I started to become interested in nutrition in my early twenties after a few years of lifting weights. I eventually realized I wouldn’t make any progress if I didn’t pay attention to what I ate. Training is just a small part of building a great body. Ultimately, it’s your diet that carves your physique. So in my quest to learn about nutrition, I began experimenting with different diets. I tried all sorts – from carb-cycling to high fat/low carbs and even went vegan at one point. But the method I got the best results from was intermittent fasting (IF). It was simple to follow and easy to incorporate into my lifestyle. I got really lean from it without much effort.
More About Intermittent FastingÂ
Intermittent fasting was popularized by Martin Berkhan’s Lean Gains in the late 2000s. The concept essentially meant fasting for 12-14 hours a day – hence intermittent. You would then break the fast with a feeding window of 6-8 hours, where you would eat 2-3 meals. For example; you may have your first meal at 12pm, eat again at 4pm and finally dinner at 8pm. Then you shut food consumption down and consume no calories until 1pm the next day. Although it’s OK to drink black coffee, green tea, water or zero calorie drinks during the fast window. During the fasting period your body burns fat preferentially, because your glycogen (storage form of glucose/energy from carbohydrate consumption) stores are depleted. This forces your body to use its body fat as its main energy/fuel source. As a result over time you become leaner due because your body is burning stored body fat as fuel. I got great results from doing IF and didn’t think I could really improve on it. That is until Jay Campbell and Jim Brown introduced me to their incredible new diet. The Metabolic Blowtorch Diet builds on the foundation of IF and MASSIVELY improves on it. Jay Campbell calls it a Targeted Intermittent Fasting Diet (TIFD). Enhancing the effectiveness of all IF protocols before it, the MBTD increases the length of fast windows on fasting days while also programming resistance training and higher carb and calorie intakes during your following weight training day’s feeding window. It’s a very unique spin on traditional Intermittent Fasting protocols.
Fat AnnihilationÂ
I’d already been doing IF for several years, so I already knew what to expect. Or so I thought. That was until I was forced to eat my first meal past 1PM. Your body sends hunger signals at certain times because that’s when it expects food. A lot of the feelings of ‘hunger’ are more the result of psychological conditioning from the advertising messages of popular culture. When you begin IF, your body still expects food during those regularly programmed meal intervals. To do the MBTD right, you will have to overcome hunger pangs (normally gut biome issues) from your body expecting food at regularly programmed times throughout the day. The key is to not quit or give in to the hunger pangs. This is a very minor test of your resolve. Because the real metabolic magic starts to happen after your body becomes ‘fast adapted’. For most people, this ‘fasting adaptation period’ last anywhere from 3 -5 days. For others, up to 2 weeks. Once you become ‘fast adapted’ fasting becomes like an on/off switch. When you decide it’s time to lose body fat, you can adjust your fasting and feeding windows almost immediately relative to your goal. Now, in the past I would have patted myself on the back after a 14-16 hour fast. And while I got pretty good results, I now realize I was leaving money on the table not extending the fasts. A week into the diet I triumphantly told Jay I was breaking the fast at 2pm. His blunt reply came,
‘Not long enough. Go til 4-5pm.’
WHOA! Could I really fast for that long? I wasn’t sure. But when I tried it, I was BLOWN AWAY by the difference in fat loss. I then started fasting from 18 hours all the way up to 22 hours. The diet has blowtorch in its name for good reason:
There is nothing like it for insane and
efficient fat loss.
In all honesty, I never fasted for longer in the past because I was paranoid about losing muscle mass. I had bought into years of fitness and bro propaganda saying you needed to be eating every 3-4 hours to maintain muscle mass. This didn’t happen. In fact, the leaner I got, the BIGGER I looked due to improved muscle density. I honestly don’t feel I lost any muscle in the process and even if I did, I learned a hell of a lot.
Fasting does not equate to losing muscle.
Doing the Metabolic Blowtorch Diet has changed the way I view dieting forever. Actually I hate to say this. Because people want to sell you on their expensive 12 step programs telling you how easy everything is. But losing fat on this diet was pretty simple. Before optimizing my hormones on testosterone replacement therapy, I figured there was always a trade-off. Remain lean with minimal mass or get big and carry around a little fat. But when I followed the MBTD, I regularly ate two square meals. And at times just one. And you know what? I got leaner and looked ‘bigger’ due to better muscular density.
Training on The Metabolic Blowtorch Diet
With traditional IF protocols, the idea is to train fasted. Training fasted is great in theory – your body uses fat as its primary energy source because glycogen stores are depleted. I used to train fasted before I began the Metabolic Blow Torch Diet and then realized the stupidity of my thought process In the presence of of low muscle glycogen stores prior to training, the body breaks down muscle tissue in order to mobilize amino acids to create glucose to burn as energy. To combat this, most IF practitioners take BCAAs (branched chain amino acids). The thing is, BCAAs are proteins which upon consumption break your fast. So you’re not even training ‘fasted’ anymore. (Very few people actually realize this including the various gurus who promote this strategy to their disciples) If you’re going to break your fast, it’s much better to do it with a solid meal instead of a handful of supplements. Traditional IF methods advocate waiting several hours until lunch time, keeping you in a catabolic state. This effectively blunts protein synthesis and the precious refilling of your muscle glycogen stores. Now that I follow the Metabolic Blowtorch Diet, the diet’s programming forces me to eat prior to training ensuring my muscles are always rich in glycogen to fuel my training. This guarantees my workouts will be explosive and productive.
My Schedule
Below is how my diet schedule looks on training and fasting days. I want to be open with you about how I did it – to show you can also adapt it to your own needs. (Look for much more explicit detail on the MBTD’s flexibility in the book when it launches end of September)
Training Days
6:00 AM 1st meal of the day: Homemade oatmeal pancakes with eggs, cinnamon, blueberries and scoop of protein powder Supplements: 850mg Metformin, 2 x fish oil tabs, cup of strong black coffee Activity: 10 minutes of mindfulness meditation 7:00 AM Train (On leg days, I eat an additional piece of fruit and I may drink a protein shake during the workout) 9:00 AM 2nd meal of the day: Homemade oatmeal pancakes with eggs, cinnamon, blueberries, and scoop of protein powder 1:00 PM 3rd meal of the day: Chicken salad with/without quinoa, depending on my level of fat loss 5:00 PM 4th meal of the day: Same as 2nd 8:00 PM 5th meal of the day: Omelette or light egg salad 10:00pm Protein shake (depending on my goal; if I’m going for maximum fat loss, I might skip this) Bedtime Supplement(s) to take: 500 mg Metformin, 30 mg Dessicated Thyroid OTC supplement Fasting Days
6:00 AM
Supplements: EMF, 850mg Metformin, cup of strong black coffee
Activity: 10 minutes of mindfulness meditation
4:00 PM
1st Meal of the day: large bowl of mixed salad with boiled eggs, chicken, and avocado
6:00 PM
30 mins of steady state cardio on the gym bike or incline walk
** Ideally I’d do fasted cardio but my schedule means I can’t always do it in the morning
8:00 PM
2nd Meal of the day: same as the first meal
10:00 PM
3rd Meal of the day 30-40g protein shake
Bedtime
Supplements: 850 mg of Metformin
You Don’t Need To Be A Monk
I want to clarify this, so you don’t come away with the wrong impression.
I, nor Jay, or any of the other guys on this site follow a strict diet 100% of the time.
It’s just not possible.
Sometimes you need to have a life too.
The point is you don’t need to be a Buddhist monk to get incredible results from this diet.
I’d say follow it 80% of the time and you’re golden.
You can even allow yourself to cheat every now and then.
Let’s be honest, when your dieting correctly, you’re aiming to minimize carbohydrate intake.
The MBTD ensures you deplete your glycogen stores during long hours of fasting, while also refilling them on training days GUARANTEEING your training stays on point due to muscle glycogen stores always being topped off.
It also ensures your basal metabolic rate (BMR) stays constantly fluctuating from the yo-yoing of calories and carbohydrates day to day. This is extremely crucial to the various metabolic pathways staying ‘upregulated’ and finely tuned to ensure lipolysis ie fat burning.
On this diet you can listen to your body and give it what it needs, while giving yourself a mental respite in the process.
All without derailing your results.
There are diet purists out there who will disagree and say a ‘diet is a diet’ and you should be strict if your goal is fat loss.
I get it.
But, I’m just a regular guy who wants to look good naked.
I’m never going to step on stage.
I just want to hold down a job, lead a normal life and still look and feel fantastic.
The Metabolic Blowtorch Diet has provided me the answer to do exactly that.
Look at my progress after only 6 weeks.
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To summarize, these are the main differences between Intermittent Fasting and the Metabolic Blowtorch Diet:
- MBTD allows for more flexibility and customization around your lifestyle.
- The MBTD forces you to eat around or just above maintenance calories (along with a higher carbohydrate intake) on weight training days. This allows for basal metabolic rate (BMR) and thyroid hormone to stay constantly elevated ensuring your metabolism doesn’t slow down over time like most IF diets.
- The MBTD extends fasting windows significantly – up to 20 hours for men and 15 hours for women. This dramatically enhances fat loss due to specific biochemical and metabolic processes explicitly detailed in the book.Â
- The MBTD places emphasis on the strategic use of medications and supplements to accelerate fat loss. These include Metformin/Berberine, Dessicated Thyroid Medications, Albuterol and Nicotine gum.
A Quick Thought on BDNF The added benefit of doing the Metabolic Blow Torch Diet is its tremendous cognitive effects. During the fasting window my brain worked on overdrive – I felt more creative and alert. My body’s resources were not being constantly diverted to my stomach. Indeed, I discovered the reason for this heightened sense of creativity is due to Brain-Derived Neutrophic Factor (BDNF). BDNF is responsible for increased learning capacity, higher levels of intelligence, and improved ability to process information. There is an entire chapter on all the wonders of BDNF inside The Metabolic Blowtorch Diet. It’s worth reading the book for this alone.
Final Thoughts
Now, lots of people with stellar diets tend to favor intermittent fasting because they believe that if they simply fast for 12-18 hours they can eat poorly when they break their fast. Let me be clear:
You can’t eat like shit on the Metabolic Blowtorch Diet and expect Stellar Results.
Looking good on the inside is just as important as looking good on the outside. Remember, the aim is here is fat loss in addition to overall health. The Metabolic Blow Torch Diet dramatically enhances your health:
- It lowers insulin resistance, reducing the risk of type 2 diabetes
- It reduces inflammation in the body, lowering the risk of disease
- It lowers the risks of most of the diseases of aging
- And more…
There’s no rocket science involved – you’re essentially skipping meals for fat-loss and lowered whole body inflammation. The real discipline of this diet is in consuming ZERO calories for prolonged periods. And inevitably that means dealing with the powerful psychological component of hunger. Ignoring hunger is tough. It’s a basic human instinct. And when your stomach sounds the hunger alarm, you must choose whether you eat or not. But you don’t have to overcome hunger with willpower alone. Because we all know:
Willpower is NOT the only answer.
The Metabolic Blow Torch diet isÂ
With its advanced strategies to suppress your appetite. With The Metabolic Blowtorch Diet, you don’t have to deal with the mental anguish of fighting temptation. You’ll no longer see hunger as an ordeal. In fact, you’ll learn to EMBRACE it, knowing its presence signals your victory in the war on fat loss. To get on the waiting list for YOUR FREE COPY of The Metabolic Blowtorch Diet, go here.