21 Day Fast Mass Building Update #2:

The Anabolic Amplifier Effect: What it is & How it works…

By Lee Hayward & Vince Del Monte

I’ve got a question for you…

What’s The Most Anabolic Muscle Building Substance You Can Get Your Hands On?

…Is It A Black Market Steroid ?
Nope.

…Is It The Latest Bodybuilding Supplement Stack ?
Negative.

…Is It Some Exotic Herb From The Amazon Jungle ?
Heck No!

The most anabolic substance known to man is “food”.

I’m dead serious about this. All the training, drugs, and supplements in the world won’t build an ounce of muscle mass without proper nutrition and adequate food intake. In fact when you get right down to it, the food you eat is the only real “Anabolic Component” of your entire muscle-building regimen.

Going to the gym and working out is NOT anabolic. The workout itself is actually catabolic and breaks down muscle tissue. Now granted it’s the stress of working out that triggers the adaptation response within the muscles so that they get the signal to become bigger and stronger. But it’s the food you eat that actually goes towards building muscle tissue.

So the question is how do we maximize the muscle building power of food in order to get big and ripped? Well the key is to understand exactly how your body reacts hormonally to changes in your food intake.

Yo-Yo Dieting… Chances are you have probably heard the words “Yo-Yo Dieting” brought up in conversation among dieters and weight loss experts before. Basically Yo-Yo Dieting, also known as weight cycling, is a term that was coined by Kelly D. Brownell, Ph.D., at Yale University, in reference to the cyclical up-down motion of a yo-yo. In this process, the dieter is initially successful in the pursuit of weight loss but is unsuccessful in maintaining the weight loss long-term and begins to gain the weight back. The dieter then seeks to lose the regained weight, and the cycle begins again.

Ok, so to translate that into English it basically means that a fat person goes on a diet and they lose some weight. But after a while they get fed up with being on a low calorie diet and feeling hungry all the time. So they ditch the diet, pig out, and gain the weight back again.

Now most mainstream diet and weight loss gurus talk about Yo-Yo Dieting as a “bad” thing that should be avoided. But when you actually take a deeper look into the topic, you’ll see that it’s not as bad as the weight loss gurus have made it out to be.

You’ll hear all kinds of myths and misconceptions about Yo-Yo Dieting… People say stuff like… “it will ruin your metabolism”, “make you get fatter”, “make it harder to lose weight again in the future” and the list goes on and on.

But when you do your homework you’ll see that the research doesn’t back up these myths. In fact studies have shown that repeatedly cycling your caloric intake actually increases your food efficiency and doesn’t “ruin your metabolism”.

And while it’s true that most people will re-gain weight when they come off a diet. What is NOT taken into consideration is the actual body composition of that re-gained weight. There have been several studies that show a lot of the weight that’s re-gained after a low calorie diet is actually lean muscle mass and NOT just excess bodyfat.

Yo-Yo Dieting For Muscle Growth!

Competitive bodybuilders will regularly go through phases of “Yo-Yo Dieting” for the purpose of gaining lean muscle mass. They will follow an ultra strict diet before a competition in effort to lose weight and get ripped to the bone shredded. Then right after the competition is over they will purposely change their diets and gain back the weight they lost, along with several pounds of additional new muscle mass. The end result is they get bigger and more muscular with every single competition they do!

A prime example of this happens right after a bodybuilding contest when bodybuilders experience their post contest “Rebound”.  It’s during this short window of opportunity bodybuilders will literally make the most insane rapid muscle gains ever! If you’re not familiar with how the Post Contest Rebound works, then let me explain it for you… Bodybuilders will go on a very strict fat loss diet for at least 12 weeks prior to a bodybuilding contest. This is so they can strip away all their excess bodyfat and get as ripped to the bone shredded as possible. Their goal is to step on stage with NO Excess Bodyfat What So Ever! This is necessary in order to bring out all their rock hard muscle definition. However, once the contest is over the celebration begins. Can you imagine how good it must be for all those “starving bodybuilders” who have deprived themselves of their favourite foods for weeks on end to all of a sudden be allowed to eat them again?! Let’s just say that the typical foods most bodybuilders eat after a show are NOT the most “healthy”…

Pizza, burgers, fries, ice cream, cake, cookies, and chocolate bars are just some of the many things that will get devoured in ridiculous amounts… If they actually added up all the calories consumed it would be scary!

Now in most “normal people”, eating this much food would just be stored as ugly unwanted bodyfat. But when your body is depleted (as in the case of a pre-contest bodybuilder) this Over abundance of calories triggers the body to unleash HUGE amounts of Natural Anabolic Hormones that shuttle all this food towards building solid Lean Muscle Mass!

Note:
I’m am NOT suggesting that you purposely go out and eat “junk food” in effort to gain size. I’m just telling you what the majority of competitive bodybuilders will do when they “pig out” after months of strict dieting.

It’s actually quite common for bodybuilders to gain 20+ pounds of muscular bodyweight during the first week after a show!

Now obviously a lot of that rapid weight gain will be water and muscle glycogen being stored within the muscle cells. But about 5-10 pounds of it will be actual solid lean muscle mass.

Can you imagine the incredible muscle building results that you could make by going through this kind of rebound cycle again and again?

Considering the fact that the average gym member is lucky to even gain 5 pounds of muscle per year. You can now see why competitive bodybuilders are among the BIGGEST & Most Muscular guys in the gym, especially since they are literally packing on 5-10 pounds of permanent muscle mass with every pre-contest diet & post-contest rebound!

When following a strict bodybuilding contest diet you’ll lose a lot of bodyfat, as well as some lean muscle mass in the process. But once you start the post contest rebound the majority of the weight gained is lean muscle mass with only small increases in bodyfat.

All Good Things Must Come To An End… (Or Maybe Not ?)

As impressive as these results are for both competitive bodybuilders the key thing to realize is that these fast muscle gains are only temporary. Fast muscle gains come in spurts, it’s NOT a non-stop process.

When competitive bodybuilders are “pigging out” after a bodybuilding contest. They generally make incredible muscle gains for about 2 weeks before things start to slow down and plateau. After that if they continue eating excessive amounts of calories beyond the 2 week mark those extra calories will get stored as bodyfat, and NOT as lean muscle mass.

This is the biggest draw back to traditional Bodybuilding “Bulking” Programs. Guys will often go on a prolonged high calorie eating plan for 12 weeks at a time. Now granted they will make some fast muscle gains initially when starting the program, but they quickly get to the point where the gains in bodyfat are greater than the gains in lean muscle mass.

So do you want to know the “secret” strategy to avoiding these problems?

It’s simple… Implement Shorter and More Frequent Training & Nutrition Cycles!

2 Steps Forward, 1 Step Back…

Now if you’ve done any reading on the topic of fat loss, than I’m sure you are familiar with the concept of cycling your calories. I’ve talked about it here with regards to “Yo-Yo Dieting”. But the common strategy that most weight loss diet experts recommend these days is to temporarily increase calories to prevent the metabolism from slowing down and hitting a fat loss plateau.

What researchers have found is that whenever you start a low calorie diet you can make rapid fat loss progress for the first few weeks. But after that the body adjusts to the low calorie diet, the fat loss results comes to a screeching halt.

So to overcome this problem people have incorporated different kinds of calorie cycling variations. Having a “cheat day” or “high calorie re-feed days” planned into the fat loss program helps to prevent your metabolism from adapting to the low calorie diet, and it actually speeds up your overall fat loss results.

Not only that, but having a planned “Cheat Day” gives you a mental break as well. Temporarily going off your diet satisfies your food cravings and makes the process of following the fat loss program much more tolerable over the long term.

Now there have been tons of research articles published about this calorie cycling concept from fat loss point of view. After all we live in an overweight society where the average person wants to lose weight. But this same principle also applies in reverse to muscle building as well. It just hasn’t been documented as much because building muscle isn’t nearly as popular as losing fat.

So like I’ve already mentioned whenever you drastically increase your calorie intake over base levels your body will release higher amounts of anabolic hormones to shuttle those extra calories towards lean muscle growth.

This elevated anabolic response continues for about 2 weeks. After that, the body adapts to the higher calorie intake and your muscle growth progress hits a plateau. This is when you need to temporarily back off on your food intake and “Re-Prime” your body for another rapid growth “Rebound” phase.

Cycling your calories like this not only helps you make better lean muscle gains, but it also gives your digestive system a break from consuming excessive amounts of food all the time. A lot of people don’t realize this, but following a high calorie mass building eating plan is down right hard!

While it sounds fun initially to be able to eat a lot, it quickly becomes a chore. Having to regularly consume over and above your maintenance calorie intake day after day is very difficult. If you have ever followed a typical bulk up eating plan for any length of time you know exactly what I’m talking about here.

Just like when you are following a fat loss diet and you look forward to a cheat day when you can “pig out”. During a mass building phase you actually look forward to low calorie days when you don’t have to eat so much.

The brand new 21-Day Fast Mass Building System that will be available on January 11^th is based on those exact nutritional cycling principles. The program is divided into 2 phases that complement one another, and keeps your body on the “Anabolic Edge” for maximum muscle growth.

The first phase of the program is a 1-week low calorie “Primer Phase”. This will give your digestive system a break, increase your insulin sensitivity, and elevate hormones and enzymes so that your body becomes very efficient at storing the food you eat as lean muscle.

Then once your body is primed for growth, we’ll switch gears and move into the 2-week high calorie “Overload Phase”. This will open up the floodgates for natural anabolic hormone production (IGF-1, Testosterone, and Insulin). It’s during this phase where you’ll literally be able to feel your body growing bigger and stronger by the day!

In addition to cycling your nutritional program, we’re also going to cycle your training routine. You see a HUGE mistake that bodybuilders and fitness enthusiasts often make is not matching their workouts so that they complement their diets.

Obviously, when you are following the low calorie “Primer Phase” you are not going to have the same level of strength, muscle fullness, and power as you will when following the high calorie “Overload Phase”.

So to go along with the “Primer Phase” we’re going to follow a fast paced conditioning circuit routine that utilizes higher reps and more bodyweight exercises. This lighter training phase will give your joints and tendons a break, and prep your body for the heavy mass building power-training phase that’s to follow.

With the 21-Day Fast Mass Building System the scales are tipped in favour of lean muscle growth, because you’ll spend the majority of your time in a caloric surplus. While at the same time following a heavy mass building power-building workout program, thus allowing you to grow bigger and stronger!

But you will not experience the metabolic pitfalls that are associated with traditional long term bulking and heavy mass building workouts, because we’ll be strategically “Re-Priming” your body with a brief period of lower calories and lighter training every 3^rd week.

This short low calorie “Primer Phase” will also allow you to trim off any excess bodyfat that you may gain during the high calorie “Overload Phase”. This is a nice little side benefit of the program that ensures you make LEAN muscle gains over the long term.

With this system you’ll work WITH your body’s natural growth processes and NOT against them. You’ll literally take 2 steps forwards and 1 step back with every 21-Day Fast Mass Building Cycle. And you can follow this program for as many cycles as you like until you reach your desired level of muscular development!

Note:
Make sure to come back here tomorrow, because we’re going to share 3 of the biggest mistakes that most guys make when they go on a mass building program that actually sabotages their gains and makes it harder to gain lean muscle… So stay tuned for that!

Let’s make 2011 your best year ever for living large both inside and outside the gym!

all the best,
Lee & Vince