Eat Clean Lift Hard

How much muscular size can you gain without bodybuilding drugs?  Here are a few calculator’s I have come across. 

John McCallum’s method

1. Chest = 6.5 x wrist (use this figure for the rest of the calculations)
2. Waist = 70% of chest
3. Legs = 53% chest
4. Neck = 37% chest
5. Arms = 36% chest
6. Calves = 34% chest
7. Forearms = 29% chest

Stuart McRobert’s method

Start with height of 5ft 2in, 14in arms, calves and neck, 38in relaxed chest, 21in thighs, 28in waist.  For every 1in of height add 1/4in to the arms, calves and neck, 3/4in to the chest, 1/3in to the legs and 1/2in to the waist.

There are times when moving up to the next heaviest dumbbell in the rack is not possible as the jump in weight is too much and it causes you to drop your reps too low to get the desired training effect. Similarly, when using machines or barbells, sometimes selecting the next heaviest load is too much of a leap in weight.

Traditionally, many people stick to the same weight and each workout attempt to do more reps. When they can do significantly more reps they then move up to the next weight. This is fine for some people but for others it takes longer than if they were to progress in small weight increments.  This can be quite demotivating and cause people to switch exercises before they have completely milked gains from the first one.

This is where microloads, fractional plates or PlateMates come in (cheap improvisational tip coming later in this post). These are the product names of plates that weight 1kg or less. Adding these to the bar or machine you barely notice a difference. But if you add them regularly you will soon develop the strength to progress to the next dumbbell, barbell or load setting on a machine.

If you don’t want to buy a set of these little discs you can improvise. Try using an extra pair of dumbbell/barbell collars. Make sure you weigh them first. I have a mixture that weight between 0.25 and 2lbs each. Alternatively, you can get metal washers from a hardware store which also come in different fractional weights.

Yes it is! The method can be succintly described as ‘eat clean lift hard’. That’s exactly what I’ve been doing for the past five months and I’ve lost 25 lbs of bodyweight and 6 inches off my waist. That’s an average loss of 5 lbs a month and 0.8in off my waist a month. Even better is that I have lost little or no strength or muscle in the process.

Eat Clean: I eat good foods and eat less than I normally do. I avoid junk foods and overeating. I don’t fret over how many meals I eat per day. I don’t believe meal frequency has any negative impact on my metabolism. What matters is how much I eat. When fat loss slows down I simply reduce my food intake more.

Lift hard: I progressively overload my muscles by doing harder exercises, lifting heavier weights, doing more reps, more sets or resting less between sets. This ensures my body burns fat and not muscle while being in a calorie deficit mode.

I haven’t done any cardio in the past five months, rarely performed any ab work and haven’t used any supplements or drugs.