How to Manage Your Holidays
How to manage your Holidays…
I want to try to explain to you diet guys how to minimize damage from holiday meals, birthday parties, or even a cheat meal. To do this I will need to explain some key points to set the groundwork so you can apply what you have learned. It would take me a very long time to analyze each of your holiday schedules and workout routines/diets to figure out how to implement the correct protocol. I would rather teach you to fish… So we begin.
First we should talk a little about insulin for those who don’t know. Insulin is the hormone that tells your body to stop burning fat and to start storing nutrients. This is a good thing for your muscles, but a bad thing for your fat cells. This is illustrated with a high GI carbohydrate post workout; point being to shove nutrients into your muscles. However insulin does the same thing to fat cells when a high GI carbohydrate is ingested; it shoves dietary fat (fat eaten) into fat cells. This makes you fat… So our goal, in general, is to utilize insulin to shove nutrients into our muscles, but not into our fat cells. There is an easy way to do this.
I want you to imagine a big pot or pan, one that can hold water. Then, inside this pot picture an empty glass. The pot is your fat cells and the empty glass is your muscle cells. When the empty glass gets filled up with water to the point it overflows, the pan (your fat cells) starts to fill up. If we can keep the glass empty, or partially empty, this will minimize spillover into the fat cells. So first we must empty the glass.
Spiking your insulin, refilling glycogen levels, will definitely happen during the holidays. Spiking your insulin and eating tons of food will fill up your muscle cells and spillover to your fat cells. The way to minimize this is to first drain everything you can out of your muscle cells (the glass in the pot), thus minimizing the insulin spike. So how do we do that you ask?
You will need at least a two day lead on whatever it is you are trying to minimize damage from. Since holidays are not exactly something that are planned last minute, this should not be an issue. One day can be done with less effectiveness, but 3-5 days is the best. For the point of practicality I will assume a two-day lead.
Day 1
Cardio – Empty stomach cardio is a must. HIIT style for at least 20 minutes followed by another 20-minute minimum of low intensity. HIIT should be done 3 minutes slow, 45second all out sprint.
Split up cardio and weight training into two different sessions.
Weight Training – You will want to train big muscles, and lots of them. Day 1 will have to be legs. No doubt about it. Squats, dead lifts, lunges, with some leg extensions or hamstring curls to go with it (calves too if you please). Annihilate your legs.
Diet for Day 1 – 20 grams of carbs post workout are the only carbs allowed. Complex Carbohydrates ONLY.
Day 2
Cardio – Empty stomach cardio is a must. HIIT style for at least 20 minutes followed by another 20 minute minimum of low intensity. HIIT should be done 3 minutes slow, 45 second all out sprint.
Split up cardio and weight training into two different sessions.
Weight Training – Stick with big muscles. Chest and Back. Pull-ups, Rows, Bench Press, Dips, etc. 45 minute – 1 hour workout. If you feel like crying, you did a good job.
Diet for Day 2 – 25-40 grams of carbs post workout are the only carbs allowed. Complex Carbohydrates ONLY.
Day 3 -5 (if applicable)
You are able to be a little more lenient if you are doing a depletion of more than two days. You can move chest or back to day 3 or 4 and you can also add smaller muscles into the program. You can also up your carbohydrates to low, rather than virtually non-existent. Still only complex carbs are allowed.
After Day 2 your glass, aka muscle cells, should be pretty empty. This way when you reefed (holiday) you will have the least amount of spillover as possible. Empty stomach cardio on the day of the cheat meal is a great idea, but I understand the obligations many of us face. If you are the type of guy that owns a treadmill though, this is the best time to use it.
I hope this helps everyone manage his or her way through the holidays.
PS. Just because you perform the above method does not mean that you will be able to eat anything you want and not gain fat. Please try to minimize the damage by not eating so much shit food. Just eat the food that is good for you first, then try your hardest to ignore the other food. Put less on your plate than you want, and try not to go back for seconds. Eat slow, drink tons of water, and fill up on veggies. If that doesn’t work, just take Muscle-tech and you will be fine.
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Originally Posted by nk92mi
