 2856)
HOWEVER, carbohydrates play a role in the hydration of muscle cells and, not surprisingly, in the hydration of most other cells in the body. (Location 2867)
You retain two to three grams of water per gram of carbohydrates you intake.228 This is part of the reason why so many suffer from high blood pressure. (Location 2868)
Consuming 0.5–0.7 grams of carbs per pound (1.1–1.5 grams/kg) of body weight within thirty minutes after training results in proper glycogen resynthesis. (Location 2890)
possible. As stated earlier, one gram per pound of body weight, or 2.2g/kg of body weight. (Location 2925)
A few months after I started eating this way, I met Dr. Shawn Baker, one of my favorite people. He had just been on The Joe Rogan Experience podcast talking about carnivore nutrition, and I realized then maybe my plan wasn’t so unreasonable to recommend after all. (Location 3022)
At the time there were no supplements I felt were worth taking, so I wasn’t bothering with any of that. I was just doing the standard X3 sessions, six days per week. (Location 3030)
pressure. I eventually started drinking plain black coffee instead, which led to me deciding to develop my own natural coffee replacement beverage, which eventually became another Jaquish Biomedical product IN-Perium. It’s a great appetite suppressant that kept me from being too hungry on OMAD. (Location 3036)
My one meal was typically two or three large steaks. My body weight was approaching 220 pounds, so I needed to be at or over 220 grams of high-quality protein to meet my protein needs. (Location 3038)
Since the development of Fortagen, I and several other X3 users have demonstrated taking three to five doses daily builds muscle on an almost zero-calorie day (Fortagen is four calories per dose). (Location 3043)
Fortagen was designed to help individuals who want to eat less animal protein or just find it difficult, inconvenient, or expensive to eat multiple pounds/kilograms of meats on a daily basis to meet their protein needs. (Location 3047)
I try to vasodilate through a combination of stretching a muscle, then hydrating that muscle to the highest degree immediately post workout. The strategy has accelerated my growth and I intend to continue it. (Location 3064)
With X3, the goal is to continue each exercise until you can no longer move the bar. The last repetition should barely move it an inch. (Location 3249)