LeanGains

[gbglifter]

First of all: sorry Rihad for totally hijacking your thread!

I like your plan. I hate the flabbyness too. It feels like your just banging your head against a brick wall when your´e in that state. My plan is, if Im being honest, get down to below 10 so I feel really, really pleased with my physique, then swing in between maybe 7/8 and 11/12%. So Im always "lean". I dont see myself as big. You get blind to how you actually look. People that havent seen me in ages usually comment on how beefy I look though. Which is pretty funny as I havent weighed this little in years!

I had a look at your pic before and you look fairly beefy TBH.

 

[Jester]

I'm not about to use drugs any time soon, if ever. And I'm not expecting a miracle from LeanGains (don't know why some of you are saying IF in a generic sense as if meaning to say "they are all the same") in the sense that it will get me to 5-6% without strict macro partitioning, I just won't be counting calories for now as I'm perpetually bulking anyway. But I do hope that fat will gradually drop to ~15% by eating the same usual stuff (chicken breast, (sometimes meats, fish), 2 eggs, buckwheat, pasta + olive oil, cottage cheese, milk, etc) between 2pm-10pm.

IF protocols are essentially the same. You can choose the one that suits you best, or that you think might give you the best result, but the differences are minuscule
.

I eat almost 200g protein per day. Its easy: three big chunks of meat, chicken or fish. One at each meal.

To get 200 grams of protein, you'd have to eat at least 6 skinless chicken breasts/ day. I guess three meals isn't that bad, to eat 2 chicken breast at each meal for example. That is still a crapload of meat, not to mention a bunch of fat too.

If you ate lowfat fish like tuna to keep the fat intake down, you'd have to eat 5 big cans of tuna to get 200 grams...I guess I am just a wimp, I have a hard time stomaching that much protein, unless I have AT LEAST 3 meals plus some whey powder.

Dont know where youre from but swedish breasts are bigger than that. Average 4 breasts per kilo in the bags I buy.

The average chicken breast without bone or skin has around 32 grams of protein.

Pretty much every lean meat is ~28-35g of protein per hundred grams. Chicken, beef, pork ... I count them all as 30g per 100g (before cooking, obviously).

There's also a massive variance in terms of the size of chicken breasts. I can find them between 200 and 450gm's depending on where I shop.

AFAIK digestion takes several hours, absorption happens at several grams of AA per hour. Don't know if AAs from multiple sources are absorbed simultaneously or not, like after eating a mixed meal + yoghurt on top of it.

Absorption rates are pretty poorly defined, I wouldn't get caught up trying to plan your absorption down to the gram. The rate differs according to the proteins.

 

[Sci]

I just won't be counting calories for now as I'm perpetually bulking anyway. But I do hope that fat will gradually drop to ~15% by eating the same usual stuff (chicken breast, (sometimes meats, fish), 2 eggs, buckwheat, pasta + olive oil, cottage cheese, milk, etc) between 2pm-10pm.

These statements are contradictory. You won't be counting calories, you will be perpetually bulking, and yet you expect your bodyfat to drop...hahaha good luck with that plan! If you are not gaining weight, you are not "perpetually bulking", and if you ARE gaining weight, then your bodyfat will NOT drop.

 

[Jester]

Yup .... there's a reason that the ppl who take time to calorie count and manage their intake are the ones who are most successful at bulking or cutting and overall size and appearance.

 

[HST_Rihad]

First of all: sorry Rihad for totally hijacking your thread!

No, no, this is great! Diet & food are frequently related The chicken breast you buy is huge though, it was probably taking some kind of roids

I had a look at your pic before and you look fairly beefy TBH.

Thanks, I'm continuing to improve, just added several mm to my arms & chest since the end of previous cycle, although thigh has dropped a bit, probably due to switching from squats to leg presses, although I don't see a connection... More on that in my log later today (after final w/o).

 

[HST_Rihad]

These statements are contradictory. You won't be counting calories, you will be perpetually bulking, and yet you expect your bodyfat to drop...hahaha good luck with that plan! If you are not gaining weight, you are not "perpetually bulking", and if you ARE gaining weight, then your bodyfat will NOT drop.

There's some evidence that fasting during morning hours alters your metabolism to start using fatty acids for its energy needs.

 

[HST_Rihad]

Pretty much every lean meat is ~28-35g of protein per hundred grams. Chicken, beef, pork ... I count them all as 30g per 100g (before cooking, obviously).

Chicken breast has up to 20 when uncooked, 30 is a bit too much to be true. Maybe it's closer to that if you weigh them after cooking due to having lost some water etc.

 

[mikeynov]

Just as a sidenote, getting in a ****load of protein on an IF setup isn't terribly difficult:

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/food/diary/shlevon?date=2013-03-12

3 meals in a ~9 hour period (I prefer 15/9 to 16/8, particularly when calories are higher), I just add a scoop of protein powder to each meal (which itself has a decent sized serving of lean meat or egg whites). Note also I'm able to keep saturated fat quite low while fiber stays quite high.

 

[Jester]

Chicken breast has up to 20 when uncooked, 30 is a bit too much to be true. Maybe it's closer to that if you weigh them after cooking due to having lost some water etc.

"Up to 20" is too low. Obviously cooked meat has a greater protein content by mass than raw. But estimating meat to be 80% water is over-cautious. If you want to be conservative, call it a flat 25.

 

[gbglifter]

"Up to 20" is too low. Obviously cooked meat has a greater protein content by mass than raw. But estimating meat to be 80% water is over-cautious. If you want to be conservative, call it a flat 25.

We Can see water content in chicken here. Its on every packet. Most tend Do be 80% but I usually buy those with less water content than that. Im not into paying for water I dont need.

The recommendation here is to count 20% of meat as protein, give or take a procent or two back and forward.

 

[Jester]

I take it as 25%, 28-30 if cooked.

Obv. whey solves these dilemmas quite nicely

 

[Old and Grey]

gbglifter, I think your 20% is OK for fish but it is almost 30% for lean beef and chicken. And the beef is probably on roids as well as the chicken, at least here in the land of the free and the home of the fat.

 

[Totentanz]

Just as a sidenote, getting in a ****load of protein on an IF setup isn't terribly difficult:

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/food/diary/shlevon?date=2013-03-12

3 meals in a ~9 hour period (I prefer 15/9 to 16/8, particularly when calories are higher), I just add a scoop of protein powder to each meal (which itself has a decent sized serving of lean meat or egg whites). Note also I'm able to keep saturated fat quite low while fiber stays quite high.

I just want to add that myfitnesspal.com is an awesome site. I previously used fitday and had to enter in nutritional information on foods all the time. Not so with myfitnesspal...

 

[gbglifter]

gbglifter, I think your 20% is OK for fish but it is almost 30% for lean beef and chicken. And the beef is probably on roids as well as the chicken, at least here in the land of the free and the home of the fat.

Livsmedelverket(Food standard agency) here states that chicken has 23g per 100.
http://www7.slv.se/Naringssok/Naringsamnen.aspx

and beef has has 21.8g
http://www7.slv.se/Naringssok/Naringsamnen.aspx

I do try do eat as much organic as poss but its expensive as hell here. Organic sirloin costs 20 dollars per pound! Standard stuff is around 18.

 

[Jester]

Livsmedelverket(Food standard agency) here states that chicken has 23g per 100.
http://www7.slv.se/Naringssok/Naringsamnen.aspx

and beef has has 21.8g
http://www7.slv.se/Naringssok/Naringsamnen.aspx

I do try do eat as much organic as poss but its expensive as hell here. Organic sirloin costs 20 dollars per pound! Standard stuff is around 18.

I try to take each website w/a grain of salt. If we look hard enough, we can always find a site to support the contention we support (not to say that's what you're doing, just that there's multiple sources and not all agree).

20% is just too low for me. For seafood that wouldn't surprise me, being more buoyant and less dense (other than flake [shark]). That's essentially saying that lean meat is rocking 80% water, and most material I've found states the 65-70% range. Regardless, I count it as 25-30g per 100g for raw lean beef, chicken, pork, turkey.

 

[gbglifter]

I think the difference comes from raw product and cooked produkt. The final cooked produkt will probably contain less water and therefore have a higher percentage of protein. But if one counts the protein in the raw product then that amount will still be there once its ready to eat. Ive just checked again and raw chicken is indeed 23 but oven baked chicken is 27%.

Its seems a bit trivial but at least we´re "de-boning" the facts.

 

[Jester]

There's definitely a difference b/t raw and cooked (a significant one I'd argue, the volume of any cooked meat is substantially less than non-cooked).

I would still argue that raw, it's more like 25-30 and cooked, more like 30-35 (method of cooking dependent ... boiled/braised is unlikely to reduce water content that much, obviously).

 

[HST_Rihad]

Quite interesting reading on IF supporting my guesses:

Intermittent fasting (IF) is a pattern of eating that alternates between periods of fasting (usually meaning consumption of water and sometimes low-calorie drinks such as black coffee) and non-fasting.
There is evidence suggesting that intermittent fasting may have beneficial effects on the health and longevity of animals—including humans—that are similar to the effects of caloric restriction (CR). There is currently no consensus as to the degree to which this is simply due to fasting or due to an (often) concomitant overall decrease in calories, but recent studies have shown support for the former.[SUP][1][/SUP][SUP][2]

[/SUP]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermittent_fasting

So we can lean bulk...

 

[Jester]

1. Don't treat Wikipedia as gospel.

2. Where did you get that idea from your quoted paragraph?

3. Can't cheat thermodynamics.

 

[Weeqay]

I have been "leanbulking/recomping" for the last 2 years..it's a slow but steady process, which, however, does not compare to traditional bulking and cutting with regards to efficiency..at least not from my experience. I have gained a significant amount of strength and volume while at first decreasing and then maintaining my bodyweight (from 86ish to 78ish and now at around 80-82ish), which I presume, indicates fat loss and muscle gains. But then again, I don't have any hard science to prove that and neither do I need it...I'm happy with my development and that's enough for me.
I mainly do it because it fits my lifestyle and more and more studies regarding IF have popped up and for now seem to promote an overall positive effect of fasting on the body and mind (which might get debunked in the next decade, who knows?).
Anyway, as others have pointed out, you should give it a shot and see if it fits you. Maybe it will, maybe it won't. One downside that I can absolutely support is that eating lots of kcal in a limited amount of time is horribly hard. Sure, I can stuff myself with a cheesecake of 2600ish kcal after a training session and suddenly be at the amount I need (and I do that from time to time, because cheesecakes are awesome!)...but after that I'll be sleepy as hell and bloated and whatnot...eating can become quite painful in that regard.
Anyway..try it and see for yourself

edit says: I'm posting this because my IF protocol has been inspired by Martin's LG