They say that the path to great results is a three-legged stool. This gives you a solid base for your foundation. The legs of that stool are Exercise, Nutrition, and Sleep. You have to do all three if you really want results. You cannot train hard and eat right and stay out until 3:00 a.m. partying. You cannot sleep all night, exercise like crazy, and eat garbage. And you cannot just sleep and eat without training and develop the body that you want. (I think you could add a fourth leg to that stool if you include supplements to you program.) Now, experts will tell you that 70% of results are made in the kitchen but I had hit a plateau regarding my weight loss. I attributed it to things like, “Hey I am packing on muscle and muscle weighs more than fat.” But those stubborn areas were not reducing. So I wanted to take things to the next level.
But first, a disclaimer. I am combining research from a variety of different sources, like Dr. Jim Stoppani, Ryan Engel, and Alexander Pauwels. I am just standing on the shoulders of their genius but I am also breaking this down in a bit of “Ryan Language” to make it easy to understand. So, I am going to be using as little medical jargon as possible while still explaining how and why.
We all know someone who has lost a lot of weight and rather than looking healthy, they look sickly. They get that “Al Roker Syndrome” where their head is too big and they look like they have a candy apple head on a stick body. I didn’t want that when it came to losing weight. I wanted to look healthy and strong. In order to do this, it is not just about a caloric deficit. Sure, you can do that and you will see everything shrink. I wanted to burn the fat while maintaining my muscle mass which means technically what I need is a “shred” program.
Put simply, a shred is designed to specifically burn fat while maintaining your muscle mass. I had been bodybuilding for two years before I attempted a true shred. The way I equated it was I have the muscles underneath. You just cannot see them because fat is like a sweater that you are wearing under your skin. The muscles are there but they are difficult to see. So my goal was to “shred” the fat turning that sweater into a T-shirt so that my muscles would stand out more.
By attempting this diet, it means that I should not see too much reduction in my overall size, which probably means I am a 2XL shirt size for life. But there should be very present tapering in my waist. So my shirt size shouldn’t go down but my pants size should. And hopefully it means that there is more material hanging loosely in the bottom half of my shirts. Maybe I will actually be able to tuck them in and look presentable! So how is this achieved? It means a very specific calculation of what you are putting into your body.
Things You Will Need
My Fitness Pal App: Download the My Fitness Pal app by Under Armor from the app store. Full disclaimer: This is the actual app that I use. Under Armor is not paying me to say that. I am sure there are many other apps out there that do the same thing but a friend personally recommended it and I like it very much. You will need this to chart your meals, water consumption, progress, etc. The app is cloud based so I can access it my work PC, home PC and through my iPad. (You can get it on your smart phone. I personally still use a dumb phone.) This means I can chart my meals from anywhere I have an internet connection. The more you use it and the more food you log into it, the more intuitive it becomes and the easier it is to use. I eat a lot of the same stuff over and over, so after a week, I can now chart my meals in a heartbeat. I don’t think people realize how many calories they take in until you start breaking it all down. And when you actually see it in black and white? It is an eye opener.
Digital Food Scale: Yep, you are about to become that guy. I picked up a Mainstay brand digital scale at Walmart for around $15. I like it because I can put on my containers, zero the scale, and get accurate readings without having to do math. I also use the postal scale at work which does well in a pinch.
Measuring Tools: Hit the local dollar store and start loading up on measuring cups and measuring spoons so that way you can start tracking how much you are really taking in. I used to love to watch Justin Wilson do his cooking shows and he never used measuring cups because he cooked so much he could just eyeball it. You will get there eventually but, for now, every gram counts.
Calorie Counter/Heart Monitor Watch: While this is not essential, it does present you with more accurate numbers. I go pretty intense at the gym, limiting my rests as much as possible, and on average I burn roughly 900 calories per 1 hour session in the gym. Rather than using the My Fitness App to track all my individual reps and sets, I just plug in “Strength Training” and how many calories I burned.
The app then calculates that and adjusts your caloric totals accordingly. So if you burn 600 calories in your workout, it gifts you an extra 600 calories for your daily total and adjusts everything.
Determining Your Caloric Baseline
In order to lose weight you have to ultimately be at a caloric deficit for a certain time period to notice results. The biggest mistake people make is drastically decreasing the amount of food being consumed as well as meal frequency. Meal frequency should actually increase. I eat at roughly 8:00 at home or 8:30 on the way to work. Snack at 11:00. Lunch at 1:00. Snack at 3:00. Whey protein shake at 6:30 (post workout). Dinner around 7:30. Casein protein shake right before night night. Thankfully my job allows me to keep on a really rigorous routine. You just have to plan around your schedule accordingly.
The Basal Metabolic Rate
The BMR is how many calories your body burns in a 24 hour period. If an average person burns 70 calories an hour just lying in bed, it means your body burns 1,680 calories per day with zero activity. (This is why you see such dramatic weight loss on Survivor because the contestants are burning more than they are taking in.) Now, there are other factors that go into this (sex, age, height, weight) but the average man burns 1,662 calories per day. (Women burn around 1,493.)
How to Calculate Your BMR (according to the Mifflin-St. Jeor equation):
– Men: 10 x weight (kg) + 6.25 x height (cm) – 5 x age (y) + 5
– Women: 10 x weight (kg) + 6.25 x height (cm) – 5 x age (y) -161
Because I am American, I had to go to Google for the conversions but here we go. When I did my check, I am saying I was at 250 pounds (113 kg) [psst, it was closer to 255] and I am 5'11" (180 centimeters). So using their BMR calculator, for me, the calculations are as follows:
(10 x 113) + (6.25 x 180) – (5x41+5) = 2,055
You then take your answer and multiply it by how active your lifestyle is:
– Sedentary (little to no exercise) = BMR x 1.2
– Lightly Active (light exercise couple of times per week) = BMR x 1.375
– Moderately Active (Exercise 3-5 times per week) = BMR x 1.55
– Very Active (Hard Exercise 6-7 times per week) = BMR x 1.725
– Extremely Active (Intense Exercise + physical labor job) = BMR x 1.9
I am sitting at a desk for 8 hours a day but I am hitting the gym for five days a week averaging about 75-minutes per session. So I am going to consider myself to be Moderately Active. I take my BMR and multiply it by 1.55 which is 3,185 calories. If I am going to shave 20% off of my caloric intake, that means I now have to trim my total to 2,548. To keep the math simple let’s just call it 2,500.
Now I have my target. I need to consume fewer than 2,500 calories per day, provided I am doing my exercise. With zero exercise, I need to be consuming approximately 1,972 calories in order to lose weight.
“So, Ryan, is that it? I can eat whatever I want as long as it is under my caloric total?”
Yes… If you want that candy apple on a stick look, sure. Go nuts. I think when people try that approach they get that gaunt look which I don’t think is attractive. Or they develop the Vince Vaughn look in Dodgeball, which he self-described as “skinny but flabby.”
Remember my goals here: Look good naked. So for me, the trick to this is not just limiting my amount of calories and doing a drop all over. It is about preserving muscle mass.
According to Dr. Jim Stoppani, if you want to build muscle, you need anywhere from 1 to 1.5 grams of protein per pound of body weight. Let’s go on the light side of this and let’s just calculate this based on my long term goal of 215 pounds. So now I have to cram 215 grams of protein into 2500 calories. Let me state that again… 215 GRAMS of protein while coming in at UNDER 2500 calories.
This is harder than it sounds, so I have to be very selective about what I eat. It means eating a lot of “nutritionally dense” food. To this, we are going to apply the John Cena principle. “If it breathes or if it is green, eat it.” However, once you start calculating how much that actually is the first thing you are going to say is, “Holy crap. That is a truck load of food! How are we going to do this?”
Just wait… It gets worse. Let’s throw more math into the mix. You still want to balance things out so that we have a 40/30/30 ratio of protein, fats, and carbs. Yeah, yeehaw. More on that next.
Meal Timing
Oh yeah, as if all that wasn’t bad enough, one more wrinkle to make it even harder. Science states that, on average, the body can only metabolize about 10 grams of protein per hour, so the most you generally want to take in at a single meal is 30 grams. Everything else is just spillover. This means you cannot just sit down and gorge yourself on 90 grams of protein in a single meal and expect results.
It is not impossible but it is very hard for the body to convert lean protein into fat, so the trick to real results is to space that protein out slowly over the course of the day. So it is protein bar for breakfast, then yogurt as a snack, then lunch, then protein oatmeal, etc… It means eating several small meals often. Want proof this works? When training for Hercules, The Rock was eating seven meals a day. When training to play Wolverine, Hugh Jackman was getting up at 4:00 a.m. to eat chicken and brown rice. Granted, all their meals are made by professional chefs and they are eating steak and fish. I eat frozen chicken from Walmart and tuna out of a can… Still, the theories are sound!
Most people think that when they are dieting, they need to stop eating. Big mistake. When you deprive your body of food, it begins to think it is starving, so it will actually retain fat to keep you alive. Instead, what I am recommending is turning your metabolism into a furnace. If you want that furnace to run hot, you have to stoke it often. When you keep it running hot, you are going to burn more.
Breaking down the Macros
Now that we know how many calories we need to eat to lose our ideal weight, we need to break down the “macros” of the macro-nutrition. There are three areas that we need to focus on. By order of importance they are: 1) Protein 2) Fats 3) Carbohydrates.
We want to try to a balance of 40% Protein, 30% Fats, and 30% Carbs.
Protein = 40% Protein should make up the greatest percentage of your daily intake of calories because of its ability to build lean muscle and burn fat within our body. It is very hard for the body to turn protein into fat so that is where the majority of your meal source is going to come from. Some of the best options for lean protein sources include: Chicken/Turkey Breast, Beef (lean as you can get it), Eggs, Nonfat Greek Yogurt, Fish, etc.
Fats = 30% Fats are generally not something to be afraid of as long as they are the right fats. The fat count on milk and cashews and peanuts look downright scary to the uninitiated. But good fats are needed to stimulate fat loss because of its hormone-enhancing properties and are supplemental to muscular growth. Steer clear of trans fats that come in the form of candy bars, fried foods, and pizza. But eat things like: Milk, Nuts, Peanut Butter, Avocados, etc.
Carbohydrates = 30% Say it with me, “Carb are the enemy.” As the 21st century poet Macklemore once said, “I never knew what a carbohydrate was… Turns out it was all the snacks I love…” And he is right. There are essential proteins. There are essential fats. There are no essential carbohydrates but they are pretty damn well unavoidable. So the trick is to reduce those carbs as little as possible. Complex carbohydrates are the only way to go as far as pairing with all meals. The best complex carbs that also limit insulin spikes are: Brown rice, sweet potatoes, oatmeal, whole-grain breads, whole-grain pasta. In an ultimate shred cut, you want to stagger down from 1.5 grams to 1.0 grams to .5 grams of carbs per body weight.
Why Cut Carbs?
As we go through our day, we turn to carbohydrates for energy. As we begin to limit the number of carbs we take in, the body still needs a required amount of energy to function, especially if you are busting ass in the gym. If we are starving the body of that necessary energy source, it is forced to turn to something else to provide that energy. The body then turns on itself and begins consuming its fat stores in order to survive and provide us with the energy we need. Thus, limiting carbs promotes fat loss.
Sample Menu:
Let’s take a look at a sample menu from an average day of my food consumption:
|
Food
|
Calories
|
Protein
|
Carbs
|
Fat
|
|
Goals
|
2,500
|
40%
|
30%
|
30%
|
|
Breakfast Premier Protein Peanut Butter Bar
|
290
|
30
|
25
|
08
|
|
11:00 Snack: Quaker Protein Oatmeal (1 pkg)
|
190
|
10
|
40
|
05
|
|
Great Value Greek Yogurt
(Strawberry)
|
90
|
12
|
9
|
0
|
|
Lunch: Furyan Chicken (1 cup/140 grams or 4 oz)
|
231
|
43
|
00
|
05
|
|
Great Value Green Beans (1/2
can)
|
40
|
<1
|
08
|
00
|
|
3:00 Snack Great Value Protein Bar
|
240
|
10
|
14
|
12
|
|
Dinner: GV Hamburger Patty (85/15) (x2)
|
250/500
|
21/42
|
00
|
17/34
|
|
Great Value Broccoli Florets
|
50
|
4
|
10
|
00
|
|
Post Workout BF Whey Protein w/ 2% milk (1 cup)
|
320
|
38
|
20
|
9
|
|
9:00 Snack Honey Roasted Peanuts (30g)
|
190
|
06
|
08
|
15
|
|
Night Casein Protein w/ 2% milk (1 cup)
|
240
|
28
|
20
|
6
|
|
Totals:
|
2,291
|
223
|
164
|
94
|
|
Percentage Results (based
on 481)
|
|
(46%)
|
(34%)
|
(20%)
|
I am under my caloric total of 2,500 calories and if this is on a day that I am working out, technically, I could chop anywhere from 400 to 500 calories off this total. So I would say, I am doing pretty good! This is too high for a sedentary lifestyle for me to lose weight but as long as I am clanging and banging, I should be okay.
Now, my fat intake is a little low percentage wise. If this was a regular problem, I could go with a higher concentration of fat in my milk (going up to whole milk) but since I have some calories to spare, I could also round this out with some cashews or peanuts to up that fat count.
The majority of my carbs are from the oatmeal and the protein bar. So if I would drag my butt out of bed long enough to make eggs in the morning before work (which have 0 carbs) instead of having a protein bar, I just chopped out 17% of my total carb intake. Cut out the oatmeal and we just slashed 27% of my total carb intake. Carry the one. Denominator… That is 44% of my carbs! And then naturally that causes a shift up and down of your percentages for protein and fats.
This is where that My Fitness Pal app comes in really handy to help you track all this. And the majority of my food would be considered pretty low carb but I still managed to rack up 34%. So this is how hard it is to get everything right. There is very little margin for error.
Maximizing Your Supplements
I knew very little of supplements before I got started and walking down that aisle in Walmart can be pretty darn confusing. I can’t imagine walking into a place like GNC. So, let’s keep it as simple as possible. It is important to note that the reason why Bodybuilding.com is a free site is because they are always trying to sell you something. The whole fitness industry is designed to sell you something, so you have to take certain things that are said with a grain of salt.
At the end of the day, supplements are not essential. You can survive without them but they do improve performance. One of the first big advocates of BCAAs (keep reading) was Frank Zane. He even was given the nickname “The Chemist” because of his supplement regimen. And even at 70, this dude is a beast without being scary big like the current Mr. Olympia contestants. I don’t want a bodybuilder competition body. But I sure would like a pro wrestling/Marvel movie cast extra body. And that means supplements.
In a previous article, I described supplements as the mortar to lay between your building blocks of solid nutrition. I keep a lot of my supplements at the office. I even got a blender to keep there. Most of the supplements I am discussing need to be ingested as quickly as possible after your workout because that is when your muscles are starving.
I leave the gym, I go back to my office, and I take my first supplement… Gummy bears.
Wait. What? Yep, I get to the office and I eat six gummy bears. Because of the type of sugar in the gummy bears, it causes a glucose spike. Ever made Kool-Aid with cold water? You have to stir like crazy to get the powder and the sugar mixed in. Ever made Kool-Aid with hot water? The molecules are spaced farther apart so it is easier to mix. That glucose spike basically opens up your system and drives freshly consumed nutrients into your system. It is not necessary but it improves the delivery. So I eat the gummy bears. Then I do a serving of:
BPI’s BCAAs (Branch Chain Amino Acids): Branch Chain Amino Acids “keep your energy level up as well as combating catabolic properties within the body” which helps protein synthesis. It helps your muscles repair post workout. We get most of our BCAAs from food. So it is the benefits of eating a steak but since it is in powder form, it goes directly into your bloodstream and has zero calories. I also mix in:
Body Fortress’ Glutamine: Glutamine daily helps “with overall recovery and help decrease cortisone levels.” The Mountain on Game of Thrones takes glutamine… so… Well, obviously. Is it needed? No, so you have to decide if a two month’s supply is worth $8.00.
Okay, so we drank our BCAA/Glutamine mixture. Time for a chaser. Which means a protein shake.
Whey Protein: Whey protein is scientifically designed to be quickly absorbed into the bloodstream. I use Body Fortress from Walmart because it is the cheapest. I am not Rockefeller over here. If taken with a cup of milk, it gets me 38 grams of protein which is essentially a whole other meal. Now, they lace their product with some BCAAs but in order to get a full serving of BCAAs, you have to add three scoops. This would give you roughly 60 grams of protein. But remember, the body can only metabolize so much at a single sitting. So save your money and just use one scoop.
They say a good window for whey is within the first 30 minutes post workout. Stopping by work means I am getting that into my system about five minutes after my workout. I then drive home (24 minutes), shower, shave, and eat dinner, so I am giving my body around an hour to process that whey before I load up with more protein again.
Casein Protein: I take this right before bed because it is specifically designed for a slow release across 8 hours, feeding you protein while you sleep. And having that as a shake soothes my sweet tooth because it is a lot like drinking a milkshake.
So if you do the math, 30% of my protein comes from whey and casein (with the milk). Getting to over 200 grams of protein without it is very difficult.
Cheat Days
Even The Rock will tell you, Cheat Days are essential to preserve your sanity. Yesterday, I had two bacon egg and cheese biscuits from Carl’s Jr. as my cheat meal. It was 1,000 calories but not tremendously overboard. As long as you are lean for lunch and dinner, it is not like it is a massive sabotage. I even did some cookies Saturday night.
I give myself that “cheat day/cheat meal” knowing that I will be back at the regiment. The trick is just not going overboard.
How Long Will It Take?
I have been averaging around 250 pounds for a long time, so I know when I get down to my desired weight, I can maintain with my current lifestyle. If safe weight loss is 1-2 pounds a week, it calculates to 8 pounds a month, so I would have to maintain this style for 4.37 months. But within that timeframe is Halloween, Thanksgiving, my birthday, Christmas, and let’s not forget about the all the massive amount of alcohol I consume on New Year’s Eve with all of those supermodels. “Ryan, aren’t you usually asleep before 11:00 on New Year’s Eve?” You know what? Don’t judge my lifestyle.
So let’s just call it an even 5 months. With realistic setbacks due to scheduling and such, maybe it means I could get to a clean 215 by New Year’s. When I started doing the math, my other alternative was to get relatively close to this calorie count and just start hitting the gym in the morning and in the afternoon to increase my calorie burn. But as I have put this in place for two weeks now, I believe I can consistently get under my 2,500 calorie count each day without even factoring in my gym work. It is not “hard,” it just takes critical planning.
In Conclusion:
As of this writing, I have performed my shred for two weeks, so it is still very early on and I am still trying to dial it in properly. I have seen results on the scale but as I see myself in the mirror every day, it is tough to judge my personal appearance. But I do feel that this is something that I can achieve. While “215” is still 30 pounds away, I feel for the first time that it is an attainable goal because I have science on my side. Now, it is just staying focused, working hard, maintaining my willpower, and not giving up.
I hope this guide helps you achieve your goals. I’m right there with you, pal. I know how hard it is but as I tell everyone: I am not special, so if I can do it, you can do it.
Remember, you’ve got what it takes but it’s going to take everything you’ve got…
Version 1.0 – 08/07/2016
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