Man 2.0 Engineering the Alpha (37 page)

 

SCHEDULING YOUR FEAST/FAST

In the schedule we've provided you, cheat days fall on a Sunday with a full fast day following on Monday. This is not set in stone; you can really have your cheat day whenever you want—as long as you are able to follow it up with a fast. That said, understand that we've designed the entire workout and diet plan for convenience. So if you move your cheat day—and assuming you'll follow the plan and do a full fast after the cheat—then you need to realize that you will need to shift all the training days to correctly align with your workout days. We've provided a schedule to make this a thoughtless process.

While we're not going to give you a hard-and-fast rule for this, we strongly recommend scheduling your cheat day on Sunday (instead of Friday or Saturday) for three reasons.

 

1. The NFL: We have anecdotal evidence showing that cheat days are more effective when they coincide with watching football.
^*

2. The social aspect: For most of us, Sundays are lazy days—the days we don't have much scheduled to keep us busy and we get to spend time with our families and friends to just kick it.
^*
Given that cheat days allow for a diet that is more adaptable to socially friendly eating, we've found that Sundays make for the most logical and acceptable choice. Whether you're fifteen or fifty, it's hard to beat Sunday brunch with your family. So go enjoy some pancakes, all right?

3. Practicality and staying occupied: Because you'll be fasting for a full thirty-six hours following the cheat day, it's best to arrange things so that your fast falls on a day when you're busy.
As the old saying goes, idle hands are the devil's playthings. In other words, if you are fasting on a day during which you're sitting at home doing nothing, like a Sunday, you're going to hear the Siren's call of food beckoning you from the kitchen a lot more frequently.

 

The busier you are, the easier it is to fast. By planning your fast on a workday, you create a situation where you're busy throughout the day, making adherence to the entire fast an easier process. For this reason, Monday makes the best fit for your full fast day, as it's generally the busiest day of the week. Trust us when we say that doing a fast day on a Sunday sucks.

Again, you can choose your own feast and fast days to fit your schedule. Just make sure that you reorganize the workout and fasting schedules accordingly. For example, if you want to cheat on Friday and make Saturday your fast day, don't randomly schedule your workouts to fall on Saturday. Instead, do the same training plan that we have scheduled on cheat day, and do that on Friday. And then follow up with the training and fasting protocol on Saturday. The entire schedule has a rhyme and a reason. So maintain the diet and training pairings, and you'll be fine.

 

ADAPT: THE DIET

Determine Your Daily Caloric Intake During Adapt

Before you have your first cheat day, though, you once again need to determine your maintenance calories. This is done in precisely the same manner as in Prime, but
do not
use the same numbers. Your body will have undergone some radical changes in that four-week phase; at the very least, you'll have lost fat, which may put you into a different category of body fat. It's equally possible that you will have gained some muscle. In either case, your maintenance calories are going to be affected, and in order to make the best possible use of the program, you need to have the most accurate and current information. Therefore, before you set your goals for Adapt, please check your weight and get your body fat retested, and from there determine your
new
maintenance calories.

Done? Great. Let's move on to your daily calories. For Adapt, you're going to be eating below maintenance calories on both workout and non-workout days.

 

 
To determine your calories for workout days, subtract 200 from your maintenance calories.

 
To determine your calories for non-workout days, subtract 600.

 

You'll notice that you're eating a bit less on non-workout days in Adapt than you did in Prime; the reason is leptin. As mentioned, cheat days work because they serve to increase leptin; however, leptin levels only need a bump if they fall in response to a caloric deficit. To create the greatest possible effect, you'll eat a bit less during the week, but you'll
more
than make up for it with your cheat day.

 

MACRONUTRIENT BREAKDOWN

Protein

Once again, protein consumption is determined by your lean body mass, but it is higher during this phase.

Protein intake will be set as follows:

 

 
Workout days:
1 gram of protein per pound of LBM

 
Non-workout days:
0.8 grams of protein per pound of LBM

 

Carbs

 
Workout days:
0.75 grams per pound of LBM

 
Non-workout days:
0.3 grams per pound of LBM

 

Fat

At this point, you know your maintenance calories and have subtracted both the caloric values of your protein and carb intake. Now, you still have a balance of a few hundred calories; these will come from fat—and yes, that generally equates to a lot of fat. But as you know by now, if you're getting healthy fats, you're taking another step on the path toward hormonal optimization.

Now, as fat has 9 calories per gram, take your remaining balance of calories and divide by 9. The result is how many grams of fat you'll eat.

 

THE ALPHA EATING EQUATION: ADAPT

Workout Days

Going through the steps, it would look like this:

 

1. Using the information in the chart on page 169, figure out how many calories you need in order to maintain your body weight.

2. Subtract 200 from that number.
Now we've got your calories for workout days.

3.
Multiply your lean body mass by 1.
This number represents how much protein you should eat.

4.
Multiply your lean body mass by 0.75.
This number represents how many carbs you should eat.

5.
Take your total grams of protein and your total grams of carbs, and add them together.

6.
Multiply that number by 4.
This gives you the total number of calories from protein and carbs.

7.
Subtract this number from your calories for workout days.
This number is how many calories from fat you need.

8.
Divide this number by 9.
This is how many grams of fat you need.

Non-Workout Days

We repeat the same process for non-workout days:

 

1. Using the information in the chart on page 169, figure out how many calories you need in order to maintain your body weight.

2. Subtract 600 from that number.
Now we've got your calories for non-workout days.

3. Multiply your lean body mass by 0.8.
This number represents how much protein you should eat.

4.
Multiply your lean body mass by 0.3.
This number represents how many carbs you should eat.

5.
Take your total grams of protein and your total grams of carbs, and add them together.

6. Multiply that number by 4.
This gives you the total number of calories from protein and carbs.

7.
Subtract this number from your calories for non-workout days.
This number is how many calories from fat you need.

8.
Divide this number by 9.
This is how many grams of fat you need.

 

Now here's what it looks like in terms of food. Again, we provide examples of Roman and our fictional character, Steve. As you'll see, there is no shortage of good options.

With all of that covered, let's move on to the workouts for Phase II.