This Is How I Got Into My Leanest Condition Ever
I remember it quite vividly, it was the summer of 2011 and I had just watched the cult classic film, American Psycho starring Christian Bale. Suffice to say, I was blown away by Bale’s physical conditioning for his role of the serial killer and Manhattan business man known as Patrick Bateman.
His body was incredibly lean, toned and wiry; shoulders steel, pecs granite hard and stomach razor sharp. I was determined to bring my body to a similar condition and I wasn’t going to stop until my face was chiseled to the bone, abs permanently visible and muscles hard as rock.
This meant that I was going to have to drop down from 11-12% body fat to a crisp 7%. It took about 6 weeks and I was there! I didn’t even realize how lean I was until I uploaded the ‘shrink wrap video’ on youtube and comments started flying in about how I had achieved physical perfection and to stop pushing it any further.
Since I couldn’t quite find how Christian Bale got into such incredible shape, I knew I had to figure out my own approach and design an entire shredded workout program to help me achieve the same condition.
What It Took To Get So Lean
It was quite simple, I was on a very strict diet. I was eating around 1800-1900 calories per day with a high intake of protein and moderate intake of fats and carbs. Now you must know that dieting is quite simply one of the hardest tasks in the world for me. Let me explain, when I was in high school we had mandatory camping trips that we had to go on as part of our curriculum.
This might sound crazy, but I dreaded these camping trips and would have much rather been in the class room writing tests and assignments. Why? Well because the thought of going more than a couple of days with a limited food supply scared the hell out of me. I like my food, a lot! This often meant that I would sneak a bunch of protein bars on the trips to ensure I would never go hungry.
The point of this little anecdote is simply to illustrate the sheer resistance I have towards reducing my food intake. That said, I knew that if I wanted to lean down quickly, I was going to have to keep my calorie intake under 2000. This meant that hunger impulses and cravings were going to be something I would have to welcome.
How Did I Push Through This?
It’s this: one meal a day to get ripped.
I started playing around with many different approaches. Finally, what seemed to work really well, was eating just one huge meal per day. I would often fast until the afternoon with just water and black coffee, this is much easier than it sounds, you just have to give it a couple of weeks to adapt to fasting.
I would wake up around 9am, drink a few cups of black coffee, have an apple around 3pm, hit the gym and eat a huge meal at 5pm. This huge meal was what I looked forward to everyday. In fact, it was the only reason why I could stick to this low-calorie plan consistently.
Around 9 or 10pm at night I would have a big tub of 2% cottage cheese or a big omelet with some berries. Cottage cheese and eggs digest very slowly providing amino acids in the bloodstream well until the next day. This has a pretty powerful anti-catabolic effect.
In fact, cottage cheese has been shown to absorb at rates of around 2.5g per hour. A 500g serving of cottage cheese delivers a solid 60g of protein, supplying your muscles with fuel for an entire 24 hours. This strategy ensures very good muscle retention and fullness while leaning down to low levels of body fat.
If you have an egg or dairy allergy you can always have some chicken with a little fat (avocado) and veggies. The fats in the avocado and fiber from veggies will help slow down digestion for maximum fullness and to help prevent muscle catabolism.
This diet structure was the core of my shredded workout plan… without it, I knew I would have never been able to get so lean.
How To Get The “Shrink Wrapped” Effect
At the six week mark, I was super lean and chiseled and knew it was time to capture the condition I had achieved. So the night before filming my ‘shrink wrap video’ I did a big carb refeed taking in around 320g of carbs that day! The idea was to drive as many carbs into my muscles as possible, without spilling over.
After a long dieting stint, a big carb refeed can trigger what is known as the ‘woosh effect’. The high carbs boost insulin production, which helps lower cortisol levels. High cortisol levels can often times lead to lots of water retention. So by feeding on lots of carbs after a intense diet, often times you’ll look sharper. After the big carb dinner, I took a super hot Epsom salt bath to suck out any excess water under my skin that was blurring definition.
The next day I fasted until the afternoon, this maximizes growth hormone, which has a skin tightening effect, sorry Bateman, no ice pack needed. I then performed a very intense high volume get shredded workout with around six sets on my chest, shoulders and back and 3 sets on my arms. Followed by some intervals on the bike. Thanks to the carbs from the night before, my muscles responded very well to this high volume training and my muscles became full, thick and tight.
After I got home from the gym, I stepped into the web cam and I had realized that I had surpassed my goal of getting into American Psycho condition. I was slightly leaner than Bateman with a little more muscle development and considerably more abs separation. Unfortunately, I was still unable to get reservations at Dorsia.
Want The Complete Aggressive Fat Loss Protocol?
I just skimmed the surface with the aggressive fat loss protocol in this post. If you want to learn the in-depth system, well I just released a new course called the Aggressive Fat Loss Diet. This is the third program added to the kinobody line! This course focuses purely on dropping fat at a fast rate for maximum muscle tone.
This is a lot more strict and intense than my warrior shredding program so I only recommend following it for 6 weeks at a time. If you have a lot of weight to lose then you can follow it for 4 months before taking 2 weeks to eat around maintenance. This is because the more fat you have to lose, the better off your body is at handling low calories.
So if you want an AGGRESSIVE strategy for dropping body fat and want to get shredded for summer time, then check out my new program today:
==> Click here to read all about Aggressive Fat Loss.
*Your results may vary. Testimonials and examples used are exceptional results and are not intended to guarantee, promise, represent and/or assure that anyone will achieve the same or similar results.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go return some video tapes…
