Finally, after 16 long grueling weeks, my diet is over. Halfway through my long overdue week off from training, and it’s mass time!!! Debating between Massive Eating or something along the lines of Incledon’s Get Big Diet or Stout’s Precision Eating. I’ve done Massive Eating with the recommended calorie levels (4,000 at my previous bw of 160, split into 8 meals), and while I definitely put on weight, I put on too much fat for my liking (have to consult training journals, but I think it was 22 lbs, 10 lean and 12 fat). I’m wondering how many of you are using Berardi’s specific cal recommendations or if you’re dialing it down a bit. I really like the meal combining so I’m thinking maybe just dropping the cals down to maybe 3400-3500. I’d like to optimize my lean to fat ratio, and I’m wondering if I would’ve gotten much better results from doing this previously. I have no problem eating the higher calorie level, which is why I can’t understand how some people say they are physically unable to eat that much, but even when I did Don’t Diet I had to lower the cals (used 2400 initially although by recommendations I would’ve been pretty close to 3,000). I like the 30/40/30 too as I LOVE to eat protein. Comments?
Sounds like you and I are in the same boat, although I have a little way to go on my cutting. I bulked since November and my bodyfat had gotten up to 11.7% as of about two weeks ago. Now, it’s down to 10.6%, and I’m starting Mag-10 dieting with a three-on, one-off split and a few cardio sessions after lifting. I think Massive Eating is a good idea for anyone. However, you should reintroduce carbs gradually or else you risk rapid water/fat gain. Check out one of JB’s previous Appetite for Construction columns (I can’t remember which one) for more info on how to do this properly. If you’ve used his calorie recommendations and found them to be too high, don’t hesitate to drop them. I had to do so (I didn’t worry about including the thermal effect of food, and picked an activity factor of 1.4 instead of what I probably should be as a college student: 1.5-1.6). I like the higher protein as well. Keep us posted on your results; I’ll be especially interested because hopefully I’ll be in your situation in about two weeks. By the way, did you ever reach the “coveted” 5mm ab skinfold?
I stopped just short of my goal…ended up at 6 mm. I started to suffer from excessive fatigue, which seems to be common as b.f. gets very low. I’d been doing Meltdown the last month of my diet and the last official day (last Thursday) I went in to do the a.m weight workout and barely made it through a warm-up, so I ended up going home. Finished the workout that night, and I decided enough was enough. Finished at 160 and five percent, which is a 10 lb. increase from last year at the same b.f. level. I can pretty much forget about “gradually reintroducing the carbs…” I put down about 6,000 or so cals on Saturday alone, although I ate totally clean. The only thing that was iffy was my apple cinnamon granola. I’m going nuts with the week off from training, so I’m gonna cut the week off to five days. Mag-10 with a diet phase, huh? That sounds interesting. I’d also like to hear how this ends up working for you. If budget allows I am definitely going to throw this in my supp. stack. My last mass phase put me at 182 and 12.4 percent, so now I’d like to hit 180 or so and no higher than 10 percent. Definitely doable if I don’t overdo the cals. Good luck w. the rest of your diet…I’m SOOO glad mine’s done (for a while, anyway). Now if I can just successfully taper off the MD6 and T2 w/o too much backlash!
Despite everything that has been said here in the past about JB and his Massive Eating principles, I very much doubt you will find any difference in Massive Eating results vs. combining the same percentage of macronutrients in the same number of meals (p+f+c). I have tried Massive Eating, gained a lot of fat and therefore,I am not an avid evangelist of Massive Eating. It will work perfectly for the “skinny bastard” species, but for everybody else… not exactly. I think that most people who had less-than-satisfying results like yourself do not share their results on the forum… before I get attacked, yes, I have been keeping a food log for a couple of past years, I know my maintenance, bulking and cutting calories, I know how to train, I know what and when to eat and I did try every possible pfc percentages and various amounts of calories. This is just my personal experience. If it works perfectly for somebody - more power to them!
my first time i tried massive eating, it wasn’t pretty, fat gain was much more the muscle. But i decide to give JB’s don’t diet a try during my high school football season, it was prefect the “high” calories left me with energy and i still lost some weight (about 10 pounds) until i injured myself and had to stop training for some time. but after the ended i gradually increased calories till I was at massive eating level and ended up putting on over 20 pounds (just guessing but, 5 of muscle that i had lost during my injury, 5 of fat, and 0 of new month) in just over 2 months. So my suggestion is start slowly and gradually work your way up.
No worries-6mm is still damn good. Go down to the DMV or your local Dunkin’ Donuts and I’m sure you find plenty of people who would love to have a 6mm ab skinfold! I’m interested to see how this works out for me. Today, I plan to take in 1850 calories (about 55%P, 22%C, and 23%F). I had 1/3 cup oats at breakfast, and I’m going to throw in two very small salads as my only whole food carb intake. I’m also reducing my Surge intake to 1.5 scoops instead of two after my workout (Delts, Triceps, and Abs, plus 10-15 mintues cardio). I was looking at Berardi’s recommendations for post-workout carb intake and found that even though I was following the instructions for my bodyweight on the Surge container, I was still above the high end (.8g carb/kg/bodyweight). Factor in some carb calories from 10g creatine, and i was having trouble keeping the carbs to 100. So, I’m replacing the 1/2 scoop Surge with 10g glutamine and seeing how it goes. If I feel drained, I’ll toss in another 1/2 scoop protein powder. I’ll keep ya posted. Great job.
As Eric mentioned, I also had to choose an activity factor that was much less than I expected(1.3 vs 1.5-1.6). Even still, when I ate with the full calorie recommendations, it was too much. I now calculate maintenance + activity factor + thermic effect of eating to get my base and then add about 1/2 of my exercise energy expenditure and that gets me about right. I also adjust week by week if my body composition is changing more than I would like. Keep an eye on your body comp and set a limit to how high you will let yourself go. If you are adding fat too fast, cut back on the calories by 250 a day. Once you hit that max point for body comp , terminate the bulking cycle and cut back down to a body comp that you would like. These types of short cycles allow for muscle gain and easy fat loss, as you will only need to drop 1-2 lbs of fat each cycle.
Yes, I definitely think the activity factor thing was throwing my cal levels off big time. I was using 1.5, which according to the recommendations “should” be right but it was obviously too high. Second, I don’t think my training suited the amt. of cals either as I did predominantly lower-rep stuff (1-5 range on the big lifts). Had I done GVT or something similar maybe it would’ve been a little different. In past experience I could consistently gain at 3300 or so calories, where Massive Eating had me at 4000. I wanted to try it exactly as recommended though as I didn’t want to be one of those that didn’t get results because they didn’t follow properly. I hit the gym again tomorrow after a five day layoff…thank God…as my eating habits during the layoff have been sloppy. Eating clean foods, but way too much.