Bigger Leaner Stronger: The Simple Science of Building the Ultimate Male Body

by Michael Matthews

Anything we think will bring pleasure kicks this reward-seeking system into gear: the smell of the cheeseburger, the Black Friday sale, the wink from the girl, or the advertisement for the testosterone booster. Once dopamine has your brain in its grasp, obtaining the desirable object or doing the action that triggered it can become a “do-or-die” proposition.

If we’re to succeed in this new world, we must learn to distinguish between the false, distracting, and addicting “rewards” we’re enticed with every day, everywhere we go, and the real rewards that give us true fulfillment and that bring meaning to our lives.

You see, research has conclusively proven that nothing undermines willpower like stress—and not just the stress we feel when our brains are bathed in dopamine, but the stress of everyday living.12 The more stress we feel, the more likely we are to overeat, overspend, and do the many other things we regret shortly thereafter.

Now, what do many people turn to for consolation when they’re stressed? Research shows they chase “feel good chemicals,” of course, through food, alcohol, video games, television, shopping, and so forth.15 Ironically, the same people using these strategies also rate them as ineffective for reducing stress levels, and research shows that certain activities like watching TV and drinking alcohol can increase, not decrease, stress.16 Indulging often just leads to guilt, followed by more indulging, followed by more guilt, and so it goes.

In fact, research shows that sleep deprivation causes symptoms similar to ADHD: distractibility, forgetfulness, impulsivity, poor planning, and hyperactivity.22 These are hardly the types of behavior conducive to good self-control.

Reducing your consumption of pessimistic, fear-mongering media can reduce stress levels as well. Research has shown that exposing yourself to a constant barrage of bad news, scare tactics, and morbid reminders of our mortality increases the likelihood of overeating, overspending, and other willpower failures.23

When you face a willpower challenge, if you think about the future reward first and how giving in now sacrifices progress toward or some part of it, research shows that you’ll be less likely to discount the future and indulge.28 When you face the delicious prospect of bingeing on pizza, think first about how eating it gives up progress toward your long-term goal of the ideal weight or body composition, and it’ll suddenly become much less appealing.

Research has demonstrated the contagious nature of habits and mind-sets with many other behaviors, including drinking, smoking, using drugs, not getting enough sleep, and even feeling lonely and depressed.34 Because these things are able to spread from person to person to person, whom we keep as company has a much larger influence on our lives that most of us think.

Interestingly, “good” behaviors that people use to justify the “bad” don’t even have to be related. Shoppers who pass up something desired are more likely to feel justified in indulging in tempting food.40 When reminded of their virtue, people donate less to charity.41 Hell, research shows that when people merely think about doing something good, it increases the likelihood of immoral or indulgent behavior.42 And in an even stranger feat of mental acrobatics, when some people imagine what they could have done but didn’t, they feel virtuous. They could have eaten the entire cheesecake but only had one slice. They could have skipped four workouts but only skipped three. They could have bought the $2,000 suit but opted for the $700 one instead.

The moral of this section is that we simply can’t trust our feelings to guide our actions. If we wander through life chasing “good feelings,” we’ll figure out plenty of ways to not feel bad about every “little” bout of procrastination, overeating, overspending, and what have you, and, one day we’ll wonder why the hell we’re so fat, broke, lazy, and ignorant. Escaping from this trap requires that we first stop moralizing our behaviors—that we stop using vague feelings of “right” and “wrong” and “good” and “bad” to guide our immediate actions. Instead, we need to remember why we’ve committed to doing the “hard” things like exercising, following a budget, working overtime, and so on.

What we definitely don’t want to do is get really down on ourselves when we do mess up. Launching into a tirade of self-criticism will only increase feelings of guilt and shame, which will increase the likelihood of us turning to whatever will make us feel good (back to the cookie jar we go).48 The tougher, stricter, and more abusive we get with ourselves, the worse we are in the end.

Pride is another effective weapon that we can use to overcome our willpower challenges. Research shows that imagining how proud you will be once you’ve accomplished your goals, who you’ll tell, and what their reactions will be can increase your willpower and make you more likely to do what it takes to make those goals a reality.50 Anticipating the shame and disapproval from others that comes with failure can also help you stay strong in the face of temptation, but it isn’t as powerful in this regard as pride.

FutureMe.org offers a cool little tool for this that allows you to write an e-mail to yourself and choose a future date on which it will be delivered.

Research shows that a willingness to think thoughts and feel feelings without having to act on them is an effective method of dealing with a wide variety of challenges, such as mood disorders, food cravings, and addiction.56 On the other hand, trying to suppress negative thoughts and feelings, like self-criticism, worries, sadness, or cravings, can lead to greater feelings of inadequacy, anxiety, depression, and even overeating.57

Ride out the wave of desire until it finally crashes and dissolves. Researchers from the University of Washington called this “surfing the urge” and found that it helped smokers cut back on daily cigarette smoking.59 It helped them learn how to handle their feelings internally instead of turning to something external for support.

Research backs this up too. We can increase our overall willpower by performing regular, small acts of self-control like eating fewer sweets, tracking spending, correcting our posture, refraining from swearing, squeezing a handgrip every day, and using our nondominant hand for various tasks.

You can’t build any appreciable amount of muscle if you don’t train correctly. Your muscles won’t grow if you don’t give your body proper nutritional support. Performance and thus muscle growth is stunted by dehydration. Your gains will be lackluster if you don’t train with the right attitude.

Proper nutrition boils down to just two things: 1. Supplying your body with the nutrients needed to efficiently recover from your workouts. 2. Manipulating your energy intake to lose, maintain, or gain weight as desired.

Regardless of the source, 1 gram of protein contains 4 calories, 1 gram of carbohydrate contains 4 calories as well, and 1 gram of fat contains 9 calories.

Later in the book, when we break down how to diet properly, I’m going to give you simple dietary formulas for losing fat, building muscle, and maintaining weight that use macronutrient targets. I do, however, want you to know how to calculate approximately how many calories your body burns every day (your TDEE), as you may need to tweak the formulas I give later to your circumstances.

We must first calculate our BMR, which is easily accomplished by using the Katch McArdle formula. Here’s how it works: BMR = 370 + (21.6 * LBM) LBM refers to lean body mass, and it’s in kilograms for this calculation. In case you’re not familiar with it, lean body mass refers to the nonfat components of the human body. You calculate LBM by subtracting your body fat weight from your total body weight, giving you the weight of everything but your body fat. Here’s how it looks: LBM = (1 – BF% expressed as decimal numeral) * total body weight For instance, I’m currently 186 pounds at about 6 percent body fat, so my LBM is calculated like this: 1 – 0.06 = 0.94 0.94 * 186 = 167 lbs. (LBM) There are 2.2 pounds in a kilogram, so here is the formula to calculate my BMR: 167 / 2.2 = 76 kg 370 + (21.6 * 76) = 2,000 calories per day Once you know your BMR, you can calculate your TDEE by multiplying it as follows: • by 1.2 if you exercise 1 to 3 hours per week, • by 1.35 if you exercise 4 to 6 hours per week, or • by 1.5 if you exercise vigorously for 6 or more hours per week.

In case you’re wondering why those multipliers are lower than the standard Katch McArdle multipliers and other similar models elsewhere on the Internet, it’s simply because the standard Katch McArdle multipliers are too high. Unless you have an abnormally fast metabolism, standard multipliers will overshoot your actual TDEE and cause you to fail to lose weight or gain weight too quickly, depending on what you’re trying to accomplish.

A high-protein diet is absolutely vital for building muscle and preserving it when you’re dieting for fat loss. A low-protein diet is absolutely good for nothing. End of story.

One of the easiest ways to get stuck in a rut is to simply not pay attention to how much protein you eat on a day-to-day basis or miss meals and figure it’s no big deal. You see, when you eat food with protein, your body breaks it down into a pool of amino acids, which it can then use to build muscle tissue (among other things). If your diet contains too little protein, your body can become deficient in these essential amino acids, and thus its ability to build and repair muscle tissue becomes impaired. This is true regardless of whether you exercise. The basic processes whereby cells die and are replaced require these essential amino acids. Regular exercise, and weightlifting in particular, increases your body’s need for essential amino acids and thus protein. Your body must repair the damage you’re causing to muscle fibers, and that requires a lot of “building blocks.” This is why research has shown that athletes need to eat a high-protein diet to maximize performance.1

One gram of protein per pound of body weight (2.2 grams per kilogram of body weight) per day has been a bodybuilding rule of thumb for decades. • Higher levels of protein intake, usually in the range of 1.2 to 1.5 grams per pound of body weight (2.6 to 3.3 grams per kilogram of body weight) per day, are commonly recommended when dieting to lose fat.

While I could give you a big table with the PDCAA scores of various proteins, I’m going to just keep it simple: your best choices are meat, dairy products, and eggs; second to those are certain plant sources like legumes, nuts, and high-protein vegetables such as peas, broccoli, and spinach.8

Whey protein is by far the most popular type of protein supplement on the market today. You get a lot of protein per dollar spent, it tastes good, and its amino acid profile is particularly suited to muscle building. What is it, though? Well, whey is a semi-clear, liquid by-product of cheese production. After curdling and straining milk, whey is left over. It used to be thrown away as waste, but scientists discovered that it’s a complete protein. It is abundant in leucine, which is an essential amino acid that plays a key role in initiating protein synthesis.12

Due to its rapid digestion and abundance of leucine, a 30 to 40 gram serving of whey is probably your best choice for post-workout protein.

Casein is a good protein to have before you go to bed, which can help with muscle recovery.18

First, your stomach uses its acid and enzymes to break the protein down into its building blocks, amino acids. These amino acids are transported into the bloodstream by special cells that line the intestines and are then delivered to various parts of the body. Your body only has so many transporter cells, which limits the amount of amino acids that can be infused into your blood every hour. This is what we’re talking about with “protein absorption,” by the way: how quickly our bodies can absorb the amino acids into our bloodstreams.

Well, what we do know is you don’t have to eat protein every couple of hours to build muscle and strength or avoid “going catabolic.” Reaching your daily protein requirement is crucial, but the feeding schedule isn’t.

That said, research has demonstrated that how frequently we eat protein can influence whole-body protein synthesis rates (and thus overall muscle growth). Specifically, researchers at the University of Illinois found that when healthy adults split up their protein intake (about 100 grams) equally into three daily meals (30 to 33 grams at breakfast, lunch, and dinner), 24-hour muscle protein synthesis rates were higher than when intake was skewed toward dinner (11 grams at breakfast, 16 at lunch, and 64 at dinner).41

Eating protein more frequently is likely superior to less frequently. • Each protein feeding should contain at least 30 to 40 grams of protein. • Feedings can contain quite a bit more protein if necessary to hit daily targets.

For example, here’s how my daily protein intake generally looks: Pre-workout: 30 grams of protein Post-workout: 50 to 60 grams of protein Lunch: 40 grams of protein Afternoon snack: 30 to 40 grams of protein Dinner: 30 to 40 grams of protein Before bed: 30 grams of protein

So all forms of carbohydrate eventually turn into glucose, with the main difference between simple and complex sugars being the speed with which this occurs. As a general rule of thumb, you want to get the majority of your carbs from complex, slower-burning sources.

The glycemic index (GI) is a numeric system that ranks how quickly the body converts carbohydrates into glucose. Carbs are ranked on a scale of 0 to 100 depending on how they affect blood sugar levels once eaten. A GI rating of 55 and under is considered low on the index, while a rating of 56 to 69 is medium, and a rating of 70 or above is high. Simple carbohydrates are converted into glucose quickly and thus have high GI ratings. Examples of simple carbohydrates and their corresponding GI ratings are sucrose (65), white bread (71), white rice (89), and white potato (82).

Complex carbohydrates are converted into glucose more slowly and thus have lower GI ratings. Examples of complex carbohydrates and their corresponding GI ratings are apples (39), black beans (30), peanuts (7), and whole-grain pasta (42).

As I said earlier, you’ll probably notice better all-around energy levels by getting the majority of your carbs from complex, lower-GI foods. These...

Why is protein intake so important when restricting our calories for fat loss? You already know the answer: because it’s vital for preserving lean mass, both with sedentary people and especially with athletes.69

lose weight, you can lose quite a bit of muscle,70 and this in turn hampers your weight loss in several ways: 1. It causes your basal metabolic rate to drop.71 2. It reduces the number of calories you burn in your workouts.72 3. It impairs the metabolism of glucose and lipids.73 As you can see, when you want to lose fat, your number-one goal is to preserve lean mass, and eating an adequate amount of protein every day is vital to achieve this goal.

Now, with all that out of the way, let’s take a look at the benefits of eating adequate amounts of carbohydrate, starting with insulin’s role in supporting muscle growth. You see, insulin doesn’t directly induce protein synthesis like amino acids do, but it does have anti-catabolic properties.80 What that means is when insulin levels are elevated, the rate at which muscle proteins are broken down decreases. This, in turn, creates a more anabolic environment in which muscles can grow larger more quickly.81 That sounds good in theory, right? But does it pan out in clinical research? Yup. Several studies conclusively show that high-carbohydrate diets are superior to low-carbohydrate varieties for building muscle and strength.

Dietary fat is the densest energy source available to your body, with each gram of fat containing more than twice the calories of a gram of carbohydrate or protein (9 versus 4, respectively). Healthy fats, such as those found in meat, dairy, olive oil, avocados, and various seeds and nuts, help your body absorb the other nutrients that you give it, nourish the nervous system, maintain cell structures, regulate hormone levels, and more.

The type of fat that you want to avoid at all costs is trans fat. In case you don’t remember, trans fat is a form of unsaturated fat not commonly found in nature. Trans fat is created artificially and added to food primarily to increase shelf life, and it’s bad news. Research has associated trans fat intake with a variety of health problems: heart disease, insulin resistance, systemic inflammation, female infertility, diabetes, and more.88 There’s a reason why the Institute of Medicine recommends that our trans fat intake be “as low as possible.” 89 Many cheap, packaged foods contain trans fat, such as microwavable popcorn, yogurt, and peanut butter. So do frozen foods such as pizza, packaged pastries, cakes, and the like, and fried foods are often cooked in trans fat. Any food that contains hydrogenated oil or partially hydrogenated oil contains trans fats.

Unfortunately, avoiding trans fats isn’t as simple as finding foods with labels claiming them to be trans fat free. To meet the FDA’s definition of “zero grams trans fat per serving,” food doesn’t have to contain no trans fats—it must simply contain less than 1 gram per tablespoon, or up to 7 percent by weight, or less than 0.5 grams per serving. So, if a bag of cookies contains 0.49 grams of trans fat per serving, the manufacturer can claim it’s trans fat free on the packaging.

So, to recap, you can be quite flexible in how you get your dietary fats: dairy, meat, eggs, oils, nuts, and fish are all healthy sources. You don’t have to fret over your saturated fat intake, but you should strive to get plenty of unsaturated fats in your diet as well and should eat as little trans fat as possible (I eat absolutely none).

To avoid dehydration, the Institute of Medicine reported in 2004 that women should consume about 91 ounces of water—or three-quarters of a gallon—per day, and men should consume about 125 ounces per day (a gallon is 128 ounces).90

Make sure the water you drink every day is filtered and not straight from the tap. While some people assume that tap water is clean enough to drink regularly, research has shown that it is becoming more and more contaminated with all kinds of pollutants, including bacteria, pharmaceuticals, heavy metals, and various types of poisonous chemicals.91 Many people are already aware of this and stick to bottled water, but this isn’t a great solution. Not only is it expensive, but research has also shown that bottled water is chock full of chemicals. One study examined 18 different bottled waters from 13 different companies and found more than 24,000 chemicals present, including endocrine disruptors.92

This is why I recommend investing in an effective water filtration device and why I stick to filtered water myself. What you want to achieve with water filtration is low levels of dissolved solids in the water, as measured by an inexpensive testing device that gives a “parts per million” reading. The closer to 0, the better. (Tap water generally tests at anywhere from 200 to 700 PPM of dissolved solids.)

Personally, I prefer a simpler approach. I make sure the majority of my calories come from nutrient-dense foods, such as the following: • avocados; • greens (chard, collard greens, kale, mustard greens, and spinach); • bell peppers; • Brussels sprouts; • mushrooms; • baked potatoes; • sweet potatoes; • berries; • low-fat yogurt; • eggs; • seeds (flax, pumpkin, sesame, and sunflower); • beans (garbanzo, kidney, navy, and pinto); • lentils and peas; • almonds, cashews, and peanuts; • whole grains, such as barley, oats, quinoa, and brown rice; • salmon, halibut, cod, scallops, shrimp, and tuna; • lean beef, lamb, and venison; and • chicken and turkey.

I also supplement with a good multivitamin to fill any holes left by my diet and ensure my body gets all the micronutrients it needs.