The Leangains Method: The Art of Getting Ripped. Researched, Practiced, Perfected.

by Martin Berkhan

Up until the occasion or party where your decadence will manifest, consume only lean protein and vegetables. At the party, eat as much as you want—but keep fat intake low. No matter what. You may drink to your Bacchanalian heart’s content, with one caveat; it must be pure alcohol, i.e., vodka, tequila, brandy, or any other drink with zero or negligible carb content.65

Don’t get distracted by fancy recipes and countless choices, or you’ll find yourself tempted and overwhelmed.

For most people, it’s simple. Men subtract 500 from maintenance, and women subtract 350.

With the Leangains Method, these numbers increase to 0.6 to 0.7 kilograms (1.32 to 1.54 pounds) and 0.4 to 0.5 kilograms (0.88 to 1.1 pounds) per week, respectively—thanks to the power of thermogenesis.

Again, whenever possible, choose whole foods over processed. Eat plenty of greens and fiber-rich carbs, preferably from fruit, before and after your workout.

Look at it this way. The weekly average is how you measure. Biweekly is how you judge. Meaning, how’s your diet going—good, or not good enough? Because there’s no in between. Things are either going according to plan or they’re not. If they are, just keep on keeping on.

Men should expect to average 0.5 kilograms (1.1 pounds) per week minimum,

0.2 kilograms (0.44 pounds) short translates to 200 calories.

As long as you’re not dipping below 50 percent protein, macros aren’t important.

My lessons in dietetics and math now comes to an end. You know everything you need to know for now. Go, and make me proud.

Those abs were as perfect as perfect goes. Once I saw ripped abs with skin as thin as the back of my hands, I was happy, and immortalized the moment with a few pictures I posted on my website.71

It might have been Mad Men or The Killing; I’m not sure, but I do remember that the excitement was gone. Replaced with a strange feeling of uncertainty. I shrugged it off and went about my business.

I had fantasized about during the last few weeks of my diet. It tasted like regular ice cream, but it didn’t taste nearly as good as I had imagined. No, wait. It didn’t taste like victory. And as I ate it, what I had accomplished didn’t feel like cause for celebration.

But there wasn’t, and if getting to this point was the goal, it was the greatest anti-climax of my life.72 It was as if it had come too easy, knowing very well how much I had struggled just a few months ago. How much I had failed for—how long had it been now? Seven years. Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling.

In my head, the conversation went from there to “Any idiot can do what I did. That’s why nothing’s different.” It continued later, “But who can maintain this condition all year long? No one I’ve heard of.” Before I lay down to sleep that night, I had set another goal for myself. I would maintain my chiseled physique for a year, because that’s the real challenge. The true test and measure of a man, I reasoned, and closed my eyes.

The feeling I chased never presented itself. My website, youthful energy, and naiveté mixed with the typical mentality of most guys in their mid-twenties, provided a strong enough incentive to stay ridiculously lean, so I kept it up for a few years until I got tired of it.

1 kilogram of muscle burns more than five times the calories of 1 kilogram of fat.73 Preserve muscle, lift consistently, and you’ll keep your metabolic rate humming just fine post-weight loss (ref. 3,4).74

Weight training is the glue holding your muscles together as the fat pours off.

For example (and there are many), one common exercise myth is specific to how one should approach weight training while dieting: to burn more fat, use light weights and high repetitions with little to no rest between sets, in a circuit-style fashion. Current mainstream examples like P90X and Insanity are nothing more than catchy names for advanced aerobics.

If your primary goal is muscle gain, use cardio sparingly. There are better ways to spend your time at the gym—and smarter ways to lose fat.

Hit it hard, and hit it right. Then get out, and on with the rest of your life. That’s my motto, and it’s served me and countless clients well, last time I checked. They grow muscle and gain strength while losing fat—most spending less than two hours a week at the gym.

AMRAPs—the core of RPT—are tough, and the very definition of hard training. A set of squats or deadlifts may have you seeing stars and begging for mercy. Before you learn to love this, you may fear it. That’s fine. Roll with it. RPT builds character. And when you see the results, you’ll learn to love it that much faster.

Plus, you don’t have to do a lot of it. RPT is not easy. But it is time-efficient, and extremely effective. You won’t be spending more than forty-five minutes in the gym thrice a week at the most. That’s two hours and fifteen minutes per week devoted to training to get the best results possible—if you commit and do it right. Sounds like a sweet deal to me.

For the bench press, overhead, and seal row, it’s 5 percent. For everything else, 10 percent.

As long as you’re able to complete at least 8 reps in the first set, increase the load by roughly 2.5 percent in the next session.

An increase of 2.5 percent means +2.5 kilograms (+5 pounds) for most movements. But if you’re a reasonably strong squatter or deadlifter, it may be +5 kilograms (+10 pounds). Your next sequence should therefore look similar to this:

10 percent: Squats, deadlifts, chin-ups, and assistance movements

It’s wise to employ a “flying start” if you don’t know what weights to begin with. In the context of RPT, this means starting out by not hitting your goal.

What do you think you’re accomplishing with 3 reps? Those first reps will look terrible, and greatly increase your chance of injury. Especially on RPT, which calls for maximum effort.

Never mind the goal for now. Start with a weight with which you’re comfortable performing 10 to 15 reps. For the second and third set(s), reduce the load by 5 to 10 percent per RPT breakdown rules. Each week, increase the load by 5 percent instead of 2.5 percent.

Time to stop with the 5 percent jumps. Now, switch to double progression and 2.5 percent jumps. And remember, only increase the load when you’re able to do 135 x 6 in the first set.

By beginning light and using a higher rate of progression—5 percent instead of 2.5 percent—you’ll eventually enter the six-to-eight–rep range, per the example above. When that happens, you’ll have had enough practice to train there safely and productively.

to save time, for example, you can do biceps and triceps back to back, e.g. alternate curls and pushdowns with sixty to ninety seconds of rest between movements.

Rest at least three minutes between sets, preferably more between sets of deadlift and squat.

Don’t use a “touch-and-go” style of lifting where you’re bouncing each rep off the floor; instead, treat each lift like a single, starting from a dead stop with a few seconds of rest between each rep. Lastly, make sure to learn the difference between upper back rounding and lower back rounding.

a repetition only counts when the bar hits the bench.

shoes. Use shoes with a flat sole, such as Converse or similar ones, because balance is important. Those with money to spare may also consider shoes especially made for lifting, such as Adidas Adipower, which is a personal favorite that greatly improves your squatting experience.

Shortly before the omelette is ready, add 250 grams of cottage cheese and watch it melt into the omelette.

On training days, men and women add 25 grams (0.9 ounces) of carbohydrate and 20 grams (0.7 ounces) of carbohydrate respectively to the post-workout meal. If you’re following the same or a few different meal plans every day, I suggest simply adding an apple, pear, or orange to this meal.

This displaces lost muscle glycogen, and the combination of glucose and fructose found in fruit is ideal for this purpose. Another benefit of this timing strategy is that it takes advantage of the post-workout DIT discussed in Chapter 5 (“The Thermogenic 7”). To improve it further, place the brunt of your daily carbohydrate intake in the post-workout meal.

90-kilogram male: 2,520 − 500 = 2,020 calories + 100 calories via 25 grams of carbohydrate = 2120 calories.

Top sirloin, my favorite meat.

Eating meat with veggies slows down absorption and solves the problem.

above, whey protein is not a good pick as your go-to protein powder. It’s fine after training, but that’s that. If you only want to buy one protein powder, make sure it’s casein,

cottage cheese, add sugar-free Jell-O, berries, or even protein powder, etc., and you have a million different desserts to experiment with. Put the concoction in the fridge or freezer for a cool treat or a high-protein ice cream.

Don’t keep snacks at home. Simple as that.

do: I empty a bag of frozen veggies in a wide pan, no butter, turn the heat up and let them cook in their own water for roughly ten minutes. That’s right. When you’re heating the veggies, they release water, and if you just make sure to check on them and stir once in a while, you can get your veggies cooked and ready to eat without the usual hassle.

It’s an unsolved mystery as to how much fat makes itself into the food when cooking with butter. What’s known is that a significant amount doesn’t. If I were to take a guess, roughly 25 percent based on the limited data I’ve seen. But my personal stance on this is that it’s better to be safe than sorry, which is why I count every gram as usual,

For men under 10 percent body fat and women under 18 percent body fat, I recommend fat loss of no more than 0.4 to 0.5 kilograms (0.9 to 1.1 pounds) per week and 1 kilogram (2.2 pounds) every third week, respectively.

Those who are very lean may opt for even less. If you’re wondering why, grab a notepad. Mathematical models suggest that 69 calories worth of fat per kilogram of body fat can be mobilized without muscle loss (ref. 10,12).