“Hi man, i have been doing IF (16:8) from 10 am – 6 pm and i lost considerable amounts of body fat. i usually hit the gym from 8 am til 10 am. someone told me that it is bad to hit the gym without breakfast because i will lose muscle tissues as well. is this true? when is the ideal time for hitting the gym then?”
Technically you break down your muscle every time you lift. The question isn’t whether you temporarily lose muscle or not.
Rather, the question needs to be “do I build my muscle back up so that it’s bigger than before I started?”
And this is where your post-workout nutrition comes in. Protein, carbs, fats, sleep, supplements – these are all the things that will build your muscle back up, not whether or not you ‘ate breakfast’, especially if you breakfast is weetabix and orange juice.
Just make sure you’re getting 1g+ protein per pound of bodyweight (or per pound of lean mass if you’re obese), sleeping like a lion, avoiding booze, and only eating CLEAN carbs post-workout.
“Hi mate. Love your tweets and emails so thanks. What’s your take on the new study regarding circadian rhythm? If I wanted some advice on fasting to suit me could you do that?”
This guy didn’t link me the study, and I don’t have time to read through everything. But I will give my general thoughts on the ‘Circadium Guys’ stuff.
These guys essentially tell you to time everything around the sun.
Sun comes up, you eat. Sun goes down, stop eating.
Make sure you get sunlight when it’s daytime.
And that last bit is something I completely agree with – if you don’t get sunlight during the day, and then darkness later on, your sleep schedule is going to be compromised and therefore your hormonal health too.
But the problem with “just eat when the sun’s out” isn’t helpful for health purposes. Even if they added the ‘no sugar’ part, it’s still not helpful. People are already eating all day, and they’re already obese as hell. It’s not solving any health issues from a diet perspective.
What the advice NEEDS to be is:
- Whatever your current eating window is, get it smaller
- Re-allocate more calories towards the evening, because this is the social schedule of 99% of humans, and you’re not going to maintain a diet long-term if you “can’t” consume any calories when its’ dark in the evening
- Eat more meat & veggies, eat less non-satiating garbage
Follow the above three tips, and you WILL lose weight and save your health.
But eating from sunrise to sunset?
People are already doing that, and it’s not turning out too well for them.
“41 y/o 6’1″ 175 looking to gain muscle and lean out midsection which is my trouble area. What should my daily calorie target be, what foods should be off limits. Thank in advance for the help.”
The midsection troubles a hell of a lot of guys.
Typical ‘stubborn fat’ area.
And you can look at all these different supplements like yohimbine (that claim to burn ‘stubborn’ fat, but at the end of the day, fat loss is fat loss, and if you’re having difficulty with it, your focus should be:
- Less sugar (and insulin spiking)
- More sleep
Therefore any foods with sugar in should be off limit – you’ll burn through any ‘stubborn’ fat much quicker this way.
Then more sleep (in combination with zero sugar) will help to raise your testosterone levels, which improve just about every other function on your body, especially since you’re over 40.
Calories are difficult to give without more detail (get Gold or Silver coaching for that).