The best damn diet for naturals

Don't eat like a steroid user

Steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs cannot compensate for a persistently poor diet. You can get fat with steroids too. However, they can change your physiology and compensate for some serious nutritional deficiencies.

A chemically assisted exerciser could diet with minimal calorie intake without losing muscle because the drugs protect their muscle mass. And if a person uses growth hormones, T3, clenbuterol or even DNP, they could achieve the opposite: eat a lot and still get leaner.

A chemically assisted exerciser could also consume 400 grams of protein per day and benefit from the large increase in protein synthesis and use the protein consumed to build muscle. And although they may benefit from a huge protein intake, ironically a chemically enhanced exerciser will also do better on a much lower protein intake than a steroid-free exerciser.

How? Anabolic drugs reduce protein breakdown, which is especially true for steroids such as trenbolone and Dianabol, which are more anti-catabolic than anabolic.

Even though many assisted bodybuilders know a lot about nutrition, many will recommend the same diet to the natural trainee that works for themselves and their steroid abusing clients. This will rarely lead to good results. Natural trainers have different needs, not only in the gym but also in the kitchen. So let's look at these needs. If you are natural, then you will see how you should compose your diet for leanness and gains. But first, let's take a look at the science.

Calories

Any diet that makes you lose fat works by creating a calorie deficit. Simply removing a nutrient such as carbohydrate or fat from your diet will not make you lose fat if you remain in a calorie surplus.

When it comes to losing fat, calorie consumption is an important factor. I have seen many keto dieters and intermittent fasting followers who, despite following these diets strictly for over a year or more, have not come close to being slim.

This doesn't mean that a ketogenic diet doesn't work if you want to lose fat - it means that if you maintain a calorie surplus while on a ketogenic diet, you will build up fat just as you would on any other diet.

However, calories are not the only important factor, especially if you are interested in improving your body composition (your muscle to fat ratio).

Insulin

Many believe that nothing is more important than calorie consumption. These people will even go so far as to say that things like insulin sensitivity and thyroid hormones don't matter. I've even read one expert (who I have the utmost respect for) say that insulin will never make you fat.

Technically speaking, these people are right. Insulin promotes the entry of consumed nutrients into their appropriate storage areas - muscles, liver and fat cells. Insulin will not make you store more nutrients than you eat. This is not possible. So in a way, those who say this are right: it's the excess calories that make you fat, not the insulin itself.

However, if your insulin levels are elevated beyond a certain point, you will not mobilize (burn) fat as efficiently. If your body has produced a lot of insulin after a carbohydrate-rich meal, then insulin levels will remain elevated for longer. As a result, you will remain inefficient at mobilizing fat for longer. Overproduction of insulin is what prevents efficient fat loss.

And this also affects your muscles. Muscle growth benefits from insulin production, especially if your muscle cells have a higher insulin sensitivity than your fat cells. If this is the case, then you will be better at channeling nutrients towards your muscle cells.

Did you understand that? Insulin is not always bad. It's important for muscle growth. If all insulin did was make people fat and it didn't support muscle growth, then bodybuilders wouldn't inject it. But they do - and this should be a strong sign to keto dieters that maintaining low insulin levels is not ideal if you want to build muscle.

Insulin itself is anabolic and anti-catabolic. How? By directly increasing mTOR activation and nutrient uptake by the muscles and also indirectly by increasing IGF-1 secretion by the liver.

So even though calorie intake is key to gaining and losing weight (and building muscle and losing fat), insulin and insulin sensitivity are also important.

Cortisol

People are confused by cortisol and its role when it comes to slimming. On the one hand, it is a hormone that should increase fat loss. It plays a role in breaking down stored energy (glycogen, fat, protein) for energy. As a stress hormone, it prepares your body to cope with stressful situations such as running away from a tiger. The mobilization of energy is one of the most important elements when it comes to coping with stress.

In addition, cortisol increases the body's release of adrenaline by helping to convert noradrenaline into adrenaline. Adrenaline also increases energy mobilization - and it increases the amount of energy you expend.

It is often claimed that cortisol makes you fatter. These people say that increased cortisol levels make you store fat in the abdomen and lower back. However, evidence-based empirical data contradicts these claims.

Here are the facts: Cortisol is a mobilizing hormone. And when it is released acutely and not chronically, it helps with fat loss.

However, if cortisol levels remain chronically elevated, this can hinder your fat loss efforts. How does this work? Mainly by reducing the conversion of the inactive T4 thyroid hormone into the active thyroid hormone T3, which plays a major role in metabolic rate. The higher your T3 levels are, the higher your metabolic rate will be and the easier it will be for you to lose fat.

Chronically elevated cortisol levels reduce the conversion of T4 to T3 and in this way chronically elevated cortisol levels can reduce metabolic rate over time.

This is important for steroid-free exercisers, as any type of dieting and training that leads to excessively high cortisol levels increases the risk of slowing down their fat loss in the long term. An excessive calorie deficit can lead to a chronic increase in cortisol levels and the same applies to a complete avoidance of carbohydrates. The primary function of cortisol is to keep blood sugar levels stable. When blood glucose levels fall (when calorie or carbohydrate intake is too low), cortisol and glucagon are released to bring blood glucose levels back up. Cortisol is also released to mobilize other energy sources.

So the greater the calorie deficit and the lower the carbohydrate intake, the more you risk an increase in cortisol levels.

For a chemically supported trainee this is not a major problem, as the anabolic steroids can compensate for this increase in catabolism by increasing cortisol levels via an increase in anabolism from the steroids.

And if these exercisers are using fat loss drugs, then the influence of cortisol on metabolic rate no longer plays a major role, which is especially true when using synthetic T3.

However, in a natural trainee, a chronic increase in cortisol levels can not only slow down fat loss in the long term, but also make it harder to build muscle or maintain existing muscle mass during a diet. This will become important when we talk about the optimal calorie intake for fat loss or muscle gain.

Your starting calorie intake

Start with 23 kcal per kilogram of body weight during a fat loss diet and 34 kcal per kilogram of body weight during a muscle building phase.

So if you are an 85 kilo exerciser, you would start with 1955 kcal if your goal is to lose fat and 2890 kcal if you are trying to build muscle. Depending on your activity level, these values may change. A person who is very physically active (such as a construction worker) will need a higher calorie intake even during a fat loss diet, while a person with a very high body fat percentage will need fewer calories.

For example, if you weigh 135 kilos with a body fat percentage of 40%, then a calorie intake of 4000 kcal will be up to 700-800 kcal too high. This is the reason why weekly adjustments to calorie intake are crucial.

And if you're serious about achieving optimal body composition changes, then it's important that you measure your food. It's not fun and it's tedious, but how can you adjust your calories by 250 kcal if you don't know how much you're eating? Not to mention that most people tend to underestimate their calorie intake if they don't measure it.

Adjusting your calorie intake

The real key to success is adjusting your calorie intake on a weekly basis. If your goal is to lose fat, then you want to lose the optimal amount of fat. Too little and you'll lose motivation, too much and you'll risk losing muscle and having poor workouts.

As for muscle growth, if you are natural, at a certain point you can't build more muscle by eating more calories. Yes, a calorie surplus will increase your capacity to build muscle and if you eat enough carbohydrates and protein to increase your insulin secretion, then you can increase protein synthesis via mTOR activation. However, your capacity to build muscle is limited by your natural physiology. The approach of extremely increasing calorie intake to build mass does not work very well for the natural trainee.

And what about the chemically assisted exerciser? Mass gain can work extremely well for them. Anabolic steroids and other drugs increase protein synthesis enormously. This means that he can build muscle faster and more than a steroid-free exerciser.

To build muscle you only need protein, but you also need a lot of energy. This is the reason why muscle growth in supported exercisers is closely related to their calorie and protein intake. And the higher the steroid dosage, the more additional food will bring benefits. This is even more true for bodybuilders who use growth hormones.

In addition to this, chemically enhanced bodybuilders who use growth hormones, certain steroids and fat-burning drugs such as clenbuterol will not get as fat as their steroid-free counterparts due to the excess drugs.

Yes, an assisted exerciser can get fat if he eats like a barn burner, but he has more leeway than a natural exerciser. A natural trainee should be more precise in their diet.

Expectations regarding weight loss

You should weigh yourself every 7 days in the morning after waking up. Aim for a weekly weight loss of 2 to 3 pounds. Use your judgment here, of course. If you are already quite slim or not particularly large, then 1 to 1.5 pounds per week may be satisfactory.

And you will probably lose more weight in the first week due to reduced glycogen stores and the water loss this causes. But in general, the 2 to 3 pounds per week is what you should be aiming for if you have a normal or increased body fat percentage. This weight loss will not result in muscle loss and you should be able to continue to train hard.

Such weight loss is fast enough to make a significant change in a reasonable amount of time. If you lose 24 pounds in 12 weeks, you will look like a completely new person.

Reasons why weight loss may stall

As your fat loss progresses and your weight drops, it's possible that the calorie intake you used in the beginning, which initially allowed you to lose 2 to 3 pounds per week, will no longer result in fat loss.

Why? There are several reasons for this:

You're carrying around less body fat

When you have lost 10 pounds, your daily energy expenditure decreases, especially if you are physically active. This is due to the extra weight you carry around with you throughout the day. This increases the amount of energy you use for exercise and physical tasks.

You subconsciously reduce your NEAT (non-exercise activity thermogenesis)

NEAT stands for physical activities that you perform in addition to conscious training - activities such as walking around at work, climbing stairs and carrying shopping bags. If you reduce your calorie intake, your body will try to reduce your calorie expenditure. And when you lose more fat, you become lazier without realizing it. You reduce your NEAT by moving less every day.

Reduced metabolic rate

Although this reduction in metabolic rate is nowhere near as dramatic as many believe, there may be a slight reduction. Some loss of muscle mass is also possible, but this is more related to excessive cortisol levels, which are used to mobilize stored energy.

And if this increase in cortisol levels becomes chronic and excessive, then it can reduce the rate of conversion of T4 to T3 - not greatly, perhaps by 3 to 5%, but this can be enough to stall your progress.

When your fat loss comes to a halt, it means that you are no longer in a calorie deficit. Either you are consuming less energy because you are less active, or your metabolic rate has dropped. However, if you want to keep making progress, then the answer is simple: you need to cut calories.

If an average client of mine loses 2 to 3 pounds per week, then we stay at the same calorie and nutrient intake for the next week

If they don't lose any weight, then we reduce the calorie intake by a factor of 2. This means that instead of multiplying the body weight by 23, we now multiply it by 21. If the next week the weight loss is back to 2 to 3 pounds, then we stick with this amount of calories. If the weight still does not drop, then the calorie intake is again reduced by a factor of 2 (body weight * 19)

If you gain some weight (and have not cheated on your diet), then you reduce your calorie intake by a factor of 3 or even 4.

If you lose 1 to 1.9 pounds, then what to do next is a matter of choice. If the weight loss is closer to 1, then we reduce the calorie intake by a factor of 1. If the weight loss is closer to 1.9, then we do not change the calorie intake during the next week.

Note: Protein intake should not be reduced. The reduction in calorie intake should be in the same proportion of carbohydrates and fat. So if you reduce your calorie intake by 250 kcal, 125 kcal should come from carbohydrates and 125 kcal from fat. Carbohydrates have 4 kcal per gram, so 125 kcal equals about 30 grams of carbohydrates. Fat has 9 kcal per gram, so 125 kcal equals about 14 grams of fat. You would therefore reduce your carbohydrates by 30 grams and your fats by 14 grams.

In the second part of this article we will look at calorie intake for muscle building and the optimal amounts of the macronutrients protein, carbohydrate and fat. We will then look at how the meals of the day should be composed depending on the training time.

https://www.t-nation.com/diet-fat-loss/the-best-damn-diet-for-natural-lifters/

By Christian Thibaudeau