Home / Articles / Q & A / Appetite For Construction - May 4 2001

Appetite For Construction
May 4 2001

By Dr. John M Berardi, Ph.D.
First published at www.t-mag.com.

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Understanding Massive Eating

Q: I have several questions. First, according to the calculations from Part 1 of the "Massive Eating" article, at 195 and 8 to10% body fat I should be eating around 4400 calories per day to gain weight. But I've found that I get fat at 3600 calories per day! Am I to believe that I can take in 800 calories beyond what is an already a lardess-inducing quantity of calories and yet not get fat simply by virtue of not mixing carbs and fats? Call me skeptical, but this sounds like voodoo. I have trouble believing nutrient intake timing could have such an immense effect on nutrient partitioning. What do you say to that, wise guy?

A: To begin with, I'd like to dispense with the unpleasantries, then we can move on to the discussion of ideas. So listen up. Unless you've actually tried the eating program, I'm not at all interested in your comments on its potential efficacy. I know this sounds nasty but it's the truth. I've seen this program pack size on many people and yield a very favorable muscle to fat gain ratio. Those who've tried it seem to have no problems with the premise or the results. It's only those who haven't tried it who have problems with it.
And unless you've actually sucked it up and tried it, we don't have time for idle mental masturbation or "analysis paralysis". Sitting around and typing out questions about the eating plan won't get you any closer to figuring out its efficacy in your program; only taking it for a test drive will! When people tell me they don't want to make a change, it leads me to believe that they must be making such phenomenal progress that they couldn't possibly change anything at all in their program for fear of stopping the never ending gains they're making. Usually, this isn't the case.

In all fairness, though, sure, the diet may not work for you, but only trying it will provide conclusive evidence. I like to think of it this way: Hopefully, training and eating well is a lifestyle for all of us, so therefore we all have many years of it left in us. Trying a novel eating program for several months is just a brief flash in time in your training existence, so what the heck do you have to lose? If it doesn't work and you gain no size, you haven't lost anything. If you gain fat, you can diet it off.

With all of that said, I do have several comments on your thoughts above. First, you may be correct. You may not be able to tolerate such a calorie load. Remember, the calculations used in the first article are well-validated formulas from the scientific literature, but these formulas may contain errors of plus or minus about 20%. So in your case, your maintenance need may fall between the 3600-5200 range. Why such a large range? Well, even our best scientific formulas have limitations. In addition, there's the "X-factor" variable. This variable can either increase or decrease daily energy expenditure based on several genetic, hormonal, and environmental factors.

However, the idea of meal combinations and food choices is pretty important for this program. Choosing low to moderate insulin and glycemic index carbs as well as a predomination of monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats (omega 3s) is crucial to your success. Choosing the right foods allows a higher nutrient intake with better nutrient partitioning and a higher ratio of muscle to fat gain.

Any old overeating program will probably not work the same way. But remember, this program is designed as an overeating program for weight gain. If you're expecting to gain only muscle and no fat, you're going to be sadly disappointed. Fat will always be gained when eating more than your personal calorie needs. This program, however, maximizes the amount of muscle gained to fat gained.

Another thing I should mention is that your initial body-fat percentage will determine your response to any overeating program like Massive Eating. It's been well documented that when lean individuals overeat (using a reasonable diet), about 70% of the weight gain is lean while 30% of the weight gain is fat. But quite the opposite occurs in overweight individuals. In those with high body fat, about 70% of the weight gain is fat while only 30% of the weight gain is lean. So it appears the best results with Massive Eating will be achieved in those who are pretty lean to start with.

Finally, I've evidenced a strange phenomenon that needs mention. I've seen people eating what they consider to be above their maintenance level (they figure this due to the fat gain associated with the program) actually decreasing their body fat percentage while substantially increasing their calories! Sounds unreasonable but I've seen it happen!

My only explanation for this is that perhaps (and this is just me hypothesizing here) the threshold for fat gain is lower than muscle gain in these people. So arbitrarily, if you start gaining fat at 500 calories over maintenance per day, you might not start gaining muscle until you get to 750 extra calories per day. Obviously though, as the muscle mass increases above such a threshold, the overall body-fat percentage will decrease (although total body fat amount won't decrease).

Though you won't necessarily be losing body fat, again, the goal of overeating is to maximize the ratio of muscle gain to fat gain. This can only be accomplished if you're eating enough calories over maintenance to see the muscle gain!

Taking Massive Eating For A Test Drive

Q: Even if separating carbs and fats were the magic bullet of nutrient partitioning, I don't see how anyone can work out the macronutrient requirements and make them fit into the eating plan with six meals per day. Assuming a protein intake of 1.5 grams per pound of bodyweight, each of the three protein and carb meals would be 50 grams of protein and 125 grams of carbs while each protein and fat meal would be 50 grams of protein and 55 grams of fat. This seems like too many carbs or too much fat in one sitting.

A: You bring up some interesting issues with this question. One thing that I didn't clarify well enough with the "Massive Eating" article was the fact that six meals is not the upper limit for feedings in a single day. In fact, many people shoot for about eight meals with this plan, especially those with higher calorie needs. This makes it easier to get in all the calories without boat-loading carbs or fat with your protein.

What I've done below is to design a sample meal plan for your total calorie needs. This took me about thirty minutes with a calculator and food tables so there are no excuses why you can't do this at home. However, I demand a few conditions before readers are allowed to go on. First, please don't overanalyze this plan. You can substitute whatever high-quality foods you want into it, but just try to keep the basic premise of the eating plan the same.

Second, please don't bombard me with questions about how to fit this into your personal schedule (i.e. "I train in the morning, therefore I can't follow your program. Design one for someone like me. I train 9 AM. Oh yeah, and I hate salmon and refuse to buy protein powder.") The T-staff and I just don't have time to customize everyone's eating plans! Remember, reading the Massive Eating articles and searching the T-mag forum will provide more than enough information to design your own diet plan without my help.

Now, let's get to the plan:

Meal #1 (650 calories - 56 protein, 84 carbs, 10 fat)
2 servings of oatmeal with 1 scoop of protein powder (about 20g of protein) mixed in 6 egg whites with veggies and 1 piece of fat free cheese
1 piece of flax bread

Meal #2 (660 calories - 70 protein, 7 carbs, 39 fat)
8-10 oz extra lean beef
1 scoop of protein powder in water
1 salad
1 tablespoon of flax, fish, or Udo's Choice oil

Meal #3 (630 calories - 58 protein, 78 carbs, 10 fat)
2 servings of oatmeal with 2 scoops of protein mixed in
1 piece of flax bread
1 piece of fat free cheese

Meal #4 - Pre-Workout (660 calories - 70 protein, 7 carbs, 10 fat)
Same as meal #2

Meal #5 - During training (160 calories - 40 carbs)
1 serving of Gatorade powder mixed in 1 liter of water

Meal #6 - Immediately Post-Workout (420 kcal - 35 protein, 70 carbs)
3 scoops of Biotest Surge or 35g protein hydrolysate and 70g glucose/maltodextrin

Meal #7 - 90 minutes after Biotest Surge (730 calories - 50 protein, 110 carbs, 10 fat)
1 banana
1 cup of granola
1 scoop of protein
1/2 container cottage cheese

Meal #8 - (560 calories - 55 protein, 7 carbs, 35 fat)
1 can of salmon
1 salad
1 tablespoon of flax oil, fish oil, or Udo's Choice
1 scoop of protein

This program is designed to provide about 4400 calories over eight meals. The total daily macronutrient ratio is 35% protein, 36% carbs, and 29% fat. In addition, this plan provides about two grams of protein per pound of body weight and a great variety of foods. Although there's some fat in the protein plus carb meals and some carbs in the protein plus fat meals, keeping these macros under ten grams is okay. Just try not to go above this level.

Now, what I did here was to choose a program that most will do well on. However, the plan I've given may not be the optimal plan for you because I don't know your insulin or glucose sensitivity, nor do I know your carb and fat tolerance. But at least you can now see that designing such a program is easier than you thought.

So hopefully this illustrates how easy it is to design a meal plan based on the Massive Eating idea: With a few adjustments, carbs, protein, and fat can be adjusted in order to follow a higher carb plan (50% carbs, 35% protein, and 15% fat) or a higher fat plan (50% protein, 35% fat, 15% carbs) based on your personal nutrient needs.

On a closing note, remember that no eating plan that I'll ever write or design is set in stone. There's always some flexibility built into the programs. I'm certainly not able to discuss every darn permutation for each reader's personal needs in my regular articles so that's why some of the whole picture may be confusing for you.

But my job as a writer (and university instructor) is to teach you to help yourself. And it's your job as an educated reader of T-mag to be flexible and adapt ideas that you read on this site to your own personal lives.

Cardio For Gain, Cardio For Loss

Q: I've seen you recommend doing cardio after training in some situations while recommending cardio on separate days in other situations. Why the difference? Should I do cardio at all and if so, when should I do it? Or should I just eat well?

A: I don't understand why there's a huge cardio debate in weight-training circles. I wish I could just click my heels two times and it would just go away. I guess my first idea is that cardio probably has a place in virtually every trainee's program. Now the one caveat here is that athletes training for pure strength and power should probably do no cardio at all since cardiovascular exercise can interfere with strength development.

Cardio can cause a shift in muscle fiber type from very fast twitch (glycolytic) fibers to slower fibers (oxidative/glycolytic). In strength and power athletes, this can lead to lower total force development and lower rate of force development. This means sub-optimal lifting performance. However, this same shift in fiber type is probably beneficial for bodybuilders, recreational trainees interested in improving body composition, and other types of athletes. They should all do their cardio.

Understand that there are many ways to accomplish your physique goals, too many to discuss in a single article or Q and A column. I've seen people get lean with and without cardio. And I've seen people get big with and without cardio. There are so many other variables involved in improving your body. Cardio is just a piece of the puzzle. However, let me give some guidelines for optimizing your progress.

Moderate duration, low intensity cardiovascular exercise leads to increases in both insulin dependent and insulin-independent glucose and amino acid uptake in muscle and liver cells for several hours after the exercise bout. So as a result, cardio can be somewhat anabolic for muscle tissue (from a nutrient partitioning viewpoint). Also, cardiovascular exercise burns a good amount of calories (and therefore fat) and leads to increased muscular uptake of nutrients for hours after exercise (there's that nutrient partitioning again).

This should make it clear that in addition to anabolism, cardio can also contribute to fat loss. So with the potential anabolic effects of cardio as well as the potential for fat loss, I don't see why anyone interested either in getting bigger or getting leaner would exclude cardio from their training program.

Sure, some have argued in the past that cardio can be very catabolic, blah, blah, blah, but if you combine your cardio training with eating for your goals, and you avoid doing excessive high-intensity cardio work, your cardio will have mostly desirable effects.

So, since I recommend cardio for both getting bigger and getting leaner, let's split them up and discuss the best way to incorporate cardio into both types of programs.

Gettin' Bigger

Since increasing muscle mass is the goal, it's especially important to eat enough to compensate for the caloric expenditure of all your exercise (weights and cardio). Using the Massive Eating plan will help in this. With this plan, cardiovascular exercise fits in quite nicely, as the cardio will help increase nutrient partitioning and the muscle to fat gain ratio. In the perfect world, the best way to incorporate cardio into your program would be as follows:

First, directly after your weight training workouts, you'd perform about 15 minutes of cardiovascular exercise at about 60 to 70% of your HR max (which is 220 minus your age). Immediately after this session consume a Biotest Surge or a Biotest Surge-like beverage containing 0.4 grams of protein hydrolysate and 0.8 grams of carbohydrate per kg of body mass. Then about an hour later, consume another meal. This time choose food sources that contain about a one to two ratio of protein to carbs.

Next, on your non-weight training days perform 30 minutes of cardio at 60 to 70% of your HR max. This should not be done in the morning on an empty stomach but sometime during the day about 120 minutes after a meal. Immediately after the cardio session, again consume Biotest Surge or a Biotest Surge-like beverage. This time however, you won't need to eat again 60 minutes later. Just get back on track to eating every three hours or so after this, being sure to eat enough calories to match or exceed your maintenance needs.

Gettin' Leaner

To lose body fat, a combination of diet and exercise is the way to go. Obviously, eating below your maintenance level is necessary for fat loss. Using the Massive Eating principles of food selection and macronutrient combinations, subtracting about 25% of your calculated caloric needs should do the trick.

As far as the cardio goes, the idea here is to increase total calorie expenditure, to increase fat utilization, and to decrease potential fat storage. While the focus may be a bit different, the recommendations are only slightly different from above.

First, directly after your weight training workouts, you'd perform about 30 minutes of cardiovascular exercise at 60 to 70% of your HR max. Immediately after this session, consume a Biotest Surge-like beverage containing 0.4 grams of protein hydrolysate and 0.8 grams of carbohydrate per kg of body mass. However, don't eat again an hour later. After your post-workout drink, just eat every three hours as usual.

Next, on your non-weight training days perform 30 minutes of cardio at 60 to 70% of your HR max. This time, the cardio should be done in the morning on an empty stomach. Again, immediately after the cardio session, consume a Biotest Surge-like beverage. And again, just get back on your normal diet plan of eating every three hours or so.

Using the aforementioned plans, you should be able to use cardio as an effective tool in achieving your goal of body comp improvement. And by the way, since it can help your physique progress, a few nifty "side effects" include better heart, circulatory system, and respiratory system function as well as better overall health and longevity.

Summary: Do your cardio!

Recovery Secrets

Q: I've read that you're sort of a "recovery specialist" when it comes to elite athletes. What secrets do you use to improve recovery times in different types of athletes? Is there a difference between what you do for strength athletes and what you do for endurance athletes? How does diet fit into to all this?

A: I've been fascinated with recovery for the last few years. However, recently I've spent considerable time designing detailed research protocols to answer some relevant questions dealing with CNS recovery, recovery of protein balance, recovery of muscle glycogen, and recovery of the ATP-PC system. My focus in these areas has been the interaction between exercise and nutrition/supplementation.

In fact, the dissertation project that's going to earn me a PhD has been designed to examine the recovery of skeletal muscle biochemical parameters (ATP, creatine phosphate, free creatine, fiber type, PH, etc.) after very intense weightlifting. And as a follow-up, I'll be testing several old and several new supplements for their impact on recovery of the ATP-PC system after a single exercise bout and after chronic exercise training. It's exciting stuff that can be applied to all sorts of trainees at every level.

Below I'll discuss some "secrets" that I use with my athletes. Remember, however, although there are nutritional and supplemental strategies listed here, there's no substitute for a comprehensive nutritional program in terms of promoting progress and recovery.

When talking about recovery from training and competition, there are basically five areas to focus on.

Replenishment of muscle glycogen stores

After many types of training, muscle glycogen levels are depleted. Rapid replenishment of muscle glycogen stores has a favorable impact on the prevention of muscle protein catabolism, on cellular rehydration, and on subsequent exercise performances within the same day or on subsequent days.

Basically, if you don't replenish glycogen rapidly, your performance will suffer the next time you train and you may even lose some muscle along the way. Achieving the most rapid replenishment of muscle glycogen stores is especially important to my endurance athletes because they often train several times per day. However this can also help those training for bodybuilding as bodybuilding training (9 to12 reps) can often deplete muscle glycogen.

In terms of glycogen replacement, the main difference between the two types of athletes is that endurance athletes usually need more glycogen replacement than do weight trainers. With endurance exercise, the athlete should consume more carbs over the four to six hour period after the workout than the weightlifter. In endurance athletes, I usually recommend consuming a liquid meal immediately after training that contains 0.4g protein and 0.8g of carbs per kg of body mass. Then I instruct them to consume food meals in similar proportions every two hours for three subsequent meals.

This means that there'll be four total meals in the six hours following training that conform to the 0.4g protein and 0.8g fat recommendations. Some fat may be included in these latter meals, but since carb intake will be high, fat intake should be modest. In weightlifters, I recommend the consumption of an identical meal after training; however, there should only be one follow-up meal (about 60 to 90 minutes later) that consists of the same macronutrient profile. Then the next meal beyond that should conform to the lifter's particular meal plan and should be eaten somewhere around three hours later.

So why protein and carbs in these meals to promote glycogen storage?

Well, there's some literature to suggest that the synergistic insulin response promoted by carbs and protein will enhance muscle glycogen storage. While some studies have disputed these findings, I continue to recommend the inclusion of protein in these meals due to the second area of recovery-protein balance

Recovery of protein balance

Protein balance is calculated as the difference between protein synthesis (protein anabolism) and protein breakdown (protein catabolism). As I've written before in my Solving the Post-Workout Puzzle articles, protein synthesis tends to go down in endurance trainees after training while it may stay the same or minimally increase in weight trainees. However, in both types of athletes, protein breakdown goes way up, thus creating a negative protein balance and a good potential for muscle loss.

Although this eventually rebounds and the body goes into an anabolic state, in the time immediately following training, muscle can be lost. Since no athlete can afford muscle loss, this is an important focus for recovery and subsequent muscle gain. While weight trainers jump for joy at even the slightest prospect of a weight gain, endurance athletes aren't so excited about the possibility. However, the endurance athletes have nothing to fear.
Since endurance athletes have a predominant number of slow-twitch fibers, the recovery of protein balance in these athletes is designed to prevent muscle loss as a result of intense training. These types of fibers just don't grow very well so there's no big danger of packing on the pounds. But in bodybuilders, the fast-twitch fibers respond quite differently than the slow-twitch fibers. You'll grow when a positive protein balance is initiated with nutrition and supplementation.

So how does one initiate the recovery of protein balance after training?

Conveniently, the best way to do so is to consume the nutrient recommendations listed in the last section (glycogen replenishment). By consuming the mentioned ratios (with the addition of some individual amino acids like glutamine, BCAAs, and phenylalanine in the first post-workout drink), you'll quickly create the optimal anabolic environment by minimizing protein breakdown and increasing protein synthesis.

Recovery of the CNS (neurotransmitter balance)

Neurotransmitters are responsible for many functions in cell signaling and play a big role in the communication between different brain areas and between the brain and the rest of the body. Research on these regulatory chemicals and their effects in exercise training has just recently begun to get the attention it deserves. But this field is still in its infancy due to the fact that it's difficult to study the brain and central nervous system.

Some evidence exists showing that when neurotransmitters like acetylcholine, dopamine, and norepinephrine get depleted, physical and cognitive performance suffers. Since these neurotransmitters can be depleted from intense repeated bouts of strenuous exercise, this is bad news. I believe that certain types of fatigue with endurance training as well as many of the symptoms of overtraining (altered appetite, inability to sleep, etc.) are a result of this type of depletion of neurotransmitters.

In addition to this evidence, there's research showing that even the ratio of tryptophan to BCAAs in the blood can increase 5-HT (serotonin) levels in the brain. This is due to increased tryptophan uptake. Tryptophan is a precursor for the fatigue promoting neurotransmitter, serotonin.

Since neurotransmitters can be depleted during exercise and this depletion can cause fatigue and overtraining, nutritional strategies may offer some support. Supplementation with one or two grams of phosphatidylcholine (lecithin) per day may prevent the depletion of acetylcholine seen with training. Since acetylcholine is active in promoting muscular force, memory, and awareness, this would offer both cognitive and performance benefits.

In addition, six to eight grams of tyrosine supplementation per day may help with dopamine and noradrenaline depletion. Depletion of these neurotransmitters may lead to CNS fatigue, reduced motivation, poor memory, loss of motor control, and poor mood. Finally, supplementation with five grams of BCAAs during training may prevent serotonin increases during and after training due to the fact that BCAAs compete with tryptophan for uptake into the brain, thus reducing the precursors for serotonin production.

Since the research in this area is so new, I recommend that most endurance athletes try the supplements I mentioned to see if they impact performance. If not, we simply eliminate them from the program. There's simply not enough evidence to know if the neurotransmitter alterations seen in training have that much of an impact on performance and whether or not supplements can help in this regard.

Maximizing the anabolic-to-catabolic hormone ratio

In very intensely trained athletes, the anabolic hormones (Testosterone) tend to decrease while the catabolic hormones (cortisol) tend to increase. This phenomenon is present in most endurance athletes and can manifest itself in weight trainers who do a high volume of exercise. This imbalance can lead to muscle loss, performance decrements, depression, and fat gain.

Several supplement strategies can be employed in an attempt to correct this. In a study done by Steve McGregor, Tribex-500 supplementation increased the free Testosterone-to-cortisol ratio in elite cyclists. This indicates it may be useful in balancing the anabolic and catabolic hormones. In addition, supplements like vitamin C, phosphatidylserine, and plant sterols may help prevent exercise induced increases in cortisol levels.

Recovery of the ATP-PC system

The ATP-PC system is responsible for repeated muscular contractions at the start of all exercise. It's also extremely important for brief, all-out bursts of maximal effort. ATP (the best energy source for muscular contraction) is broken down during such efforts and PC comes to the rescue to resynthesize the ATP that was broken down. This system is usually very efficient.

However, when you really challenge the system with high-intensity muscle-damaging contractions, the ATP is broken down faster than it can be resynthesized and some of its degradation products are lost from the muscle. This means that for each ATP that's lost, that's one less ATP to be resynthesized for further work. Over the next few days following an exercise bout, this phenomenon can lower ATP levels by about 20%. Sure, it'll be back to normal a few days later, but most athletes don't train once every three days. They train every day so they need more rapid recovery of ATP.

Creatine supplementation and ribose supplementation may come in handy here. High starting levels of muscle creatine before the exercise bout may be beneficial in preventing the system from being overwhelmed and therefore the ATP loss. In addition, ribose supplementation has been shown (in vitro) to increase the rate of ATP resynthesis after exercise-induced depletion. So the creatine-ribose combination may be beneficial in partially preventing ATP depletion with exercise and may help lead to more rapid recovery of ATP to previous levels.

With the knowledge of these five areas essential to recovery after training, athletes can target their weakest areas. Proper identification of what system may not be recovering will help to target nutritional strategies for maximizing performance and minimizing symptoms of overtraining.