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

by Michael Matthews

It’s possible to lose weight without watching your calories, but it’s unlikely to work well over the long term for most people. There are just three simple steps to figuring out how many calories you should eat every day: calculate your basal metabolic rate, calculate your total daily energy expenditure, and calculate your target daily calorie intake. Your basal metabolic rate (BMR) is the amount of energy your body would burn if you were to lie motionless for a day, without food. It’s the minimum amount of energy it costs to stay alive for 24 hours. The Mifflin-St. Jeor equation for men is: BMR = 10 x weight (in kilograms) + 6.25 x height (in centimeters) – 5 x age (in years) + 5 Your total daily energy expenditure (TDEE) is the total number of calories you burn every 24 hours. Food costs energy to digest, process, and absorb, and different types of foods cost more energy than others. Protein costs the most energy to use and store, followed by carbohydrate and then dietary fat. Don’t use any of the data from activity trackers and exercise machines to inform your calorie intake because it’s probably going to lead you astray. Mathematical models are the ticket for calculating your total daily energy expenditure. Use my slightly modified activity multipliers when calculating your TDEE. The first step in working out how many calories you should eat is determining what you want to do with your body composition. If you want to lose fat, you need to eat fewer calories than you’r...

If you haven’t eaten protein in the three to four hours preceding your workout, then it’s a good idea to eat 30 to 40 grams before you train. If you’ve eaten protein an hour or two before a workout, eating protein again won’t accomplish much. Eating carbs 15 to 60 minutes before working out will help you push harder in your training and may also aid in postworkout recovery and muscle growth. Eat 30 to 40 grams of any type of carbohydrate about 30 minutes before a workout. Choose whatever kind of carbohydrate you enjoy most and is easiest on your stomach. There are several theories about how eating fat before a workout can improve performance, but the scientific literature disagrees. It’s a good idea to eat 30 to 40 grams of protein within an hour or two of finishing a workout. Protein eaten after a workout causes more muscle protein synthesis than when eaten otherwise. Adding carbs to your postworkout meal will keep insulin levels elevated for longer, which is desirable from a muscle-building standpoint because insulin suppresses muscle protein breakdown. High-carb diets result in generally higher insulin levels, which results in generally lower muscle protein breakdown rates, which in turn produces more muscle gain. One other benefit to eating carbs after a workout is refilling your muscles with glycogen. This whole-body glycogen replenishment can give you a nice postworkout pump and mood boost, but it doesn’t appear to improve overall workout performance unless you’ll be...

temporarily boost leptin production, however, by acutely

I’ve worked with many people who’ve used a combination of weightlifting, high-intensity interval training, and walking to lose fat rapidly. The most successful approach looks like this: Three to five one-hour weightlifting sessions per week One to three 25-to-30 minute HIIT sessions per week Two to three 30-to-45-minute walks per week

This is why fitness isn’t for the weak-minded and weak-willed. You can’t slide by on BS. Your body doesn’t care about your excuses or justifications. The only way to undo skipped workouts is to put your butt in the gym and do the work. The only way to overcome screwy dieting is to stop screwing up. If you’re going to successfully engineer your lifestyle to help you achieve your biggest goals and dreams, you must learn to love the process and embrace the struggle. If you can do that, then there’s nothing that can stop you.

When you get 6 reps for one hard set of most exercises, you immediately move up in weight by adding 10 pounds to the bar or moving up to dumbbells that are 5 pounds heavier (per dumbbell). Remember the example of how this works? Let’s say you’re squatting in the 4-to-6-rep range, and on your first (or second) hard set in the workout, you get 6 reps of 225 pounds. You then immediately add 10 pounds to the bar (not in your next workout), rest a few minutes, and get 4 or 5 reps on your next hard set. Great! The progression has succeeded, and you now work with 235 pounds in your current and future workouts until you can squat it for one hard set of 6 reps. Then, you’d move up in weight again, and so on. What if you only get 2 or 3 reps with the new, heavier weight before your form starts breaking down? What if the progression doesn’t succeed? In this case, you should drop the weight back to the original, lighter load (225 pounds in our example) and work there until you can get 6 reps for two hard sets (in the same workout). Then, you should immediately move up to the heavier weight again on your next hard set (even if that’s in your next workout) and try again. If you do that and still can’t get at least 4 reps, go back to the lighter weight and work with it until you can do three hard sets of 6 reps (in the same workout). At this point, your progression should succeed. Also, if you get 6 reps in your first set after moving up in weight, then you get to move up again!