I’ve been thinking about this for a while now…
The building blocks of muscle are protein so we need protein to grow muscle after hypertrophy.
Fasting creates accelerated GH which promotes growth while also switching to ketones as fuel so body fat becomes our food source.
Could workouts be scheduled around refeeds and fasting follow bouts of 4-5 days of lifting to accelerate fat loss and autophagy?
Let’s say you fast for 96 hours once weekly. This should burn about 3 lbs of body fat. Exercise is not to maximize hypertrophy during this time but to flush blood to the muscles to aid in mobility work post workout.
Lift one last time while fasted before your refeed, consume quality protein and carbs in your refeed, then do IF until your next fast.
During IF, schedule your eating windows to fall right after you workout. Follow a bodybuilding split for 4-5 days to hit all muscle groups separately and consume a protein and simple carbs shake postworkout followed by one healthy whole food meal.
Leading up to the next extended fast, workout one last time to burn glucose stores, post workout meal being keto, head into your extended fast with a keto head start and repeat cycle.
Could this be the Holy Grail? Weekly, we reach autophagy to aid in cellular regrowth and repair, we burn body fat while in ketosis, we maximize real food and protein consumption by timing it around weight training and hypertrophy and help our insulin sensitivity by not eating like shit. When fasting we are working on mobility and getting lactic acid to muscles to stop catabolism.
Edit: Also, I’m not married to the idea of 96 hour fasts being the best choice either. Please use Rolling 72s or 48s as an option when looking at this idea as a whole, I just wanted to try and conceptually maximize autophagy as I feel this is the biggest fasting benefit we receive.
What am I missing here?
“What am I missing here?”
Martin Berkhan’s Lean Gains. He’s the real OG when it comes to fasting and building mass. He was THE IF guy before anyone new what intermittent fasting was. He’s not just talk either. The guy walks around jacked at ~10% BF. Don’t bang your head around trying to theorize. This guy has read the science and tested it in his life. I’m certain he has a book. He has a blog I used to follow. Just search Lean Gains
For the last month I have started doing something similar to this. I work out on Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday mornings. Following the workout, throughout the day I consume 2,500-3,000 calories.
I don’t consume any food on Sunday/Monday/Wednesday/Friday.
This setup is the first time I’ve combined extended fasting with weight training and I’m still actually getting stronger (lifts going up), whilst in a calorie deficit. It seems like it should be impossible based on the theories of how everything works, but it is working for me.
I did a DEXA scan right before I started this idea and I’ll get another one in late February to see my progress.