If you’ve ever been in peak condition with big, full, vascular muscles and paper-thin skin, you know it’s an incredible feeling. People notice your in-shape ripped physique everywhere you go. It’s a rush you never forget, and you seek that peak like Tiger Woods craves, um, golf. The problem comes when you can’t get that conditioning, no matter how hard you try. It’s so frustrating and your workouts go into the toilet. That’s exactly what happened to me… This is my fat-burning story…
I had no problem achieving dramatic conditioning a few years ago. For example, the X-Rep transformation year, I got into peak shape faster than ever, with more vascularity and cuts than I thought possible for me. These photos were taken five weeks apart during my first experiment with X-Rep training (the program I used is outlined in The Ultimate Mass Workout e-book)…
I knew it wasn’t a fluke because the following year I did it again without any problems–and was actually bigger and fuller thanks to X-hybrid training techniques (see Beyond X-Rep Muscle Building)…
But the past few years I’ve had a helluva time reaching that ultimate peak again. Something hasn’t been right, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. I don’t take drugs, so I couldn’t just change to a different anabolic.
But I do use supplements. After banging my head against the wall trying to figure out why I was losing muscle mass and getting smooth on every diet I tried, even my proven successful X-Rep-year diet, I found the simple solution while reviewing my meal-by-meal diet from those perfect-peak years in the X-treme Lean e-book. I realized that I’d changed protein…
How could that make such a dramatic difference? You’ll be shocked at what I found. When I was at my biggest and leanest, I was using a combination array—a protein that contained whey, micellar casein and egg. After reading the hype about straight whey, I switched, thinking it was the best source of aminos for building muscle. That may be true, but recent research also shows that straight whey increases insulin release big time!
What’s so bad about insulin? It’s a hormone that promotes fat storage and actually STOPS the fat-burning process in its tracks. That’s correct: Your body cannot use fat for energy when insulin is present. That’s why I, like many others, have a fat-boy reaction to insulin—and straight whey protein. I have to be very careful about when I spike my insulin; the anabolic window right after a workout is fine. Unfortunately, with my whey-only feedings I was swimming in insulin all day long, preventing fat from melting away. But that’s not all…
Whey is a superfast protein. In other words, it digests so quickly that it’s in and out of your bloodstream in about an hour. After that, if you don’t eat again, your body kicks into starvation mode. And when your body senses famine, it not only preserves fat but begins eating its muscle tissue for energy instead. Holy cow! No wonder I couldn’t reach peak condition–I was turning off the fat-burning furnace and turning on the muscle-munching machine every day!
The solution was simple: Go back to what worked—a Muscle Meals meal replacement and Pro-Fusion protein (there are similar protein products – read below for what ingredients to look for). Both contain a perfect fast-slow protein array. Fast whey isolate is included, but they also have slow-digesting micellar casein, which provides a trickle-feed effect. That not only blunts insulin release but also pulses anabolic aminos to your muscles for hours.
In some studies micellar casein has proven superior to whey in adding muscle tissue. However, these proteins work best together—synergistically—as a fast-slow combo. In fact, mother’s milk, one of the most powerful growth formulas on earth, contains about equal amounts of whey and casein. That’s the Muscle Meals formula, but with some key extras…
The egg protein is a big bonus because eggs are known as nature’s perfect food. One reason is that egg protein is both anabolic AND anticatabolic. That makes it a powerful stand-alone growth factor but also very synergistic with whey and casein.
So with products like either Muscle Meals or Pro-Fusion you do NOT get a fat-storing insulin spike. Plus, you continuously build muscle with a steady flow of aminos—but there’s more good news…
Research shows that a good fat, conjugated linoleic acid, is both a powerful muscle builder and potent fat burner—plus, it blunts the release of insulin even more. In a recent study, scientists found that using CLA with creatine and protein before training produced significantly more strength and lean muscle gains than using any of those alone and more muscle than a protein-plus-creatine mixture.¹
Glutamine is the dominant amino acid in muscle tissue, so it’s very important to spur optimal growth, and something to look for in a good meal replacement or protein powder. Glutamine has also been shown to help curb cortisol, a stress hormone that eats muscle tissue
If you’ve been having a hard time getting lean, I urge you to get off straight whey and try a protein array similar to what’s mentioned above. You’ll be on you way to that powerful feeling of reaching ultimate peak condition – eye-popping, ripped-up mass – fast! Thanks to my detective work and checking out my best-condition diets in X-treme Lean, my shredding machine is at full throttle! (Note: You may be able to find similar mixed-protein products with an array of whey-micellar casein-and-egg protein; CLA and glutamine peptide are also important key ingredients to look for.)
¹Cornish, S.M., et al. (2007). Paper presented at the 2007 meeting of the Canadian Physiological Association in Ottawa.