Leangains

I learned about Leangains from another IronStrong forum member when I was bitching about having to eat all the time.

I moved onto the see food diet when I started the StrongLifts protocol as I was always hungry with the training but wasn't really that pleased with the prospect of eating six times a day. Being someone that has fasted previously I knew the health benefits of the intermittent fasting lifestyle but wasn't sure how I could fit it into my strength training schedule.

With the 5:2 diet you fasted for two days out of the week where you have 600 calories [for men, 500 for women] for the fast days and eat normally on 'off' days and with the StrongLifts 5x5 protocol you train three days out of the week, so no matter how I managed to space out the fast days I'd either be fasting on a rest day which just didn't seem very logical to me, you're restricting your caloric intake when you are tying to have your body recover from the stresses of the previous day. Or I'd be fasting on a weekend or a training day, there's no way I was going to be able to fast on the weekend and fasting on a training day wasn't going to fly with 600 calories psh!

So discovering Leangains.com was very a refreshing change from all the other sites I visited about nutrition.

I'll summarise the leangains protocol with the greatest respect to Martin Berkhan and his work, please refer to his site for detailed information on the leangains protocol.

Leangains is basically fasting, fasting on a daily basis but not to restrict your caloric intake like the 5:2 diet. 16hrs for men 14hrs for women to go without eating any food.

So with my example I fast from 20:00 in the evening through to 12:00 the next day, on training days I train fasted and eat at 13:00 on rest days I eat at 12:00 first meal is always intended to be the biggest meal of the day with calories tapered down toward the end of the day.

To work out my macros I used the If It Fits Your Macros calculator and I have been doing this since I returned to work after my tonsillectomy on 27th January 2014 all I can say for my progress is that I feel a lot stronger and I have made great progress on my squat, bench press and overhead press