But what about Intermittent Fasting and muscle gain? Won’t you lose muscle if you go without eating for too long?

If you can gain muscle while getting shredded with IF, then you’re achieving the ‘Holy Grail’ that natural bodybuilders have been chasing for decades. It’s simply a matter of time until you start looking like a fitness model.

Let’s get into it…

Firstly, we need to go back to the basics. Read this article on calories, and this article for an ‘Intermittent Fasting 101′. What causes muscle gain or muscle loss? I know there’s a segment of the population who hates to hear this, but the answer comes down to: calories. Yes, there’s more to it than calories alone, but if you’re eating only 1200 calories per day as a man, you ain’t ganin’ no muscle.

And if you go to the other extreme and shovel 3k+ calories down your mouth while you sit at your desk all day, you’re going to be gaining a lot of fat in addition to your muscle mass (which you definitely don’t want).

So how do you approach calories?

Make sure that either:

1. The calorie deficit is small (5-15%)
2. You’re roughly at maintenance calories
3. You’re in a small surplus

The worst thing you could do is slash your calories, so make sure that you’re eating enough food in your two meals (if you’re doing 16:8 or something similar), or in your one meal (if you’re doing OMAD).

And by the way, this is exactly what has worked over the past four years of IF for me – I’ve managed to put on several pounds of muscle, and I’ve been lifting for almost 10 years! If you’ve been lifting less than three years, you have NO excuse.

Now you’ve got your calories sorted, you’ve given yourself a solid chance of gaining lean muscle with IF.

So What About Intermittent Fasting For Muscle Gain?

If you’re NOT gaining muscle with Intermittent Fasting, it’s because you aren’t getting enough:

1. Protein
2. Good-quality carbs
3. Sleep (take some time off drinking)

Protein is the king of anabolism, and if you’re not getting enough, you’re not even going to maintain your muscle, let alone build it.

So how much is enough?

0.8-1.2 grams per pound of bodyweight, depending on your calorie intake, how much body fat you currently have etc.

Focus on the BEST quality sources, including fish, red meat, eggs and whey.

Then when it comes to carbs, both quality and timing matter, A LOT, when you’re trying to achieve the ‘best of both worlds’. You can’t afford to be eating sugar or eating ‘questionable’ sources of carbs like bread.

In terms of timing, you ideally want these carbs to be coming in post-workout. In terms of quality, think: sweet potatoes, rice and/or fruit.

So if you’re SERIOUS about gaining a load of rock-solid muscle with Intermittent Fasting, then I strongly suggest you train in the evening (not the morning), you eat lots of protein, and you get fruit in post-workout, shortly followed by potatoes OR rice with some fish and veggies.

Do this consistently, making sure you’re getting enough protein AND carbs, and I can guarantee that you’ll be gaining muscle with Intermittent Fasting. And by the way, if you need help with the training side of things, everything is laid out for you in Bond, Warrior and Fighter programs.

If I can do it after 10 years of lifting, you can do it.

If you’re serious about IF and you want to take your fasting game to the next level, make sure you get into the Intermittent Fasting Fast-Track members group, where you can access over $725 of content. Make sure you get in before the last day of the month, so you can access the exclusive newsletter.

The post Can You Gain Muscle With Intermittent Fasting? appeared first on Forever Alpha Blog.

Granted, you can see that he already has a very strong muscular base in place already. But how exactly did he achieve his fat loss success?

Intermittent Fasting Schedule: Like A Pro

As you know by now, there are ways to make fat loss really difficult, and there are ways to make fat loss rather effortless.

The typical dieter will go on a super-restrictive, low calorie diet with absolutely no flexibility whatsoever. They’ll sit there at the dinner table, feeling deprived and ‘fed up’ with dieting with only 500 calories left to spare, whilst their friends will be eating, drinking and having a great time.

Whereas the guy who does Intermittent Fasting? It looks very different. In fact, most people will never even know he’s ‘on a diet’, because he has so much food left to spare (especially if he’s doing OMAD which seems to be working very well for a lot of Men Over 40).

But how exactly did @StraightHand pull off this amazing fat loss transformation?

If you do the math, you can see that he averaged out at about six pounds of weight loss per month, or about 1.5 pounds per week. Now, that’s not the slowest weight loss I’ve ever seen, but it’s perfectly reasonable, and I think this shows how good Intermittent Fasting is for regulating your appetite.

We had a little back-and-forth over DM on Twitter, and he talked about his Intermittent Fasting schedule, and what he found to work best. Apparently, it narrowed over time.

When he started out in the picture on the left, he was doing 16:8, then over time he gradually shifted into 18:6 (what I currently do), and then towards the end it became 20:4.

Condensing your eating window works.

He also mentioned that high protein works very well. And frankly, it will do for you too, as protein is the most important macro for body composition. On paper, you don’t need insane amounts of protein in order to maintain your muscle mass (like supplement companies imply). But in reality, it’s crucial for keeping your appetite down, and metabolism up.

How much protein did he consume per day?

200+ grams. And his bodyweight was 205 pounds at the start, and it came down to 160. Note how his protein intake never came down – the leaner you get, the more at risk your muscle mass becomes, and the more protein you need.

What else did he say?

“Black coffee was key in AM as you suggest” – there is no greater appetite suppressant in the immediate sense, than black coffee. The narrower your eating window is, the more important this becomes in your Intermittent Fasting schedule.

What about the training he did to maintain his solid muscular base whilst losing so much fat?

He trained three times per week, no cardio, with a strong emphasis on the main compound lifts (bench, squat, deadlift etc.) Nothing too complicated by the sounds of it.

It’s Your Turn

Now, if you’re ready to make a transformation like his, then the quickest option would be to buy this Intermittent Fasting meal plan, condense your eating window, and eat all of the foods it suggests in there.

If you’re looking for a long-term, almost guaranteed solution, then check out my one-to-one coaching services. They include personalised meal plans and training programs, coaching calls and direct contact with me whenever you need. Plus you get access to the IFFT website – where all my premium IF content is available.

The post How To Lose 44 Pounds In 7 Months, And Get Ripped With Intermittent Fasting appeared first on Forever Alpha Blog.

In part one, in my pre-Intermittent Fasting days, I had started lifting weights, gaining size (and a lot of body fat), and discovered the evil of sugar.

Here’s part two:

So I continued along my merry way, focusing on muscle-gaining, but this time I had learned my lesson from sugar in 2010, and it’s coke-like effect on my brain and hunger signalling.

This time I removed sugar, and ‘cleaned up’ my lean-bulking diet a little. Losing a few pounds of fat first, I continued to focus on size for a while.

Fast-forward to the summer 2013, and I switched focus a little. With ‘beach season’ approaching, including:

• A three week holiday in Crete
• A one week ‘lads holiday’ in Malia, the ‘party central’ part of Crete
• A festival up in Scotland

I wanted to be lean, and I wanted to reveal the hard work that I’d put in over the past few years.

So I got to work on dieting…

Beginning at about 178 pounds (roughly, I can’t remember exactly), I started cutting the calories and the carbs. Problem is, I was still eating cereal every day (and cereal was very much my trigger food – even without sugar).

Asking for trouble.

But I knew that energy balance was the key variable with all this stuff, so I continued to focus on reducing the calories. And it worked. For a while.

But I ran into trouble with diet adherence and consistency, largely because of hunger, cravings, and a lack of satiation, which was largely down to:

Continuing to eat my ‘trigger food.’

Lesson:

When fat loss is your primary goal, you must make sure that any potential ‘trigger foods’ (that could lead to excess consumption or a binge) are OUT of your cupboards and immediate environment. DO NOT let yourself indulge, otherwise you’re making it 10 times harder to get ripped.

Energy balance is the number one factor that you must get right, whether your goal is to gain muscle or lose fat. But there are several things that will throw you off and make it far more difficult to sustain the correct energy balance for very long, not to mention the risk of muscle loss.

You want life to be easy, not unnecessarily difficult.

My journey looked like the following:

Week 1 – 178 pounds

Week 3 – 173 pounds

Week 5 – 175 pounds

Week 7 – 167 pounds

Week 9 – 168 pounds

Week 11 – 160 pounds

Week 13 – 157 pounds

And finally, I was officially ‘ripped’. But it wasn’t exactly a healthy, nor sustainable way to lose weight. I was hungry all the time, irritable, pissed off, and permanently weak. My workouts sucked. My stress levels were sky-high.

I was yet to discover the solution to all of this (Intermittent Fasting), as this would serve to make fat loss effortless, hunger minimal, and stress levels rock-bottom.

But for now, I had made it to 10% body fat, finally. It was a brutal journey, but I was happy to finally reveal my progress, have abs for the first time in my life, and actually look really good on the beach.

Could I sustain it for more than a few weeks while on holiday in Crete, eating Gyros, Moussaka, and drinking beer?

Find out in part three…

If you want to get to 10% body fat with minimal hunger, stress and strength loss in the gym, check out the Intermittent Fasting meal plans I offer, and also the one-to-one coaching packages available to you – Silver is only $97 per month, and you get a tailored meal plan + training program, on an on-going basis.

Enjoy!

The post My History With Fitness: Part Two appeared first on Forever Alpha Blog.