TRAIN BIG, EAT BIG

 

A.K.A - How to Really Eat and Train for Size, Strength, and Fat Loss

Classical bodybuilders such as Bill Pearl knew that one of the secrets was to train a lot AND eat a lot.

For the sake of keeping it simple in this essay, we can say that there are four methods that people use with regard to training and eating:

1. They eat a lot and train a lot.

2. They eat a little and train a little.

3. They eat a little and train a lot.

4. They eat a lot and train a little.

The other night, for instance, my girlfriend, her daughter, and I went out to eat at a local steakhouse, and, based on the waist size of almost every man in that place, and the hip size of every woman, most people—especially here in the Deep South—eat a lot and train absolutely none!  But we'll leave aside lazy people that don't care (apparently) how young that they kill over from a heart attack or that don't care if they acquire type-2 diabetes by the time they're 40 years old.  The above 4 categories make the assumption that the people in each category do some kind of training, and at least watch what they eat somewhat.  So my question for you posed at the beginning is: Which of the 4 above lifters has the best chance of success?  (Note: One of them I consider valid, another I consider "okay," whereas the other two I consider to be recipes for disaster, with one caveat on the last one.)  (2nd Note: It doesn't matter whether you're female and want to look "hot" or a man who wants be big, powerful, and jacked—the answer is the same.)

Of course, this isn't exactly a trick question since the title of the post should give it away.  The best answer is—small drumroll, please—#1.  If you want to really look good then train a lot and eat a lot!  We'll get back around to why, and more importantly how, you should do this in a little bit.  First, let's touch on the other three.

I think the only valid answers, actually, are #1 and #2.  They are the only two that will work over the long haul.  That's right, you can get good results by training a little and eating a little.  In fact, this is probably where the "average" person should live at most of the time.  If you aren't interested in a complete physical transformation, and you don't care much for either "dieting" or working out, but you do care about your health, then this is actually a good recipe for a long, fairly healthy life.  Take my parents, for example, who are both in their late 70s.  They are both lean, in decent physical health, and have bright, active minds.  They go for a few walks each week, do some gardening, and my father still cuts his grass with a push mower, and he does some woodwork in his garage.   It's a little bit of "training." (Although it's a "separate issue," I think their healthy life can also be attributed to their minds.  My mother is a novelist, and my father has written over 50 textbooks, and he still writes and edits books, so even though they are "retired" they still have active, engaged minds.)  And as far as diet, they eat, on average, just two meals a day, and have been doing this for the last decade—perhaps a little less—once I advised them it would be a good way to eat.  They eat their first meal around 10 to 11AM, after a couple of cups of coffee to start their day.  This first meal is usually oatmeal and eggs, or perhaps sausage and eggs if they feel they have been overdoing it on carbs and sugar.  They then don't eat again—no snacking—until sometime between 5 and 7PM, when they have their 2nd meal of whatever they feel like eating.

This way of exercising and eating isn't just for "old people," either.  If you're an athlete with a family and a full-time job, this might be a perfect way for you to train and eat, actually, and I'm not kidding.  The first time I squatted over 500 lbs in a powerlifting meet, this is actually the exact kind of training and eating that I did!  I worked full-time at a factory job, in addition to writing a LOT every month for several different magazines—in total, I was working at least 60 hours each week.  I had two young children—both of my sons were under 2 years of age (they're only 13 months apart)—and so very little time to train.  In fact, here was my (primary) training routine, not including my warm-ups:

Sunday: 

Bottom-Position Squats: 5 to 8 singles, followed by 3 to 5 sets of 5 reps

Bottom-Position Bench Presses: 5 to 8 singles, followed by 3 to 5 sets of 5 reps

Wednesday:

Deadlifts: 5 to 8 singles

Flat Bench Presses: 6 to 10 sets of 3 reps (for speed) using 60-70% of my one-rep maximum

That is literally all that I did.  Yes, sometimes I might substitute an exercise, such as rack pulls instead of conventional deadlifts, but I still never did more than two exercises at each workout.  And I never trained more than 2 days-per-week.

As for diet, I competed in the 165-pound class at that time, and I followed the "Warrior Diet"—that's right, the original intermittent fasting diet.  (If you don't know much, or anything, about the warrior diet, please read my "It Came from the '90s" post on just that.)   Which meant, guess what?  I wasn't eating much at all.  So, yes, training a little and eating a little can be very effective, even for some competitive athletes.

Okay, what about #3 and #4?  Let's start with #4, and then we'll juxtapose #3 (what most people attempt when trying to "get in shape") with #1 (what these same people should be doing).

There are very few instances where you should train a little and eat a lot.  But there are some outliers, so let's discuss them.  If you're a heavyweight powerlifting competitor, and you work a full-time job, and have a family, then it would be perfect acceptable to follow a powerlifting program similar to what I did above and eat a lot of food.  In fact, if you're doing hard labor, you will need to eat a lot, even if you are doing only two workout sessions weekly.  The same goes if you're a "hardgainer" who works a labor job—construction, factory work, etc.  (In fact, if you include your manual labor as part of your "training," you're actually more in box #1 than #4, so there's that, as well.)  Lastly, there are also "hardgainers" with such fast metabolisms that they can—and should—eat a LOT, rest a LOT, but only do minimal training.  But based on my recent excursion to that "Texas" steakhouse the other night, that's probably not you, and it's definitely not the average man or woman reading this right now.

Which brings us to #1 and #3.  Most people—and women seem especially guilty of this, but so are some men—when they want to "get in shape" go for #3.  But this only works for the short-term, and, in the end, can cause all sort of metabolic damage if it is done multiple times ("yo-yo dieting").  So, yes, if you go on a "crash diet" and start running like a mad-woman every day to burn even more calories, you will lose weight, but a lot of it will just be muscle and water, not fat, but even if you do lose some fat...  You can't keep it up, so before long you're back to eating and training like #4, and so the fat piles right back on.  And if you go back and forth this way—the yo-yo part—you will eventually destroy your metabolism, and then nothing will work outside of drugs (which some doctor, sad to say, will probably gladly supply you).

Which, finally, brings us around to #1, and the title of this post.  If you want to get great results—and as I said, I don't care whether your goal is be "hot" or to just be "jacked" (but lean)—then you need to learn to train big and eat big.

Now—and this is important so pay attention—you can't train in everything and eat everything in sight.  That's decidedly not what I'm telling you to do!  In other words, don't start running a few miles a day, training the powerlifts several times each week, and train with bodybuilding workout on other days.  Or—if you're me—I have to remind myself that, at 50 years of age, I can't do martial arts six-days-per-week plus do heavy weight training each morning, while also trying to get some cardio in.  I may have been able to do that when I was 18, but even then, it wouldn't have been wise.

First, however, let's discuss diet.  If you're overweight, or even have bodyfat above 12%, then the first thing you need to do is get lean.  This means eating, I would approximate, about 12x to 15x your bodyweight in calories every day, followed by ensuring that you are eliminating either fats or carbohydrates.  If you have been eating a lot of carbs for your entire life, then you are probably (at least somewhat) insulin-resistant, and so I think a "keto" diet—or at least a fairly high-fat, low-carb approach is best.  By the way, while I'm thinking about it, almost every single thing that I've seen lately at the grocery store, and is labelled "keto," is anything but!  For a dieter to "enter" ketosis, he/she is going to need to eat damn near NO carbohydrates for somewhere between 14 and 21 days.  So if you see any breads, pastas, cereals, or other grains that are labelled "keto," trust me, they're not!  In fact, they're not even good for low-carb dieting, so stay-the-hell-away from anything such as that if you know that your body functions well on low-carbs.

Now, the more you train, the more you can eat.  But this doesn't mean to go overboard on either one.  For instance, if you've been starving yourself on a 1,200 calories-per-day diet, and you weigh around 200 pounds, then you will be amazed at how much better you are going to look eating around 3,000 calories-per-day (15x your bodyweight) coupled with 5-days-per-week of intense training.

As you adjust to training, you can also slowly—and I do mean slowly—add extra workouts.  If you're lifting weights 5x weekly, then start off by adding a couple of days of jogging or hill sprints.  Do these on one of the same days that you train, that way you are still allowing your body 2 off-days to aid in recovery.  If you lift in the evening, then do these in the morning, or vice-versa.  After a few weeks, add another day of cardio, and, then, yep, after another few weeks, add another day.  Do this while increasing your caloric intake.  You will be surprised at how much better you look!

On your off days, eat more than you do on your other days.  Remember this: how you feel today is largely determined by what you ate yesterday.  So it's a mistake to limit your calories on your off days.