The Apex Predator Diet, In Glorious Detail Part 1

In the event that you're not one of the readers hanging on my every word or who is new to the blog, this spinoff originally started with the Evolution Of My Diet series, which starts here. In it, I outlined the diet I'm currently following, which I've called the Apex Predator Diet due to the fact that it consists of little more than that which an apex predator would eat, supplemented with protein shakes because I'm much more inclined to hedge my bets with a protein sparing modified fast than place my faith in the clinically unsupported yet theoretically sound Intermittent Fasting approach. The following blogs will expand upon what I've previously explained, give greater detail for why this diet kicks more ass than Gina Carano in Haywire.

Gina Carano knows ass.

An Overview of the Apex Predator Diet

The Apex Predator Diet is a at its core a cyclical ketogenic diet, not unlike those I've supported in the past. On this diet, you'll be keto dieting on 30 grams of carbohydrates or less per day for 5-6 days a week (or more, depending on your bodyfat levels). During the non-carb days, you'll be consuming 1-2 meals of fatty, preferably bone-in meat per day, supplemented by 5-7 low carbohydrate protein shakes. The other day or two are referred to as "Rampage" days, during which time you'll replenish your glycogen stores and satisfy your desire to wreck pizza and cookies. The reasoning behind this methodology of dieting is that I found protein-sparing modified fasts like the Velocity Diet gave me just enough energy to put in a workout that would embarrass an undergraduate girl trying to drop her freshman 15 before going to the beach for cock over the summer- I was truncating my workouts horribly and thinking about nothing more than fucking killing myself out of shame. Thus, I did some research and discovered those diets are really only suited to the morbidly obese and people who suck at lifting weights, rather than people trying to be so fucking superhuman they make Superman seem like a shiftless, limp-dicked, weaksauce layabout by comparison. As such, I experimented with a variety of evening meals and finally settled upon beef ribs and bone in

steaks, which are eminently satisfying, calorically dense, and restorative in ways you cannot possibly imagine.

This shit works. This diet, though similar to many you've likely seen, is vastly superior (if you're training hard 4+ times a week) to existing frameworks for a couple of reasons. 1. My macronutrient percentages are different. Conventional wisdom on CKDs is that 65-75% of your calories should come from fat. Fuck all that. According to my biggest fan on Earth, Lyle McDonald, "when subjects are told to limit carbohydrate intake but to consume "unlimited" quantities of protein and fat, they automatically limit caloric intake and consume between 1400 and 2100 calories."(Ketogenic Diet 101). I don't give a fuck who you are, that shit is not going to support heavy training. Not only is that a caloric intake suitable only to the Olson twins and 19th Century hunger artists, but at the macros suggested by the gurus, you're not getting nearly enough protein, either. 2100-1470=630/4=157.5 grams of protein. My protein shakes have more calories in them than that, for fuck's sake, and I mix them in water. The Predator Diet is much higher calorie (3000+), most days, with 50-60% of your calories coming from protein and the remainder from fat. 2. I cycle calories. For those of you who are not already incredibly lean, calorie cycling kicks in to keep your metabolism humming. I've not seen another CKD or TKD diet that tinkers with calories in this way to accelerate fatloss. 3. It's fucking easy. One of the things I see people constantly blabbering on about with the IF diet is how easy it is to not eat for half the day. I guarantee you it takes no more time to make a shake than it does to make a cup of coffee, and those fuckers must be chugging coffee if they're not eating. As such, their argument's as fucking stupid as the Predator Diet is anabolic. 4. It's anabolic. Though you're operating in a caloric deficit for the majority of the day, you're getting a constant influx of protein to stave off muscle catabolism, and the high fat meats at the end of the day provide saturated fat and cholesterol, both of which boost testosterone levels, which in turn increase aggression, which in turn makes you tear shit up in the gym, making your system even more anabolic. Basically, you become a perpetual-motion machine of badassery. 5. You're not insane with hunger at all times. When hungry, "people tend to conserve energy rather than expend it."(Russell 148) That's definitively not a good thing if you're training hard, especially if you're dieting for a competition and/or training twice a day. I used this diet to cut for

two meets and ended up on the underside of 7% bodyfat, making my water cut easier, increasing my strength to weight ratio, and allowing me to look fucking amazing while lifting big weights. 6. You have planned, insane, gluttonous cheat meals. These serve a variety of purposes, and they match the occasional gorge of a predator nicely. Because I realize experimentation is scary, and I've already done plenty of experimenting, I've got four basic permutations of this diet- Fat Fuck; Not Too Fucking Fat, But Not Too Fucking Lean; Lean As Shit; and Whiny Bitch. The first three are fairly self- explanatory, and will be broken out by bodyfat percentage (see the chart below). The last is because I get a lot of emails from people whining about pre-and post-workout carbs. They're of the opinion that they're indispensable, though I would dispute that opinion. For those ladies out there who absolutely must have your carbs or you will turn into a raging ball of hormone-fueled fury, laying waste to everything in your path as you make for the counter at Auntie Annie's in the mall, this should suit your purposes nicely as well.

Components of the Apex Predator Diet

Before we get into the finer points of the diet, let's cover a couple of basics- food and supplement choices. The reason why I've christened this diet the Apex Predator Diet is due to the awesome food choices you'll be making. Nowhere will you find bland, tasteless, rubbery bullshit like chicken breasts and steamed broccoli. Fuck it- on this diet, you won't even need utensils, most of the time, because your food should come with a built-in handle- bone. Bone is an integral part of meat, and ripping an animal's flesh off its bones with your teeth is a primal, visceral, ethereal act that stands in stark defiance to modern life and harkens to a time when men were men and women appreciated real men, in addition to being tougher than most of the "men" you see waddling their sloppy asses around the mall these days. As such, it would stand to reason that if we want to regain that former glory, strength, and aggressive awesomeness we had in times past, we should eat like our forebears. For those of you who are staring, incredulous, at that statement, consider the following: "The connection between flesh and bone is primordial and fundamental. Yet today, bones have fallen out of favor. We are all familiar with the expression, 'The nearer the bone the sweeter the meat,' but we demand everything precut and prepackaged, and that is, increasingly, all we can buy. Our world is full of recipes for boneless, skinless (and often tastless pieces of meat, chicken, and fish, and we can scarcely recognize whole fish or birds. We have become so obsessed with ease of preparation and

speed that we have lost touch with the visceral appeal of cooking with- and eating- bones." (20 McLagan)

They understood this, because they were stronger, smarter, and tougher than the lot of us. "There is a universal understanding that bones and meat are inseparable. Yiddish: Bones without meat are possible, meat without bones is not possible. Hebrew: There is no such thing as boneless meat. Greek: Meat is sold with bones. Norwegian: He who buys the meat has to take the bone with it. English: Bones bring meat to town. He who eats the meat let him eat the bones. You buy the land you buy the stones: you buy the meat you buy the bones."(119 Bones) Eating boneless meat is thus not only effete, ridiculous, artificial, and offensive to the soul of the slaughtered animal, but it's fucking stupid. Bone in meat tastes better and is healthier, as cooking it in that fashion "enables the bone nutrients to infuse into the meat, imparting wonderful flavors"(Shanahan) in addition to added nutrients. After you've cooked it that way, you eat it with your hands, as your primal ancestors did, using the bones as the handles for bearing meat to your mouth as they were fucking intended. Eating becomes more satisfying because you're restoring the tactile sense in your hands to the process of eating. As such, it becomes a richer, more natural, more intimate experience and produces greater satiety as a result. As one probably hot hippie put it, "eating with your hands gives you a deeper sense of your food, because you are bringing more sense receptors to the table. Temperature and texture become more profound when you can feel them on your fingers first, and the experience of consumption is extended even longer for a more pleasurable process."(Urban) Worries about a mess on your hands? Buy some fucking Wet Wipes and be glad you have fewer dishes to do. Additionally, you're going to be consuming a shitload of low-carb, blended source protein shakes, multivitamins, EFAs, and fatburners, and will try to mix in some offal if at all possible. I'll get into all of that good shit in the next installment, however, leaving you with the fact that offal tastes fucking awful, so I generally just take a shitload of multis.

Exactly Sources: McDonald, Lyle. Ketogenic Diet. McLagan, Jennifer. Bones: Recipes, History, and Lore. New York: HarperCollins Publishers, 2010. Russell, Sharmen Apt. Hunger: An Unnatural History. New York: Basic Books, 2005. Shanahan, Cate. http://drcate.com/deep-nutrition-the-ancient-science-of-human-engineering/the-fourpillars-of-world-cuisine/ Urban, Shiloh. "Eat With Your Hands." http://www.organicauthority.com/eco-chic-table/eat-with-yourhands.html

Apex Predator Diet, Part 2- Dieting For Fat Fucks

It occurred to me over the weekend that this is going to be one hell of a long series, so I've decided to break it up into its component diets. Given that they've the furthest to go, I thought we'd start with our tubby compatriots- they need a head start shuffling towards whatever destination to which we send them, and ample breaks to catch their breath and shoot insulin and the like.

The Fat Fuck Approach

I've actually not had to use this, as I have about the same ability to ignore the sensation of my abdominal fat sitting on my waistband when seated as those overly pretty people on the Bachelor have for admitting that they're actual prostitutes. As soon as I start feeling that sensation, I start dieting my fucking ass off. Once lean, I freak out when I lose abdominal vascularity, much less my abs in general. As such, I've had to extrapolate from the diet I used to jump start my fat loss once I noticed that my abs were going the way of the the Kardashian family's collective personal pride.

I think I hate her more than I actually should because she's got one of the best asses on Earth. As with everything I do, this diet is hardly a hard and fast dietary regimen, but rather more like a broad outline with suggestions on what you can do with the finer points. Thus, you should experiment with a couple of different approaches to determine what works best for you. From there, you can carry what you've learned into the succeeding phases and have an even better handle on your diet than the cast of that ridiculous show Mike and Molly, who apparently have made a pact to eat into immobility in recent years. The Rundown Kick it off with a 10-14 day keto run (no Rampage for 10-14 days) Protein-sparing modified fast at least one day a week 5 days a week, one solid-food meal a day, with one of those days being a fairly low calorie meal low- but not no- carb one day a week, punctuated by a 3 hour cheat window that is at least moderately reasonable. This is not, then, a full on Rampage day, but more of a moderated eating spree. One day wherein you eat more than one solid-food no-carb meal a day

Seems fairly simple, right? As I've said before, this is hardly brain surgery. The point in this phase is to get you looking at least decently while keeping your lifts up and not completely hating life. One of my main problems with the PSMF, as I've mentioned, is the fact that they leave you insanely hungry and can be a distraction from training. As such, I would recommend (based on personal experience) throwing that day in between your Rampage day and your higher calorie day. As I almost invariably have my cheat meal on Friday, that works out pretty nicely- keep the calories low on Saturday, drink a shitload of protein shakes (at least 6), and then grub on every meaty bit of deliciousness I can on Sunday.

If you're concerned about calories, you will moderate your caloric intake according to your individual metabolism. I'm not talking about some bullshit, low-brow, Easy Bake Oven BMR calculation- you will find your sweet spot through experimentation, because you're a fucking mad scientist and only you can understand your own insanity. Additionally, my conception of a workout is considerably different tan that of most, so it would be completely disingenuous for me to suggest that I could tell you what caloric intake would result in the most fatloss and muscular gain. I can tell you that your body will tell you when it's had enough fatty meat. My sweet spot seems to be between 1 and 3.5 lbs of meat in a sitting, depending on the type, my level of activity, and where I am in a week. Luckily for you, "studies of ketogenic diets have found that when subjects are told to limit carbohydrate intake but to consume "unlimited" quanitites of protein and fat, they automatically limit caloric intake and consume between 1400-2100 calories." (Ketogenic Diet 101) That's a very cool biological cruise control you've got built in, and I can say that though I generally go a bit higher than that (2000-3000 calories) in my evening meal, I definitely hit a point where I can go no further, and it's not from being stuffed- my body just taps out and says and says "fuck it, I'm done." The key here, especially for you tubby motherfuckers, is to stop eating before you're full. Luckily, meat on the bone slows your eating considerably (I personally tend to scarf down my food like a wild, starving dog), so you'll have a better sense of where you stand in terms of fullness than you would otherwise.

There is one unfortunate caveat for you people, however- years of overindulging have fucked you harder than a big-bootied white girl at a black fraternity and you can no longer fully trust your body's satiety signals. Leptin is the hormone made by fat cells that causes your brain to listen to signals of satiety, but overweight people, having much greater fat stores, have higher leptin levels and become resistant to the signal. As such, I would start toward the lower end of the caloric spectrum and increase as needed, using your level of energy in workouts as a guide. (Russell 22) One nice thing about the structure of this diet is that it will help to moderate the other side of the hormonal overeating coin- ghrelin. That's the hormone that tells your body you're hungry, and it's suppressed with high fat diets. As such, you'll likely find you're hungriest on your Rampage day, since you won't be eating such high fat foods throughout the day. Many of you, upon seeing some quick results, are going to come to the conclusion that you should skip your Rampage day to prolong your fat loss. If you choose to do so, I would add in another high calorie day (but not consecutive with another), and would not recommend that you go more than two weeks without a cheat meal, both for sanity and your metabolism's sake. The reason I start this phase with a 10-14 day keto run is that the fatter you are, the harder it is for your body to get into ketosis. Basically, if you think of your glycogen stores as a water glass, you filled that fucker up years ago and kept dumping buckets of water on top of the full glass for years, while leaving it out in the rain. In Seattle. Your insulin receptors threw in the fucking towel years ago, while you shoving Little Debbie snack cakes down your piehole and washing it down with a Coke. You're completely destroyed your body's ability to correctly recognize its own metabolic signals, so you're going to have to suffer a bit to undo the damage you've done. Additionally, Dan Duchaine was a big fan of starting ketogenic phases with 10-14 day keto runs, and that makes good sense- fat people produce ketone

bodies much more slowly than do lean people.(Russell 22) Thus, I can drop into ketosis inside a day right now, but the 308 lber trying to drop to 242 is going to take the better part of the week, for the reasons I outlined earlier in this paragraph. In regards to how much carbohydrate you should eat, which I'm sure many of you are wondering, you should shoot to keep your carbohydrates to 30 grams or less a day. "Although up to 100 grams of carbohydrate will allow ketosis to develop, it would be rare to see ketones excreted in the urine at this level of intake."(Ketogenic Diet 104) Because you've spent the last several years stuffing your face with all manner of bullshit, you might want to go ahead and forgo it for the time being so as to get your body back to a state where it can better tolerate carbs. The nice thing about dieting is that the leaner you get and stay, the more leeway you end up having with it, and the more rapidly you can make physiological changes for the better. Think of fatloss like a massive freight train- it's a bitch to get that motherfucker moving, but once it's up to speed, nothing short of a nuke is stopping that fucking thing from reaching its destination. Is this phase going to be fun? In spots. Eating every meal with your hands is fucking awesome, in my opinion. There's less cleanup, you get to use wet wipes, and gnawing on a bone is a hell of a good way to avoid biting your fingernails. The days you're not eating real food, however, are going to fucking blow. That's the price you pay for years of eating like dogshit, however, and if you want to be a beast, you're going to have to go hungry like one every now and again.

I'm sure you wrestling marks just came in your pants. Triple H actually uses a moderate-fat ketogenic diet, as it happens.

Sample Week Of The Fat Fuck Approach

Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday: 5-6 protein shakes throughout the day (and one overnight, which I'd leave on the toilet and chug while peeing). I usually had Monster Milk in the morning, and followed that with Muscle Infusion throughout the day. If I did a morning workout, it was a short workout (20 mins) usually consisting of one arm deadlifts, and I usually did not have a pre-workout shake. On two of these four days I typically substitute one shake at lunch with wings or other no-carb meat. 1500-2500 calories worth of meat, preferably on the bone, for your evening meal. If you're eating chicken, make sure you're eating the skin. You might want to think about a Protein Sparing Modified Fast (nothing but shakes) on Monday as well, especially if you want to accelerate fatloss.

Wednesday: 5-6 protein shakes with a less calorically dense dinner. This is intended to rotate your calories and

stimulate more fatloss. Friday: Watered-down Rampage day. Keep you carbs reasonable, and focus on getting lean proteins throughout the day. To give you an idea of how I did this to into single digit bodyfat, most Rampage days consisted of 94% lean meat tacos on low carb shells. For my cheat meals, I went bananas, but I'd suggest that while you definitely want to make sure you eat a considerable amount of carbs, you should keep your calories in check until you're starting to see decent progress. This is for two reasons- you need to learn dietary discipline and because your body still has massive fat stores on which to draw, so massive cheats are unnecessary. I'll cover the Rampage Day in depth in an upcoming post, but for now I'd say eat lean and low-to-moderate carb throughout the day and cap the day with a carbohydrate bonanza the likes of which you've likely not seen since you saw undergraduate college girls descend on a table of free bagels. In terms of amounts, I'll agree with Dave Palumbo and say your initial Rampage day should be in the neighborhood of 400 grams of carbohydrates. If you don't lose more weight the following week, reduce that number. If you lost plenty, you can adjust it up. For you guys, however, I'd suggest you go easy, since you've mangled your insulin sensitivity worse than that broad who got attacked by a chimp a couple of years ago.

This is what your metabolism looks like. Well done. Saturday: Protein Sparing Modified Fast. Nothing but shakes in water today. Quite frankly, you're likely going to want to skip the gym today and just occupy yourself otherwise, but if you do plan on training, be prepared for it to suck, so don't plan to hit PRs.

Sunday: Keto day, but eat two meals today- one smaller and one larger. Make sure you train on this day- your lift will be awesome.

What You Will Need For This Diet

A good multi-vitamin. I cannot bring myself to eat offal, so this is a necessity for me. If you like eating liver and kidneys and sundry other items you see falling out of hapless victims in Hostel, feel free to skip the multi. I'm back on the Animal Pak bandwagon, and I'm fairly certain you could cure cancer with it. Omega 3 fatty acids. I'm not paying eleventy billion dollars for grass-fed beef. I've not got the money for that silliness, and likely nor have you. Pop Omega 3s like candy and you're gold. Some permutation of the ECA/ECY stack. I don't give a fuck how you combine them- just do it. Neanderthals were huge fans of ephedrine, and so should you be.(Doweiko 88) I've written about why you should love it here. I use Stimerex or Lipodrene.

A good blended protein. I've used Matrix 5.0, Muscle Infusion, Monster Milk, and Pro Blend 55 to good effect. Just make sure that the carbs in that fucker are LOW- that means no Muscle Milk, no Syntha 6, no weight gainers.

A Note About Women And This Diet Assuming you're a woman or have ever met one, you're aware that women regard carbohydrates like the last life boat on the titanic and will maul you like a fucking honey badger if you get between them and their potatoes. There's actually a psychochemical reason for this- women appear to either have chronically low seratonin and tryptophan levels or are just addicted to high levels of the two chemicals. This is especially true around their period, at which time the production of both chemicals in the brain is suppressed. Additionally, seratonin reduces anxiety, from which every chick I know suffers, and tryptophan is the amino-acid precursor to seratonin, so it contributes to anxiety suppression as well. (Sayegh et all, Christie) Guess what kinds of foods stimulate the production of those chemicals? Carbohydrates. Protein-rich foods (i.e. the foods women typically ignore for carbohydrate-laden foods) increase dopamine and norepinephrine, which means eating a lot of protein will make you more alert and energetic. This may be why men are so ready with solutions to any woman's problems, and happy to share them until she plants a fucking fork in his eye for doing so.

Her craving for carbs was so great, she had to wrap her face in a dirty blanket to restrain herself. The reason why I'm including this is because women need a priest qualified for an exorcism and a psychiatrist far more than they need this diet. I'm not saying you necessarily can't do it, but it'll likely make you miserable for a couple of weeks. Men with high estrogen levels and might have this problem too, but that's just speculation. The original sound guy for the Grateful Dead is apparently 100% carnivorous and had this to say about chicks and keto diets: "The female hormones seem cause a strong craving for carbs, as the female body isn't fertile without a layer of fat. This makes this diet very hard for women to follow. Traditionally the women are the gatherers of fruits and (starchy) roots, while the men are the hunters. This is shown today in the different ways men and women go about buying things. The gals "shop" which is a trip through the entire store or mall in search of things to buy. They may not actually buy (gather) anything. The guys on the other hand know what they are after, and then seek it out (hunts it down) and buys it, usually then taking it home right away."(Stanley) If you do decide to try it, I did a quick google search to see which kinds of cheese might work for this diet, since it's my experience chicks will consider eating dogshit if it's covered in enough of the right kind of cheese. I'll say right off I know fuckall about cheese and despise it. Thus, I'm making recommendations on macronutrient ratios: Gruyere Cheese- This seems to be about as close to beef ribs as you can get in a cheese. If you want to sit down to a pound of this shit a day, have at it. 40g of protein and 42g of fat per cup with <1g carbs Limburger Cheese- Damn near as good for you as Gruyere, provided you can tolerate the smell. Goat Cheese, Hard Type Brie Cheese Edam Cheese Monterrey Chesse Muenster Cheese Camembert Cheese

Up next, dieting for the Not Too Fucking Fat But Not Too Fucking Lean and the Rampage explained fully and completely. Sources: Christie, Catherine. Mood-Food Relationships. http://www.faqs.org/nutrition/Met-Obe/Mood-FoodRelationships.html#b Doweiko, Harold E. Concepts of Chemical Dependency. Macdonald, Lyle. Ketogenic Diet.

Russell, Sharmen Apt. Hunger: An Unnatural History. Sayegh R, Schiff I, Wurtman J, Spiers P, McDermott J, Wurtman R. The effect of a carbohydrate-rich beverage on mood, appetite, and cognitive function in women with premenstrual syndrome. Obstet Gynecol. 1995 Oct;86(4 Pt 1):520-8. http://web.mit.edu/dick/www/pdf/909.pdf Stanley, Owsley. Diet and Exercise. http://thebear.org/essays1.html#anchor496162

Apex Predator Diet, Part 3- You're Getting Less Fat. Congratulations.

The Not Too Fucking Fat, But Not Too Fucking Lean Approach.
This is what I used when I was between 12% and 8% bodyfat. I could see two abs clearly and two a bit hazily at the beginning of this diet, and I followed this fairly strictly for about two months. Once I started getting into single digits, I noticed myself getting hungrier and hungrier, and had to start eating more to maintain my bodyweight. Additionally, once you get into the single digits (or middle double digits for chicks) you'll find that your metabolism resembles the Israeli Killdozer- it crushes damn near anything in its path provided you have someone competent behind the wheel. As such, this approach is going to alter slightly as you get leaner (should you wish to alter it). I realize that some of you react like Luddites at a robotics convention when faced with changing a workout or diet if its still yielding results, and if you fall into that category stick with the more draconian approach until you hit the next stage of the diet. For those of you who have less resolve for sticking with something than a meth addicted four year old white trash kid in the toy department at Wal-Mart, I recommend setting a hard start and stop point on the evolution of this phase of the diet to ensure that you make the progress you

should. This stage is not too much different than the previous one, except that I recommend only one day of Protein Sparing Modified Fasts and your Rampage day kicks in harder than a teenage erection at a Hustler party. After youve made it to single digits, you may choose to drop the day of protein sparing modified fasts to ensure you dont leave weight on the platform on training days and that you continue to make forward progress with your physique. At some point, youll get lean enough that youll notice a very pronounced loss of aggression in the gym due to those days. Additionally, once you hit single digits, I recommend adding a smaller second food meal midday. This will help you stabilize your weight as you bring the diet home.

The Basics of the NTFBNTS Phase

Saturday, Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday: 5-6 protein shakes throughout the day (and one overnight, which I'd leave on the toilet and chug while peeing) comprised of 40-60 grams of protein. On two of these four days I typically substitute one shake at lunch with wings or other no-carb meat. Once you hit single digit bodyfat, you can make this a four day affair. On one of these days, try to fit in a protein sparing modified fast (i.e. consume nothing but protein shakes) until you hit single digits. I recommend placing this day on Saturday, in between your Rampage and high-calorie keto days, so as to keep your metabolism stimulated and reap the benefits of alternate-day fasting. 1500-3000 calories of fatty meat, preferably on the bone, in the evening.

Wednesday: 5-6 protein shakes throughout the day (and one overnight).

Less calorically dense meat for dinner (t-bone, ribeye, or NY Strip steak, leaving the fattiest bits behind. This is to ensure that youre still cycling your calories, even if youre skipping the protein sparing modified fast day.

Friday (Rampage Day): Today is going to be characterized by medium- to low- (but not no-) carb meals throughout the day. Restrict your meals to 50 grams of carbohydrates or less per meal, and keep your fat low to ensure carbohydrate reuptake. This is the polar opposite of your typical day, so just bear in mind that your carbohydrates and fat should be inversely proportional at all but the Rampage meal. Rampage! This is going to be a three hour cheat window that Ill detail in the next installment.

Sunday: Higher calorie keto day. Ensure that you eat two solid food meals on this day, preferably of fattier meat on the bone- think wings, ribs, chops, etc. 5-6 protein shakes throughout the day (and one overnight).

Jesus tittyfucking christ. Who doesn't understand the proper use of the word "too"? ...Fratboys. During this phase, you should be making progress like a fratboy with a sorostitute in his dorm roomyoure nearly there. Unlike said fratboy, however, youll likely find rohipnol unnecessary, though you might benefit from the following: Avoid doing cardio. Though utilizing a CKD (Cyclical Ketogenic Diet) as opposed to a TKD should forestall muscle catabolism brought on by high volumes of work in the gym, aerobic exercise taxes your anaerobic substrates too heavily.(Duchaine 132) Since this could lead to muscle loss, Id avoid it. For the forty three thousand rugby athletes whove emailed me about this diet (sweet fucking Christ a lot of you like wearing striped shirts), youll want to follow the Whiny Bitch permutation of this diet, which is forthcoming. Supplement with Chromium Polynicotinate or Vanadyl Sulfate. Both minerals work to regulate your blood sugar and insulin levels, and might aid in training and recomposition as a result.(Duchaine 131) Dont skip or skimp on your Rampage day. I cannot imagine a person actually doing so, but based on the emails I get, a lot of you do some tremendously stupid shit. Dont be one of those guys- Rampage like your name is King Kong once a week. If youre curious as to why, theres a good reason- you cannot sustain high intensity training indefinitely in the total absence of dietary carbohydrates and expect to make continued progress. You do have some glycogen resynthesis that naturally occurs as a result of weight training, though its relatively small.(McDonald KD 122) As such, you need to hit the Rampage once a week to ensure you replenish glycogen stores. Skipping or postponing your Rampage in this stage will, at best, make you fucking miserable, and at worst, reduce or eliminate your gains. Since this diet is all about being fucking awesome, reducing your potential for awesome is counter-intuitive. Consume stimulants. Theyll fuel your workouts and they help establish and deepen your levels of ketosis.(McDonald KD 116) Additionally, amphetamines have been shown in recent studies to

increase the effect of dopamine on your brain, which increases motivation for both physical and mental activities.(Ito) Happily for us, ephedrine is an amphetamine, so feel free to make use of the wonderful bounty that is ephedrine and all of its amphetaminy goodness. You'll be focused like a pedophile on a preschool playground when you hit the gym, find dieting easier, and generally be more awesome. For those of you with heart problems, moral issues, religious issues, or simply think youre better than the rest of us, feel free to abstain. Stimulants, while not necessary on this diet, definitely help.

Drink if you want. Though by no means necessary, and done to excess will fuck up your gains, drinking can actually help you deepen your levels of ketosis.(McDonald 115) Alcohol itself gets converted to ketones in the absence of dietary carbohydrates, which means that it wont fuck up your diet beyond replacing the ketones your body would produce from the conversion of stored bodyfat. Thus, it can slow fat loss if done to excess, but will not fuck up your ketogenesis. This is, of course, assuming you stick to non-carbohydrate laden alcohol like vodka, gin, tequila, Everclear, etc. Additionally, Robb Wolff recommends you drink as early as possible to allow the alcohol to clear your system before bedtime to avoid completely shutting down GH release overnight. One of the best things you can consume, alcohol wise, on this diet is the disgusting old-timey gin and tonic, garnished with lime. The lime juice blunts insulin release while the tonic water acts as a non-polar solvent that delivers the alchol into your system faster.(Wolff 138) Wolff actually recommends the Crossfitters drink of choice, the NorCal Margarita, but it occurred to me as I wrote this that the drink of choice in the period of British Colonialism will do the job just as well, while additionally conferring resistance to malaria. Thus, feel free to show up to your local gin bar rocking a monocle and a comically undersized safari outfit to cover all of your bases. At the very least, youll annoy the holy fuck out of the hipsters drinking that vile bullshit, which makes it a victory no matter what.

Up next- a detailed description of your Rampage. Sources: Duchaine, Dan. Underground Bodyopus. Ito R, Hayen A. Opposing Roles of Nucleus Accumbens Core and Shell Dopamine in the Modulation of Limbic Information Processing.J Neuroscience. 2011 31(16):6001-6007 McDonald, Lyle. Rapid Fat Loss. McDonald, Lyle. Ketogenic Diet.

Apex Predator Diet, Part 4- Every Apex Predator Goes On An Occasional Rampage, So Long As Chris Hansen Doesnt Catch Them First

A hulking figure appeared in the doorway, cloaked in an aura so intense that he barely seemed capable of doing aught but great violence to anything within his reach. As he stepped heavily into the room, the onlookers noticed that every sinew, every muscle, and every vein stood in stark relief beneath his paper thin skin, which threatened to burst like the skin on a sausage left too long on the grill. His t-shirt, loose at the waist, grew tighter as the eye moved upward until it appeared to be strangling him, so tightly was it stretched over his bull-like neck and shoulders. Shouldering aside illclad, scrawny hipsters, the brute made his way to the front of the establishment and spoke. "Bring me a pizza adorned with every conceivable type of meat, as many breadsticks as you can fit into a garbage bag, and a half gallon of whiskey, or I swear by all of the gods that I shall reduce this building to rubble, lay waste to the surrounding areas, carry off your women, and drink all of your liquor. You have fifteen minutes to comply. "

Goddamned right.

It was, clearly, Rampage Day. Though you might be thinking that skipping your Rampage day might be a good way to accelerate fat loss, this is not so. In the initial phase of this diet, you might stretch your keto runs to acclimatize yourself to the diet and undo the massive damage you've wrecked upon your internal system. Additionally, youre primarily concerned with being less disgusting to look at and touch, which is understandable. As such, you might be inclined to continue to stretch the no-carb phase of this diet to ten to fourteen days, which can have some very positive metabolic effects. Once you've re-entered the realm of human physiques, however, you should rethink that policy, as this diet's not about not being fat- it's about being fucking awesome. If you're going to be awesome, you're going to need to lift continually heavier weights and get more muscular, and the Rampage is a critical component in that, especially given the fact that some studies have shown that long-term ketogenic diets inhibit muscle growth when the dieter is in a hypocaloric state, which you'll likely be in for at least part of the week if you're doing one or more days of Protein Sparing Modified Fasts.(McDaniel) If you're doing PSMFs and breaking your ass in the gym, it's highly likely that until you engage in a gastronomic catastrophe like the Rampage, you're going to be in a hypocaloric state over the balance of the week. That shit simply cannot be allowed to stand, as your workouts will suffer and you could lose some of the muscle you've broken your ass inside out to get.

Thus, you should regard a refeed day as sacrosanct. The Rampage Day is essential for getting insanely strong and lean, as a day in which you deliberately overeat carbohydrates is utterly necessary for muscular hypertrophy, strength gains, and overall recomposition. Essentially, the Rampage Day confers more benefits than a cattle prod at a school for the mentally retarded- it stimulates your metabolism,(Matsumoto) replenishes your glycogen stores for heavy training,(Bowden) increases your thyroid, adrenal, and sex hormones,(Poehlman) provides sundry mental health benefits through a forced break from clean eating,(Westrate) and helps normalize most, if not all, of the hormones [involved in] metabolic slowdown: leptin, ghrelin, insulin, etc.(McDonald RFD 46) You will, however, have to do the refeed correctly in order to reap its benefits like a Muslim collecting hymens in Jannah. Unless you're where you want to be in terms of bodyfat, ho wever, this isnt going to be a fucking free-for-all day, as youre hardly out of the water yet. Instead, the Rampage is a

combination of a structured refeed (like youd do for a glycogen supercompensation) and a cheat meal.

If youre still worried that youll grow your disgusting fatbody back in your first Rampage, fear not - there are at least two studies that suggest that the body continues to use bodyfat for fuel during the first 24 hours of carbohydrate loading, so provided you stick to the plan, you ll be well on your way to getting the striated buttocks of which youve always dreamed.(McDonald KD 135) At least one study has shown that short breaks from high fat diets will not have an adverse effect on lipolytic activity, and lipolytic activity in people who take high carb breaks from high fat diets are actually higher than those who are on a high carbohydrate diet, meaning you'll burn more fat if you cheat a bit once a week.(Saitoh) Additionally, fellow low-carbohydrate dieting advocate, Dave Palumbo, stated that if "you use a keto-diet, you'll need to have a cheat meal (to spike insulin) at least once per week to keep the thyroid functioning normally." For anyone who's ever met a grossly obese person, they invariably claim that their thyroid's at fault, rather than the fact that they gave up vertical locomotion for a scooter and some Ho-Ho's ten years ago, and haven't even bothered to mourn the fact that they've not seen their genetalia in in 15 years due to their obsession with television game shows and Cheetos. Best to keep your distance from those motherfuckers and keep that thyroid humming like a chick from the Berkeley School of music giving a blowjob.

Get Rampagin'!
On your Rampage Day, you're going to plan on consuming 3.5-4.5 grams per pound of gross bodyweight. Thus, a 154 lb. person should consume 600 grams of total carbohydrates on Rampage Day, whereas a 200 lb person would consume around 800. The timing of the carbohydrates is not as important as the amount, though I prefer to keep myself in a caloric deficit until the cheat window to milk every bit of stimulus I can out of the massive influx of food. Additionally, predators in the wild

invariably have a marked circadian rhythm and their hunting motivation is influenced by the a ctivity of endogenous clocks(McFarland 463) Though you might be skeptical of the application of this fact to you, humans are universally considered to be apex predators, so it is in our nature to eat in a particular rhythm. This might be why I find this diet so fucking easy to follow- it has a nice flow. Additionally, my body seems primed for the influx of calories in the evening, which leads me to believe that youll utilize the majority of the calories you ingest if your Rampage is synchronous with your largest meal during the week. Is there science to support that? Fuck no, but it makes sense, so Im sticking with it. You dont need to walk around with a notepad and calculator all fucking day long, either - the key to the refeed is how many carbs and which kinds, rather than the pace at which you eat them.. For the first couple of Rampages, you might want to plan them a bit so youre shooting for the right carbohydrate levels. This will give you a benchmark and allow you the opportunity to fine tune your intake as you go. Others of you might want to go my route and keep your carbs under 200 grams for the duration of the day, so that no matter how fucking nuts you go come cheat time you cannot overshoot your mark. I found this particularly helpful in the early stages, but as I got leaner it went from unnecessary to possibly counterproductive. Multiple sources Ive read virtually scream that you should avoid fructose during glycogen recomposition, as it simply replenishes liver stores and can actually be stored as bodyfat. Thought vegans will scream bloody murder this isn't true, science does not appear to have their back. Instead, science appears to have gained full mount and is currently beating vegans like they're talking shit on a California playground. "Fructose is more lipogenic than glucose or starches, and usually causes greater elevations in triglycerides and sometimes in cholesterol than other carbohydrates. Dietary fructose has resulted in increases in blood pressure, uric acid, and lactic acid." To add insult to injury, "added fructose seems to provide little advantage over other caloric sweetners and compares unfavorably to complex carbohydrates in susceptible segments of the population."(Hallfrisch) Thus, Id avoid fruit for the most part. Additionally, overdoing the sucrose can lead to some being stored as bodyfat. If youre eating either, try to restrict them to 50 grams and 100 grams, respectively, to avoid reducing the efficacy of the refeed.(McDonald RFL 46-7) Thats not to say that you should underdo it, however. The Minnesota Experiment showed that the utilization of the minimum necessary calories in a refeed will lead to decreased enthusiasm for the diet and training, no matter the macronutrient composition.(Russell 129) Thus, youll Rampage as intelligently and aggressively as you should do everything, like youre a modern day Neanderthal with an 8 inch boner facing down a wooly mammoth thats trying to rape your girlfriend.

Rapist.

The Rampage Itself

In the past, I covered cheat windows fairly in-depth and mentioned that there are a couple of ways to skin this proverbial cat. The Rampage will utilize none of those, and will instead rely on a single 3 hour cheat window on the heels of the aforementioned carbohydrate refeed. During the cheat window, I encourage you to eat like you're a midwestern housewife at an all-you-can-eat buffet and gorge yourself. I usually pick foods on which I can graze, as I've shrunken my stomach and haven't got any interest in putting myself in physical pain during my weekly three hour holiday. There's no metabolic reasoning for grazing, however- it's just what I like to do. For those of you who are about to throw Lyle McDonald in my face, relax, I've read the same shit. His contention is that during these structured refeeds, you should definitely not "use the concept as an excuse to eat yourself sick or eat three times what youd normally eat."(McDonald, 34) I'll tell you this from experience- the farther you get in a given diet, the less you can consume in three hours- it's a matter of pure biology. Thus, at the beginning of your diet, you'll be able to eat more during your cheats, which will likely slow your progress. Should you notice this, you can moderate future Rampages to forestall that slowdown, though as you get leaner, you'll notice you can get away with a lot more in the way of craziness and lapses. Additionally, once start seeing definition you'd never seen before, or veins you never thought you'd ever see, you're going to naturally restrict yourself on your cheats to prevent any backsliding, at least until you've stayed lean for a considerable period of time and find yourself nearly insane with hunger by Friday night.

The night is a very dark time for me.

Timing:
I usually choose to Rampage at night. From a insulin standpoint this is probably not ideal, but from a lifestyle standpoint, I don't care. There's not enough of a difference in hormone levels between

morning and night to justify worrying about my insulin levels, and I find that it's awesome to go to bed full to bursting and have the night to digest and bomb out my place in peace, rather than force myself to eat a meal when it's inconvenient. Some nutritionists believe that pre-workout is the best time for a scheduled cheat window. Anytime I've tried to schedule a cheat meal early in a day and train later, however, I find that my lift's a disaster, and I spend the majority of the time acting like I've got some horrible stomach flu. The kind of flu wherein you know you're going to paint the bathroom one color or another because everything wants out all at once. I chose wrong once, and my mom had to clean the bathroom after, as I passed out with my head hanging over the toilet, pants around my ankles, shit covering every square inch of the bathroom. This has made Mother's Day expensive since I was 6. I don't wish to repeat that event, so I don't cheat pre-workout.

There is no reason for this picture other than its existence, which is reason enough.

Two supplements that will increase the effectiveness of your cheat meal are: ECA stack- It increases your thermogenesis anyway, but "ephedrine alone can increase the thermic effect of a meal by 30%"(Berardi). As such, make sure you whack that back prior to the initiation of your feeding frenzy to ensure that you're getting the optimal metabolic response to your overfeeding. Digestive enzymes- Before, during, and after. Trust me, they'll help. If you've been eating clean, your body's going to have something to say about what you're eating, and it's going to let everyone in the room know what it thinks about it. This should prevent any non-alcohol-related pants-shitting, and keep you from smelling like you've shit them. Lastly, it'll increase the absorption of the nutrients you'd so rudely and crudely stuffed down your ravenous gullet, increasing the positive effects of that meal and hopefully negating any of the negative ones.

One last word on this, for you fatties- don't include these feeding frenzies if you're not already lean. If you're a fatass, you don't deserve them from a mental standpoint and cannot really utilize them from a metabolic one. As such, you'd be wise to steer clear until you can see some abs. For guys, this means under 15%, tops. For girls, that means... whatever the female equivalent of 15% is. We'll call it 25-27%. If you can see abs, have at it- otherwise, wait until you can. Additionally, if you find that cheat meals are either not helping, or they're actually hurting, monkey with the timing, duration, and what you're actually eating. Should you find yourself in the aforementioned fatass category, limit yourself a bit in your Rampage- you've been on a years-long Rampage and it's high time you exercised some self control. Make sure you get your carbs, but keep the fats below 25% of your total calories while doing so. Kill a couple of bags of Baked Lays and hit up Fuddruckers for a couple of Buffalo Burgers, maybe. Remember- eye on the fucking prize. The rest of you... get ready. Tomorrow we Rampage.

I think it's cool to drink DUTCH beer on St. Patty's provided it's served correctly.

Sources: Arnold, Patrick. A Steroid for Flu Prevention. Muscular Development, 2/10/10, p. 276. Berardi, John. "Q & A with John Berardi." Iron Magazine. http://www.ironmagazine.com/article466.html Bowden VL and McMurray RG. Effects of training status on the metabolic responses to high carbohydrate and high fat meals. Int J Sport Nutr Exerc Metab. 2000 Mar;10(1):16-27. Faigin, Rob. Natural Hormonal Enhancement. Cedar Mountain: Extique, 2000. Hallfrisch J. Metabolic effects of dietary fructose. FASEB. 1990; 4:2652-2660. Matsumoto T, et al. Comparison of thermogenic sympathetic response to food intake between obese and non-obese young women. Obes Res 2001 Feb;9(2):78-85 McDaniel SS, Rensing NR, et al. Epilepsis 2011;52:3(30), e7-11. McDonald, Lyle. A Guide to Flexible Dieting. Taylorsville: McDonald, 2005. McDonald, Lyle. Ketogenic Dieting. McDonald, Lyle. Rapid Fat Loss. Palumbo, David. "Q&A with Dave Palumbo." http://www.rxmuscle.com/articles/qadave/590-qaawith-dave-palumbo-august-6-2009.html Poehlman ET, et al. Genotype dependency of the thermic effect of a meal and associated hormonal changes following short-term overfeeding. Metabolism 1986 Jan;35(1):30-6.

Saitoh S, Matsuo T, Tagami K, Chang K, Tokuyama K, and Masashige Suzuki. Effects of shortterm dietary change from high fat to high carbohydrate diets on the storage and utilization of glycogen and triacylglycerol in untrained rats. EUR J APP PHYS OCC PHYS; 74 (1-2):13-22 Sarkola T, Ericksson TJP. Testosterone increases in men after a low dose of alcohol. AL Clin Exper Res; 27 (4): 682-5. Westrate JA, Hautvast JG. The effects of short-term carbohydrate overfeeding and prior exercise on resting metabolic rate and diet-induced thermogenesis. Metabolism. 1990. Dec;39(12):1232-9. Willey, Warren. Better Than Steroids. Trafford: Pocatello, 2007.

Apex Predator Diet If You're Lean As Shit

If you're following the Apex Predator Diet, it's highly likely that you didn't start out ridiculously lean. As such, it'll have take you some time to get to this point- this diet's not a quick-fix or crash diet, but rather a way to lean out while getting bigger and stronger all at the same time. By the time you hit 8% bodyfat, your metabolism should be wearing a pvc outfit and holding a cat o' nine tails tipped with metal rings, because it's dominant as hell and has made your bodyfat into its snivelling sissy bitch. You should now be at or under 8% bodyfat, so your abs are standing out in stark relief, your body looks like a Rand McNalley map due to your incredible vascularity, and you should be feeling like you can eat lightning and shit thunder at this point. You are, officially, awesome, provided you're not bereft of muscle mass.

I'm not satisfied until every vein is forced up against my skin. Look how vascular I am Brian. If there's one thing women love it's a vascular man. I've got veins, they carry blood all over my bahday. That's how John Mayer would say it. Bahday. Assuming you had to work to get here, you'll know exactly how your body responds to both diet and exercise, which affords you a tremendous amount of leeway with your diet. Before you head for the all-you-can-eat pizza buffet, however, bear this in mind- you'll never be so awesome that you can outtrain a shitty diet. As such, sticking to the Apex Predator Diet is a good idea, though you can have the occasional dalliance. As always, I encourage you to explore your inner Nikola Tesla and get as mad scientist as you can with both diet and training, but just remember that until you stay lean for a

considerable period of time, your body is going to attempt to return to whatever your previous fat setpoint is. Thus, if you spent the last 10 years eating butter sandwiches and appeared to be one box of Milk Duds away from purchasing a rascal to get you hither and thither, take the following with a grain of salt. Additionally, if you like Milk Duds, you have no working taste buds, so dieting shouldn't be all that difficult for you anyway.

Got the coke and the smile covered. Candied gastronomic atrocities aside, the Apex Predator Diet will become for most of you a delicate balancing act, wherein you're going to try to maximize your caloric intake while remaining super lean. Though it's not as simple as most would like, nothing fucking is, so have a coke and smile and shut the fuck up about it. You'll find that you'll naturally cycle your calories, as your ghrelin and leptin production will be optimized at this point, and your body is going to loudly let you know what it needs when it needs it. Your stomach will growl its fucking ass off all day if you try a PSMF, and you will be miserable in the gym, so you'll likely drop those days. They'll be replaced by the regular Apex Predator days from earlier phases of the diet, wherein you drink shakes until your final evening meal. When

your metabolism resembles nothing more than Slayer's War Zone in speed, ferocity and overall sentment, it's tough to live on protein shakes and nothing more. As such, your weekly diet will start to look much more like this: Monday - Thursday, Saturday and Sunday 5-6 protein shakes evenly spaced throughout the day consisting of 40-60 grams of protein and less than 10 grams of carbs. 1 medium sized meal midday (I shoot for 600-800 calories in the form of wings, generally, although I'll substitute other meats as well. 1 large evening meal of 2000-4000 calories in the form of (preferably bone-in) meat. Let your hunger levels dictate the size.

Friday Rampage Day- Go here for details. Alternate Saturday At times, you're going to find both your enthusiasm and your energy waning for continued ketogenesis. On those weeks, push hard to make it to Fridaywith the knowledge taht you're going to carry your carbup over onto Saturday. As to when you'll want to do this, it's entirely up to you- I would use a combination of the mirror and your general level of enthusiasm for the gym as a guage. If you find yourself incredibly burned out, a second carbup might be the boost you need. Make Saturday more of a medium carb, low to moderate fat, high protein day than a Rampage. It's important to remember that these carbohydrate refeeds are not supercompensations. Supercompensations should only be used sparingly, as frequent use reduces their efficacy.(Zatsiorsky 13) Additionally, I would not make a habit of utilizing the moderate carb Saturdays on a frequent basis, as there's only a small amount of glycogen resynthesis that occurs in the second 24 hours of carb loading, and there's the potential to regain some of the fat you lost during the week. As such, you should keep carbohydrate levels at or below 2 grams per pound of bodyweight on Saturdays.(McDonald 132-3)

It's Time To Take A Vacation

Another massive and awesome benefit of breaking your ass to get this lean is the fact that short dietary vacations don't do much harm, and in some cases will break you out of a plateau. According to Torbjorn Akerfeldt, our "genes have not evolved much during the last 100,000 years; thus, they are still developed for our hunter/gatherer and, more recently, pastoral ancestors, who, whenever they succeeded in killing an animal, lived on meat for a week or two. At other times, when they had bad luck hunting and a crop failed, they lived on a low-calorie diet. This selective pressure gave man adipose tissue with almost unlimited storage capacity and a very adaptive metabolism to cope with periods of different diets."(Phillips) Basically, once you'e lean, if you diet hard and undereat a bit, you'll get a consistent carryover of the rebound you get from your Rampage Day into multiple days. I will generally not take this past 5 days or so, but one study showed that a three week period of overeating resulted in mass gain that was nearly evenly split between fat and muscle, and an increase in nitrogen retention that persisted even after the diet returned to normal.(Forbes, Oddoye) Thus, protein retention after the overfeeding was increased, and the body was more anabolic.

Eat up, motherfucker. Personally, I don't plan these. They just sort of happen, and are generally the result of a longweekend vacation or something similar. You could try planning them if you wanted, and if you chose to do so, I would suggest they be limited to 4 or 5 days and occur on non-consecutive months. Additionally, I'd suggest you undereat a bit in the week prior to the overfeed to accelerate fatloss. Provided you jump right back into the Apex Predator diet, keep your training up, don't abuse the vacation and aren't completely ridiculous about it, you can get away with quite a few dietary shenanigans. Up next, the Apex Predator Diet for Whiny Bitches and the innumerable rugby players who email me about this diet. Sources: Forbes GB, Brown MR, Welle SL, and Underwood LE. Hormonal response to overfeeding. Am J Clin Nutr 1989 49: 4 608-611. McDonald, Lyle. Ketogenic Diet. Oddoye EA, Margen S. Nitrogen Balance Studies in Humans: Long-Term Effect of High Nitrogen Intake on Nitrogen Accretion. J. Nutr. 1979 109: 3 363-377. Phillips, Bill. Torbjorn Akerfeldt interviewed by Bill Phillips Part I" http://myoblast.wordpress.com/2010/02/02/abcde-anabolic-burst-cycling-of-diet-and-exercisetorbjorn-akerfeldt/ Zatsiorsky, Vladimir. Science and Practice of Strength Training.

Apex Predator Diet For Athletes and Italians (APD + Carbs)

When I first posted about my concept for the Apex Predator Diet, I received a spate of emails asking me about pre-, peri-, and post-workout carbohydrates. As I've stated more than once before, I think that the current infatuation with those three facets of one's nutrition are perhaps the most absurdly overblown distraction from critical points of training and nutrition one could have. It's like a leper colony appealing to the UN for condoms and zit cream. People obsessed with peri-workout nutrition come in exactly one form- people who have no fucking clue what a real workout is, clad in whatever the trendy workout gear of the moment is, making a fucking production of making a shake midworkout and getting in my fucking way when I'm trying to get water in between sets. That's right- if you're focused with laser-like intensity on your mid-workout nutrition, you're a fucking bitch. When you're lifting, you should be concerned with weights, not Biotest supplements and waxy maize.

Jon Cole, beast of all beasts. First man to squat 900, and an unreal 1200 total (430 press, 340 snatch, and a 430 push jerk) at the same weight in weightlifting, a sport for which he really didn't train and rarely competed. This man was wildly unconcerned with his peri-workout nutrition.

As for the pre- and post-workout nutrition guys, they're certainly a lesser form of evil, probably duped into thinking that shit is of critical importance through the constant barrage of marketing that pervades every corner of life. For every person who states that pre- and post-workout nutrition is of critical importance if you want to gain mass and strength, I've got 100 people to name who did it without either, and a cock to slap across your lips. That's not to say, however, that there's no benefit to be gained from either, but rather that their combined importance is still far less than that of the workout itself. Given the fact that you're reading this, it's highly likely that you know this, so I'll be happy to impart a bit of knowledge on the subject of pre- and post- workout carbohydrate meals and their utility in the Apex Predator Diet.

That stated, I'll address the athletes who've expressed their concerns about consuming a ketogenic diet while participating in a sport that involved more than simply grunting and picking up heavy shit. I personally have followed a ketogenic diet while wrestling and found I had no problem with energy provided that I kept my calories relatively high. At that time, I was wrestling at 134 pounds and my diet consisted, as I recall, of pork sausage patties for breakfast and about a dozen hamburger patties throughout the rest of the day, in addition to the very occasional protein shake. At the time, I hadn't really jumped onto the supplementation bandwagon, so I really didn't consume much in the way of supplements outside of my favorite ephedrine-filled supplements ever- Metaform Heat and Ultimate Orange. For those of you too young to know about either of these supplements, they had so much caffeine and ephedrine in them that meth addicts were scared to take them. Both of them tasted like fruit flavored cat shit, but they got you fucking going. As such, I'll reassert my support for the consumption of stimulants, especially for those of you who need extra energy for running around and the like. Once more, they're not necessary, but they're helpful, just as the inclusion of carbohydrates might be if you're not as genetically well-suited to ketogenic dieting as I am.

Oh, how I long for thee, Metaform Heat.

Tinkering with the Apex Predator Diet

I've stated time and time again that it's imperative that you experiment with anything and everything you try in order to maximize your personal benefit. Doing so would generally necessitate a fair amount of research, but give my penchant for research, I've tried to do a fair amount of the legwork for you. One concern some people have had with the Apex Predator Diet is that they experience a tremendous amount of lethargy a couple of days into the low carbohydrate phase of the APD. Given the amazing array of biochemical makeups one could have, this should come as no surprise- I've never suggested that anything I do is "one size fits all." In my still unfinished Metabolic Typing series, I outlined various metabolic typing methodologies, but the current trend is to divide people into Protein, Carb, or Mixed types. It's possible to transition from one to the other, according to some authors, so making that attempt might be worthwhile.

As I mentioned in the ATA about the diet, Lyle McDonald and Dan Duchaine both suggested the use of an Isocaloric diet if one is shifting from a traditional high carb, low fat diet into a ketogenic diet. An interesting study by Stephen Phinney examined the initial investigations into ketogenic diets for endurance energy, and his study uncovered exactly what Duchaine and McDonald alluded to- the body often requires at least a two week acclimation period to wean athletes off their carbohydrate diet.(Phinney) Thus, your "carb crash" might be mitigated by the gradual transition. Something like

the Zone Diet might help people who would be considered Carb-Types according to a Metabolic Typing test transition to a Protein Type. A month of Zone Dieting, however, might not be enough to complete the transition, and you might experience the crash Phinney noted. The Inuit, according to Phinney, dealt with energy lags by greatly increasing their consumption of fat and decreasing their protein intake accordingly, while other authors have suggested taht fat could be decreased and carbs could be increased accordingly. The key, then, is to determine what works best for you. That is, of course, the entire purpose of the Apex Predator Diet- to allow one to shed fat while gaining muscle and strength. Luckily for me, I'm well-suited to ketogenic dieting. For those of you who aren't, or feel as though you need more quick energy to facilitate sporting competition or just to fuel your workouts, there is hope for you yet.

Efferding rocks a fairly unique diet of 50% fat, 23% carbs, and 27% protein, for instance. It's all about finding your person sweet spot, which he's clearly done.

A Historical Aside
Before you delve into the following bits about the utilization of carbohydrates to spur greater athletic performance, I'll go ahead and make a quick aside- a quick study of the entirety of human history will lead to one inevitable conclusion. Humans do not require carbohydrates to perform at a high level. The history of agriculture is essentially the history of human collectives in areas of high population densities- carbohydrates provide a cheap, easy way to feed a large population in a small area. Put another way, carbohydrates are the fare of plebians and slaves, as crops were grown to feed the menial workers cheaply and to keep them alive while they built absurd buildings like ziggurats and pyramids. As I've shown before, humans were larger and more muscular in the paleolithic era than the neolithic, and those peoples credited with being the strongest and most muscular in recorded history were all nearly entirely carnivorous. The peoples considered to be the scourges of Europe were always nomads, championing animal husbandry and looking down upon agrarian societies as prey- the Huns, Goths, Mongols, Scythians and Sarmatians all ate similar diets that consisted of little more than meat and milk. Of the Goths, Tacitus noted that "Feasts and entertainments, which, though

inelegant, are plentifully furnished, are their only pay. The means of this bounty come from war and rapine. Nor are they as easily persuaded to plough the earth and to wait for the year's produce as to challenge an enemy and earn the honour of wounds. Nay, they actually think it tame and stupid to acquire by the sweat of toil what they might win by their blood."(Tacitus) Though the latter two tribes eventually adopted agriculture, their agricultural products were the fare of those who remained behind with the villages, rather than those who rode into battle. The Huns and the Mongols took this even further, eating little more than horse and game meat, and drank mare's milk and horse blood to supplement their nutrition. This diet hardly hamstrung them- it enabled them to conquer vast territories while constantly outnumbered, and fueled legends of their incredible ferocity.(Turnbull 30)

looming on horseback 8 ft above the ground, screaming maniacally, capable of unleashing repetitive and deadly fights of triple-edged arrows, they must have seemed the very embodiment of horror to those who had to stand and fight them. Nor were such fears unwarranted, for Scythian warriors regularly beheaded their enemies and sometimes even skinned them whole. If an enemy were known personally, his skull might receive a special treatment: sawn through below the eyes, it would be cleaned and painstakingly fashioned into richly appointed drinking vessel. Not surprisingly, Scythian ceremonies especially royal funerals, were drenched in blood: sometimes these drinking vessels were filled with enemy blood, mixed wine and after arrowheads were dipped into it, the concoction was imbibed by the Scythian chieftain."(Mann 4) Contrast these diets of these lean, mean killing machines with that of the gladiators. Gladiators in the Roman era were generally captives obtained from battles with neighboring tribes, all of whom generally subsisted on meat. As such, they were generally described in accounts by ancient authors as huge framed, broad shouldered, muscular, and wild eyed,(Tacitus, Jordanes, Turnbull) and were

chosen to be warriors for their stature and ferocity. Once placed into the arena, however, their diet was changed to a nearly vegetarian diet, and not because the gladiators needed the extra energy. "The vegetarian diet had nothing to do with poverty or animal rights. Gladiators, it seems, were fat. Consuming a lot of simple carbohydrates, such as barley, and legumes, like beans, was designed for survival in the arena. Packing in the carbs also packed on the pounds. 'Gladiators needed subcutaneous fat," Grossschmidt explains. "A fat cushion protects you from cut wounds and shields nerves and blood vessels in a fight.' Not only would a lean gladiator have been dead meat, he would have made for a bad show. Surface wounds "look more spectacular," says Grossschmidt. 'If I get wounded but just in the fatty layer, I can fight on," he adds. "It doesn't hurt much, and it looks great for the spectators.'"(Curry)

So, high carbohydrate diets are awesome for getting fat, and but are they necessary for maintaining cardiovascular endurance? Fucking nope. The aforementioned study by Phinney cited two still-unrefuted studies in which endurance athletes were switched to a ketogenic diet. In both studies, their performance improved considerably after their acclimatization period. Neither group consumed supplementary calories, but rather increased their fat intake to accommodate their increased energy needs. Thus, you might consider altering your macronutrient profile simply by adjusting your fat intake prior to attempting the inclusion of carbs. Were I to do so, I'd consider adding heavy cream to my protein shakes and possibly rubbing my ribs with olive oil.

Oil makes delicious things deliciouser.

Upping Your Carbs Pre- and Post Workout

If you're not interested n increasing your fat intake or have already tried it and found it didn't do what you'd wanted, there's always upping your carbs. In the Anabolic Diet, Mauro Di Pasquale mentions that certain people will have a tremendous amount of difficulty maintaining progress on a ketogenic diet consisting of 30 grams of carbohydrate a day. As such, he recommends that one complete at least the initial 10-14 day keto run and then begin experimenting with increases in their carbohydrate levels until an optimal balance between performance and body recomposition is struck. Following this line of thought, he tailored a diet for Gozilla's second cousin on the black side of the family, Bob Sapp, so that it lowered the fats somewhat and increased the carbohydrates.(Di Pasquale, Bob Sapp 11) He did mention, however, in the Anabolic Solution for Powerlifters, that people who are excellent fat oxidizers (like myself) can easily train on 20 grams of carbohydrates a day, so experimentation is absolutely critical- don't just decide what you need at the outset.(ADFP 21) Ol' Mauro claims that the timing of one's carbohydrates is fairly insignificant, but does note that eating pre-workout carbohydrates will decrease IGF-1 and GH.(ASBB 70) Thus, he recommends eating 50-100 grams of carbohydrates postworkout, for a total carbohydrate intake of .5-1gram of carbohydrates per pound of bodyweight a day. This, of course, would necessitate a concordant drop in fat intake.

On the flip side of the coin, Lyle McDonald's Targeted Ketogenic Diet is actually based on the utilization of mostly pre-workout carbohydrates, which he feels are necessary to fuel high intensity exercise. He recommends 25-50 grams of carbohydrate pre-workout, and claims that the type of carbohydrate and the glycemic index thereof is insignificant. This would, of course, still preclude the use of fructose, as the goal is to replenish muscular glycogen stores rather than the glycogen stores of the liver. According o McDonald, pre-workout carbohydrates will likely not affect either your insulin

levels nor your ketosis (though they might throw you out of ketosis for the duration of your workout), and are thus fair game for just about everyone. Conversely, post workout carbohydrates may negatively affect ketosis, so he encourages experimentation with those.(Ketogenic Diet 125)

As for the type of carbohydrates, I have a suggestion from novelist and paleo internet guru J. Stanton, who told me that he's been using a modified version of the APD for a while with great success. If you're unfamiliar with his stuff, Stanton does a bunch of wacky shit outdoors that I'm inclined to call cardio, but he insists it's just "doing epic shit outdoors", like climbing mountains while fasted and all sorts of other shit that doesn't involve picking things up and putting them down. He did, however, recently start lifting and noted the APD is the shit, with a couple of his own variations: "Here's an advanced-level Predator Diet variant: you may get more mileage out of your protein shake if you eat several grams of dextrose with it. Reasoning: the protein causes some insulin release, which (if the protein is eaten solo) requires some glucose to be released from the liver in order to maintain blood sugar levels. Then your liver will signal "NEED MORE GLUCOSE" and there will be a cortisol spike, whereupon your liver will suck up some of the protein and convert it via gluconeogenesis. Also cortisol is catabolic. So the additional dextrose basically gives the inevitable insulin something to chew on, and as a bonus, causes a bit of extra insulin release which will help drive protein into muscles. (Note that "weight gainer" shakes have an assload of sugar because it's cheaper than protein. Too much, no good. I'm working on about a 4:1 protein/glucose ratio, but that's a guess and open to refinement. And it includes whatever sugar's already in your protein powder.) You can buy a big bag of dextrose at the brewery supply store...but the easier way is to just eat a few Bottle Caps or Sweet Tarts candies. Believe it or not, they're basically 100% dextrose: no sucrose or HFCS. So my routine during protein loading days is: glass of unflavored whey isolate + 4-5 Bottle Caps, every few hours. Note: add Runts and Spree to the list of "glucose with impurities": like Bottle Caps and Sweet Tarts, they're just dextrose, maltodextrin, and flavoring."(Stanton)

The Gist
As you can see, there's a bit of debate on the optimal timing of one's carbs if you're adding them to the Apex Predator Diet, but if you feel you need them, there are methods to try. Experimentation is the name of the game, so get out your chemistry set and make something fucking awesome happen. Just remember, however- the baddest motheruckers ever to walk the Earth didn't need bread to help them stomp the piss out of a bunch of bagel-chomping motherfuckers, and it's likely you don't either. Sources: Bodybuilding.com. Stan Efferding 6500 calories diet. http://forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?t=138848513&page=1 Curry, Andrew. The gladiator diet. Archaeology. http://www.archaeology.org/0811/abstracts/gladiator.html Di Pasquale, Mauro. Anabolic Diet. Di Pasquale, Mauro. Anabolic Solution for Bodybuilders. Mauro Di Pasquale: 2002. Di Pasquale, Mauro. Anabolic Solution for Powerlifters. Mauro Di Pasquale: 2002. Di Pasquale, Mauro. Bob Sapp (The Beast) Training and Nutrition Secrets. Published as pdf. Jordanes. An account of the person of Attila. Mann, Nirmil. The Life and Times of Pakher Singh Gill. Pittsburgh: Dorrance Publishing, 2005. McDonald, Lyle. Ketogenic Diet. 1998 Phinney, Stephen D. Ketogenic diets and physical performance. Nut Metab 2004, 1:2. http://www.nutritionandmetabolism.com/content/1/1/2 Tacitus. Germania. Turnbull, Stephen and Wayne Reynolds. Mongol Warrior 1200-1350. Oxford: Osprey Publishing, 2003

Stew-Roids Like A Muthafucka

It's rare that I have an issue titling a post, as the title usually pops out of my fingers simultaneously with the idea for the article. The title for this post eluded me, however, as if I were an obese, mustachoied, unwashed child molester, rocking a turgid 4" hard on, chasing the last remaining child through a McDonald's Playland with a leaky bag of opiate laced candy with ten minutes left before the end of the world. This is odd, because hilarity usually comes fairly easy to me, and I know exactly what it is this article is to be, and yet the best I can come up with is "Holy Shit, Westerners Are All Retarded", because holy shit, Western lifters are fucking retarded. Blinded by an endless spate of fad diets, immersed in endless debates about nutrition and buried in mounds of research conducted by people who have no understanding of weightlifting outside of theory, and in the US in particular without a traditional ethnic diet, we're left standing on a desert island with a vile protein shake in hand, staring wistfully across a small strait filled with piranhas and sharks at a party island replete with lifters pushing weights of which we can only dream, drunk out of their skulls, and eating delicious foods. For the kids on message boards with sub 315 squats, the only answer is "DRUGS, LOTS OF DRUGS", because they're giant retarded vaginas with less understanding of what it takes to get strong than my 75 year old ice cream-obsessed, white collar father, who could easily outlift 85% of message board posters simply because he's a fucking man with full grown testicles and a modicum of personal pride.

The missing element in English speaking countries isn't drugs, and though it's partially related to work ethic, that's not it either. Instead, the missing element is the paucity of giant iron kettles constantly filled with stews that are consumed in massive quantities by men who could not fit into their girlfriends' jeans.

That's right- we are not eating enough stew. That is the problem, and this is not a joke.

David Rigert- powered by a hatred of capitalism and copious amounts of borscht.

For those of you with short attention spans, let's run down a quick list of people who traditionally eat stew and their concomitant skill at strength sports: Russians and Ukranians. They eat stew by the bucketful, and they probably just recycle their trophies and medals in weightlifting at this point because they've got nowhere to store the fucking things. Bulgarians. Bulgarians have, per capita, more trophies in Olympic weightlifting than any other country in history, in spite of the fact that they live in a tiny, landlocked, dour, cold, poor country whose only traditional export is humongous mustaches. Like their former Eastern bloc comrades, they're slurping down wheelbarrows full of stews called moussaka and kavarma 24/7/365. Iranians. Persian traditional cuisine is pretty much just kebebs and stew (khoresht) with a variety of breads and rice. For a small country, they have a disproportionately massive number of Olympic medals in weightlifting and wrestling, and have an incredibly long and rich history of strongman and wrestling training called varzesh e bastani that literally could not have existed in a place wherein the diet wasn't centered around their traditional fare. Unlike the Indians, they never gave up on a meat-heavy diet, so they've been able to keep dominating strength sports while the Indians have languished in estrogen-fueled vegetarian weakness. Turks. Most of the meals cooked in the home start with meat-rich soup followed by thick stews made with beans and minced meat. If you're unaware, the Turks always do well in Olympic weightlifting, and have wiped the mats with foreign wrestlers since the dawn of man. Hungarians. Though you don't think of Hungary when you think of strength sports, Hungary has 20 medals in weightlifting and a shitload in wrestling, in spite of the fact that they have fewer people in their country than live in Paris. Their secret? Goulash by the bucket. Sumo Wrestlers. All those motherfuckers do is eat stew and drink beer when they're not training, and they average 412 lbs at 6'2". Yes, they're fat, but science says "so what?", because sumo wrestlers carry more lean body mass than bodybuilders (Kondo). The average sumo carries only 26% bodyfat, which means that that in contest shape they'd be stepping onto the bodybuilding stage at 307.8 lbs. Icelanders. Iceland has long been renown for its strongmen, all of whom credit their disgusting fish stew as being the secret of their success. Chinese. Though neither soup nor stew is a mainstay of the traditional Chinese diet, Chinese weightlifters eat loads a heavy soup made of chicken and pork ribs, and they're working over the lighter weight classes in Oly lifting like they're mini Mike Tysons hanging beatings on Robin Givens lookalikes.

I realize that due to the fact that no renown author has written at length about the utility of stew, my contention here is likely being viewed with no small amount of skepticism. No bodybuilder has ever touted the benefits of stew, and it's never been said that any phenomenal American athlete credited stew with their success. As such, stew could not possible be in vogue, because nowhere are people more lemming-like than in Western strength sports. As such, my theory begs more investigation. Prepare yourselves for a fact dump that makes your typical deuce dropping in German scat porn seem positively reserved by comparison.

Stewed foods are probably as old as pottery, likely due to the fact that stewing is a very simple way to cook a wide variety of foods, and is perhaps the best method of retaining as much nutrition in the cooked foods as possible. The Scythians, a tribe of man-eating, death dealing superhumans who dominated the Russian steppes for centuries were huge fans of stewing, and would stew their food whenever they weren't sewing their enemies' scalps into horse blankets and capes. As ingenious as they were pants-shittingly brutal, the Scythians were known to cook their food by "put[ting] the flesh into an animal's paunch, mix[ing] water with it, and boil[ it like that over the bone fire. The bones burn very well, and the paunch easily contains all the meat once it has been stripped off. In this way an ox, or any other sacrificial beast, is ingeniously made to boil itself." (Wiki) Ever fans of stewing, one neighboring tribe to the Scythians known as the Issedones would walk their elderly men right into a crock pot and cook them up, then gild their skullcaps and use them as drinking vessels. Motherfuckers back in the day knew how to throw a fucking party. The reasons behind stewing are simple: none of the nutrients generally lost in drippings from roasting or in the water from boiling are discarded- instead, they're either cooked right back into the meat or remain intact in the broth. meat loses less weight by being stewed than if cooked by any other method. stewing denatures protein, making it far more digestible (hydrolyzed whey is denatured, for instance) for those of us who view vegetables as a necessary but horrible evil, you end up eating far more of them in stews than you would otherwise. stews can be easily kept hot and reheated. acrylamides (cancer-causing agents in starchy foods) are not formed in stewing.

As Ori Hofmekler states, stew is the balls. "History has taught us how to best prepare beef, fish, and fowl. Ancient Romans cooked protein foods in broth. They often mixed fish or meat with veggies, grans and beans all together in one pot.

The popular practice today of barbecuing or grilling meat, which caramelizes or burns its surface, denatures the protein and creates toxins that are widely believed to be carcinogenic"(Hofmekler 73). While Ori might not understand that denaturing protein is often actually a good thing, he has a point- there is a reason the greatest military of the ancient world cooked the way they did- it worked, and it provided the army with the best nutrition possible to ensure victory on the battlefield.

Beyond the above list, there is one other reason that you should be eating a wheelbarrow full of stew daily- history has shown that the biggest and strongest people on Earth eat stew with more alacrity than a dog shows when drinking from the toilet. Stew isn't just food- it's stew-roids. Take, for instance, the example of Icelandic strongmen. These gigantic motherfuckers buck the trend of small bodies leading to long life, as the Icelanders are second only to the Japanese in terms of longevity, and are second in the world for males under the age of twenty. Their secret? A stew called kjotsupafor- a traditional lamb soup made of fatty lamb, rutabaga, onion, carrot, celery, cabbage, leeks, and a fistful of rice. Icelandic strongmen credit this stew single-handedly with their size and strength, and claim that this was the stew that made their Viking ancestors the skull-smashing, cervixdisplacing, monastery-burning behemoths they were. Currently, Icelandic strongmen eat kjotsupafor before, during, and after training, and up to six times per day to fuel their training (Bourdain). If you're curious how it's made, here's a recipe:

2 Tbsp. olive oil 1 tsp. finely chopped garlic 3 pounds lamb, on the bone (thick chops or shoulder whatever is cheapest!) 1 medium onion, sliced 1/3 cup brown rice (traditionalists use rolled oats as an alternative) 6 cups water 1/2 tsp. dried thyme 1/2 tsp. dried oregano 1/2 cabbage, roughly chopped 3 carrots, diced into 1/2" pieces 1/2 rutabaga, uniformly diced 1 cup cauliflower florets (optional) 4 potatoes, scrubbed well and diced into uniform 1/2" pieces (see alternative note below) In a large pot or dutch oven, briefly saut the garlic in the olive oil for 1-2 minutes over medium heat (do not brown). Add the lamb pieces and brown on all sides. Add the sliced onion to the pot and saut very lightly (about 1 minute), then pour in the brown rice and water. Raise heat to high, bringing the soup to a low boil; allow to boil for 5 minutes, skimming away the froth as it rises. Reduce heat to medium, stir in dried thyme and oregano, cover pot, and cook for 40 minutes. Add cabbage, carrots, rutabaga, cauliflower (if using), and diced potatoes. Cook, covered, for an additional 20 minutes, or until vegetables are fork-tender. Remove meat and bones from pot, chop meat coarsely, then return. Warm for an additional 5 minutes. (Alternatively, some Icelanders will remove the lamb and potatoes from the pot and

serve these on a plate, separately from the soup. If presenting the meal this way, chop the potatoes into larger, 1" chunks). Yield: 6-8 servings of kjtspa. One bowl of kjtspa yields the following nutrition:

Perhaps Iceland isn't your thing- you hate vikings, prefer samurai, and are the one fucking asshole on Earth who thinks Deadliest Warrior got it right when they stated a viking would lose 522 out of 1000 fights to a samurai. Let's look past the fact that your parents hate you and want you out of their basement, you were the smelly, paste-eating kid in school, and you likely have never been in a fistfight, yet have a black belt in some kind of useless karate. We can get past that. Really. Actually, we can't, and I hope someone sets you on fire. Despite that fact, you should still be eating stew more often than a 1920's cartoon hobo, because that's just about all sumo wrestlers ever eat, and if you've already forgotten, scientists have declared that sumo wrestlers carry the most lean body mass of any humans on Earth, so it's not as though they're simply giant babies tottering around in diapers.

The stew, of which sumo wrestlers eat prodigious amounts, is called chankonabe, and is comprised of tossed sliced tofu, carrots, cabbages, leeks, potatoes, lotus roots, daikon radishes, shiitake mushrooms, and giant burdock in chicken broth. they wash all that down with massive amounts of beer and saki, then take a nap to allow the massive meal to digest. Chanko is considered a "sort of legal steroid" in Japan- "Of all the performance enhancers used in sports, it's perhaps the oldest and most venerated. Chanko dates to at least the late 19th century, when short-order cooks from Niigata prefecture fixed meals for wrestlers. The word 'chan' (regional dialect for "father") was conflated with 'nabe,' the name for one-pot meals often served at the table. 'It's the main course of a sumo meal,' says Konishiki. 'All the sumo wrestlers have to eat it, whether they like it or not'" (Lidz). Here's how chankonabe is made in Tokyo's Tomoegata:

Tachiyama Chanko-Nabe (Tachiyama's Beef and Chicken Hot Pot) Serves 4 3 lbs. chicken bones 1 2.8-oz. package abura-age (deep-fried tofu), cut into large pieces 1 clove garlic, peeled 1/4 cup soy sauce 2 tbsp. mirin (sweet rice wine) Salt 1 medium waxy potato, peeled, quartered lengthwise, sliced crosswise, and blanched 2" piece daikon, peeled, quartered lengthwise, sliced crosswise, and blanched 1 small carrot, trimmed, peeled, sliced on the bias, and blanched 1 leek, white part only, trimmed, washed, and sliced on the bias 1/4 head napa cabbage, cored and cut into large pieces 4 shiitake mushrooms, stemmed 4 oz. shimeji mushrooms. trimmed and separated 4 oz. fresh burdock root, trimmed, peeled, and shaved into long thin strips 10 oz. yaki-dofu (grilled tofu), halved lengthwise and cut into 1/2"-thick pieces 1/2lb. boneless chicken thighs. cut into thin strips 1/2 bunch chrysanthemum greens, trimmed 1/2 lb. very thinly sliced prime rib eye of beef 1 lb. udon noodles Bring a medium pot of water to a boil over high heat. Put chicken bones and fried tofu into 2 separate colanders set in sink and pour two-thirds of the boiling water over the bones to rinse off any impurities and the remaining boiling water over the tofu to rinse off excess oil. Transfer bones to the medium pot and set tofu aside to drain.

Add garlic and 14 cups cold water to pot with bones and bring to a boil over high heat, skimming any foam that rises to the surface. Reduce heat to medium-low and simmer until broth has reduced by one-third, about 21/2 hours. Strain broth into a clean, wide medium pot, discarding solids, and skim off fat. At the table, set pot on a portable stove in center of table, add soy sauce and mirin, season to taste with salt, and bring to a simmer over medium heat. Add about one-third of the potatoes, daikon, carrots, leeks, cabbage, mushrooms, burdock, grilled tofu. chicken, fried tofu, and chrysanthemum greens to simmering broth. Cook until vegetables begin to soften and chicken is just cooked through, about 5 minutes. Add about one-third of the beef. Simmer until just cooked through, about 1 minute.

Once all the vegetables, tofu, chicken, greens, and beef have been eaten, use a small sieve to pick out scraps. Bring remaining broth in pot back to a simmer, add noodles, and simmer until cooked through, 6-8 minutes. Serve in individual bowls. One serving of Chankonabe yields the following nutritional awesome:

As though the above information weren't compelling enough, lifters at David Rigert's training camp eat copious amounts of veal broth filled with boiled meat and potatoes, Glenn Pendlay strongly recommends that lifters eat stew as a regular part of their diet, and the Chinese Olympic weightlifting team eats chicken and pork rib soup as a staple of their diets. Essentially, everyone BUT powerlifters in the Western world are eating stew all the live long day, to their great benefit. This is a tragedy for us Westerners, but this tragedy can be averted... with the liberal use of a crock pot and a willingness to depart from the norm. To give you an idea of what it is you're missing out on, here is a bit of the nutritional information for some of the best choices for stew: Beef Goulash nutrition:

Borscht nutrition:

Khoresht nutrition:

Beef Chili nutrition:

As you can see, stew is pretty much the balls if you're looking for a shitload of calories and a shitload of protein. Properly done, stew can obviate the need for a multivitamin, keep you full, and fill you with the power of all of your viking ancestors currently drinking in Valhalla and awaiting your arrival. For those of you who are still in the "get ripped" phase and not in the "get huge motherfucker" phase of life, stew might not be the best choice. For anyone who's looking to the coming winter months with a twinkle in their eye and an idea about packing on some serious mass and throwing around weights that would seem positively fantastical to the 150 lb. nutritional gurus on the internet- time to start jacking some stew-roids so you can leave the world of bitch mode behind.

Viking up, motherfuckers.

Sources: Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations - Iceland (Hello Darkness, My Old Friend). Arc Tv. 30 Nov 2009. Web. 6 Aug 2013. http://livedash.ark.com/transcript/anthony_bourdain__no_reservations(iceland_(hello_darkness,_my_old_friend))/6630/TRAVP/Monday_November_30_2009/131494/ AP. Japan Sumo Association to crack down on obesity. Dimensions Online. Web. 5 Aug 2013. http://www.dimensionsmagazine.com/news/083958.htm Chinese Weightlifters Eating in Korea. Youtube. 25 Nov 2009. Web. 6 Aug 2013. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4uYmxb-A4Ag Diehl, Kari. Kjtspa, Icelandic Lamb Soup. Web. 6 Aug 2013. http://scandinavianfood.about.com/od/souprecipes/r/kjotsupa.htm Hofmekler, Ori. Warrior Diet. St. Paul: Dragon Door, 2003. Kadokura, Tania. Sumo Stew. Saveur Magazine. Nov 2002. Web. 7 Aug

2013. http://www.banzuke.com/chanko-nabe/ Klokov Discusses Diet. Forum Post. 12 Aug 2011. Web. 6 Aug 2013. http://pendlayforum.com/showthread.php?t=3610 Kondo M, Abe T, Ikegawa S, Kawakami Y, Fukunaga T. Upper limit of fat-free mass in humans: A study on Japanese Sumo wrestlers. Am J Hum Bio. 1994. 5(6) 613618. Lidz, Franz. From Soup to Guts. Slate. 30 Nov 2004. Web. 4 Aug 2013. http://www.slate.com/articles/sports/left_field/2004/11/from_soup_to_guts.html Pendlay, Glenn. Weightlifter's Kitchen w/ Glenn Pendlay - Crock Pot Stew. Youtube. 24 Feb 2013. Web. 6 Aug 2013. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QD_V3urp1eg

There's No Such Thing As Too Many Stew-Roids

Before I start the second installment in this series, a warning- If you're unaccustomed to eating massive quantities of fiber, go REALLY easy on the beans if and when you make chili. Likewise, taking it easy on spices might be a good idea, no matter how spicy you like your food. the reason behind this warning is that after eating chili made with two cans of Texas Rancheros beans, a couple of pounds of lean beef, and a shitload of poblano peppers, wasabi, habenero pepper sauce, crushed red peppers, and ancho chili, I've been running to the shitter shooting flames from my ass for the last 14 hours, and am feeling not unlike I did when I had dysentery in China, though I am as of yet not bleeding from my asshole.

Now, onto the show...

Quite frankly, the popularity of my stew idea has me taken a bit aback- I honestly believed the world at large would accuse me of having holed up in my house, collecting my own urine and fecal samples, and basically writing nonsense while living full-on Howard Hughes style. It appears, however, that I'm onto something, so I believe it behooves me to continue with my stew series- the more I research, the more I discover that the correlation between stew and gigantic, badass motherfuckers is 1:1, no matter where you are in the world. As it happens, my initial idea for eating stew didn't come from my research, but rather arose out of my inquiry into the ideal bulking diet, as I've grown unbelievably weary of constant dieting and have been looking around for a method by which I can alter my diet and increase muscular mass without becoming one of the giant, fat pieces of shit you see waddling around most gyms in sweatshirts with cutoff sleeves and sweatpants that appear to have been new when Flashdance was initially released on Laserdisc. Putting on a bit of fat in the pursuit of huge numbers is no issue- losing the appearance that I actually lift weights is.

As such, the traditional "see food" diet was not an option, nor was the hideous nonsense I reposted from Dave Tate about eating pizza drenched in olive oil. Instead, I thought to look to how people have done it around the world in a logical, sensible, sane manner, though with a mode of execution extreme enough to justify its use with my training methodology. That thought then sat on a dusty shelf in the back of my mind as I rummaged through it looking for odd bits and pieces for the new nutrition ebook, and I'd occasionally catch a glimmer from that abandoned shelf that'd draw my attention whenever the word "stew" popped up in a book or article. I then recalled Ori Hofmekler's bit on stew, which I posted in the last installment of this series, and the entire concept began to congeal in my head. I'd already thought in the past that chili could be made into the ultimate food, and then it dawned upon me- there is no need to make it into the ultimate food, because it already is the ultimate food. I did a bit of maths to confirm this, and this is what I found:

Assuming you make your chili with one pound of 93% lean beef, 425 grams of pinto beans, 425 grams of kidney beans, and a can each of tomato soup and diced tomatoes, you're looking at 2159 calories, 36g fat, 301g of carbs (of which 82g is fiber, so really it's 219g carbs), and 168g of protein, all for around $6. Thus, for maybe $16 bucks you could double that and have three protein shakes to top out around 5000 calories and 450 grams of protein.
Depending on how you look at it, you're hitting a split of 50% carbs, 37% protein, 13% fat without deducting the fiber, or 42% carbs, 43% protein, 15% fat with the fiber removed from the equation (which I do, because fuck fiber). Either way, if you can't grow on that shit, you're not going to grow on anything. Additionally, all of the health concerns constantly issuing forth from the mouths of your wives/girlfriends/parents/coworkers are obviated by the fact that you're getting an insanely balanced diet jam-packed with more fucking nutrition than you'd get just about any other way. For those of you who are curious about my chili recipe, here it is: Jamie's Pants-Shitting Scorched Anus Chili 4 servings

2 lbs 93% lean ground beef 2 cans Bush's Best Texas Rancheros beans Brown Bag Chili Mix 8 oz tomato sauce 5 poblano chilis, minced 6 TBSP Sriracha 4 tsp wasabi powder

4tsp habanero sauce 2 tbsp crushed red pepper 2 tsp ancho chili powder 2 tsp cayanne powder

Brown your meat. Add 8 oz can of tomato sauce. Add water by filling that can twice right out of your tap (16 oz). Mix thoroughly while adding our large packet of seasonings. Let simmer overnight in a crock pot.

Though my first love insofar as stew goes is chili, that's not my first thought with stew. When I think of stew, as a general rule, I think of the stew one sees in every medieval movie, ever. There's invariably an iron kettle brimming with meat and potatoes simmering in the backdrop of any medieval period piece, and that or roast meat are usually the only things you see eaten, along with bread. That, I've learned, is known as hunter's stew, perpetual stew, and hobo stew, and it sounds like it's a gigantic Santa Claus bag of awesome. Basically, this type of stew, which was extremely common even through the early part of the 20th Century in a lot of places, is whatever one can find thrown into a pot and slow cooked over a fire. The cool thing about the perpetual stew is that the pot never got emptied- as it was consumed, more random shit was thrown in- whatever meats, veggies, or tubers they had lying around got chopped up and used. This is why stews are so fucking cool- you can use endless variations, and the quality of the meat is inconsequential because even the toughest, stringiest cuts of meat are rendered tender by the slow-cooking process.

Though that description likely conjures up images of hulking, brutish, unwashed and bloody men slamming their forearms down on the table of a filthy inn and screaming "flagon of ale and meat!" at the top of their lungs, that type of a meal would have been just as common in the medieval era as it was in the Roman, the pre-Roman era of the Scythians, the early 20th century, and even in modern Iceland, Japan, Hungary, and elsewhere in non-Americanized countries. In fact, the stew-grainalcohol combination of the medieval era was used with great success by the Saxon Trio of the early 20th Century and is the mainstay of the sumos and Russian strongmen- a healthy reikishi may drink up to six pints of beer at a midday meal (Scott), Saxon was apparently "weaned on beer" (he once drank 50 beers pre-performance) and ate a tremendous amount of stew and soup (Inch) and still perform, and everyone who's ever lifted in Russia has some tale of drunken debauchery and sour cream-filled beef stew. The amalgamation of alcohol, stewed meat, and grains seems to have arisen right out of the Middle Ages, as stew was referred to as "companaticum"('that which goes with the bread') and was thus nearly invariably served with booze and bread (Wiki).

I think most of us would agree that this might serve as a decent accompaniment to the meal.

If you're curious, I managed to rustle up a medieval stew recipe to give you an idea of what it was those fuckers had bubbling away in a cauldron awaiting the return of King Arthur and his men. The following recipe comes from a book that might be more aptly titled 700 Years of Culinary Failure, but the author instead went with 700 Years of English Cooking, which while accurate lacks the descriptive terms necessary to warn the reader of the culinary disasters bound within the pages of the book.

Medieval Spiced Beef Stew Serves 6-8

1.5kg lean braising steak, chopped into bite-size chunks 3 tbsp plain flour Oil for frying 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon 1/4 tsp ground mace 1/8 tsp (small pinch) ground cloves 4 black peppercorns, crushed 1/2 tsp cardamom pods, crushed and green pods discarded 1 large onion, finely chopped 6 large sprigs parsley, stalks and leaves finely chopped, plus extra to garnish 900ml beef stock 50g stale wholemeal bread, torn into small pieces 3 tbsp cider vinegar Pinch of saffron threads

Toss the beef with the flour to coat. Cover the base of a large casserole dish with a thin layer of oil and place over a medium high heat. Add the beef in batches and fry, stirring occasionally, until browned. Return any browned beef to the pan with its juices. Add the spices, onion and parsley with a splash of the stock and fry, stirring frequently and scrapping up the crusty layer from the bottom of the pan with a wooden spoon, for about 5 minutes until the onions have started to soften. Add the rest of the stock with a pinch of salt and bring to a gentle boil. Cover, reduce the heat to low and simmer for 2 hours, until the beef is tender. Meanwhile, soak the bread in the vinegar with the saffron. Stir into the stew and simmer, uncovered, for about 20 minutes until the bread has broken down and the stew is thick. Taste and season with salt and freshly ground black pepper. Serve with bread and buttered green vegetables, garnished with chopped fresh parsley.

Obviously, that's one stout ass meat soup. While it's not really fatty enough to be considered fully keto, you could diet for a bodybuilding show on this stew and show up grainier than a cameraphone pic from 2001. Additionally, cinnamon isn't just a dessert spice- it's used a hell of a lot in good chili recipes, and finds its way into damn near everything Indian. It's worth noting that cinnamon's inclusion into any meal is usually a good idea, as cinnamon confers a variety of health benefits you don't get with other spices- cinnamon lowers blood sugar and cholesterol and may prevent yeast infections in those sad sacks who've picked up the HIV on a trip to Thailand or their local bathhouse. As such, this stew is pretty much the ideal thing for anyone to eat from time to time, and eaten with a giant loaf of brown bread and a liquor-filled libation and you've got yourself one hell of a postworkout meal.

Macedonian Stew
Frankly, the Macedonians have done exactly fuckall since conquering much of the known world, but as a former title holder in the World Domination Championships, their food deserves some mention. As

for sporting events since then, they've only been a country since 1996 (they were part of former Yugoslavia, and prior to that part of the Bulgarian Empire), but have pulled down a number of medals in Olympic wrestling in spite of the fact that their country is essentially six people standing around a goat in the ass-end of Bulgaria. Though I didn't even know there was a such a thing as Macedonian cuisine prior to researching this, a restaurant in Indianapolis is famous for their stew, which is of course Macedonian- John's Famous Stew in Indianapolis. The stew, which is called Turli Tava, is supposed to be the balls, and you can make it considerably hotter (as the Macedonians are wont to do) by adding a bunch of Hungarian wax peppers.

Quite frankly, I have never had a Hungarian dish I found the least bit spicy and could rinse my contacts with the juice from Hungarian wax peppers, but Macedonians apparently love 'em and think they're capable of rendering stew spicy. That aside, cranking up the heat on your stew is a damn fine reason, as the capsaicin in hot spices can "burn body fat with minimal potency, fight inflammation with decent potency, and prevent cancer with indeterminate potency" (Examine.com). If you're more inclined to use horseradish or wasabi, that works as well, as the isothiocyanates that make the brassica family spicy inhibits cancer growth. As such, you should do as the Macedonians and Hungarians do and spice the fuck out of your food. If you find yourself disinclined to do so, consult the following complete list of people who do not like spicy foods: Pregnant women Breastfeeding mothers Menstruating women Women on menopause Children Old People Animals (except fish)

As Maddox says, "this is a complete list of people who do not like spicy foods,so if you don't like spicy food, you must one of the above listed. Animals, old people, and children can't read, so I guess that makes you a bitch" (Maddox 68-69).

Turli Tava

Preheat oven to 400. You will need: 1 pound of mixed meat pork and beef cut in chunks for stew Sea salt freshly ground black pepper 1 medium onion, peeled and roughly chopped 3 cloves of garlic, minced 2 medium potatoes, peeled and roughly chopped 2 medium carrots, peeled and roughly chopped 1 medium eggplant, stem removed and roughly chopped 2 red or green bell peppers, stems and seeds removed, roughly chopped 1 large tomato, roughly chopped 1 1/2 cups of okra, tops and tails cut off, blanched in salted water for 1 minute, rinsed and drained (if unavailable replace with green beans) 1 tablespoon paprika salt and pepper to taste 1/4 cup olive oil 1/2 cup water Parsley, roughly chopped to garnish

Directions:

1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Season veal, pork and chicken with salt and pepper and set inside the clay dish. Mix in the vegetables. Season with paprika, salt, and pepper. Add in the olive oil and water; mix well. Put it in the oven and cook it uncovered for 1 hour and 30 minutes, stirring occasionally. Garnish with parsley. Let cool for 20 minutes then serve it warm with crusty bread. Utensils not needed- this stuff is chunky enough to eat with your hands or chunks of bread, just the way Conan would have done it.

Bulgarian Stew
Provided you're an adult human being who lifts weights and does not have their head jammed so far up your own ass that you know what your own duodenum tastes like, the Bulgarians require no introduction. Given the spate of prolapsed rectum gobbling I've noted (with pleasure) on various porn sites, I suppose I might as well introduce them anyway. Long known as the swarthy asshole of Eastern Europe, Bulgaria emerged as an Olympic wrestling and weightlifting powerhouse under the benevolent eye of the Soviets. No country has amassed medals in those respective sports as have the Bulgarians, a people as un-numerous as they are un-hirsute. Culturally, the Bulgarians are hardly Russian, however- they're a curious blend of Slavic, Celtic, and Greek influences. The Thracians, one of the only Greek nations to stand with the Spartans at Thermopylae, hailed from what is now Bulgaria, comprise the "Greek" influence, and combined with the Turkic/Hunnic Bulgars and South Slavs (the rest of whom eventually ended up as Yugoslavia) to comprise the population and culture of

modern Bulgaria. Despite their vastly disparate culturally different influences, Bulgarians eventually embodied a literal and figurative melting pot, which then took tangible form on the dinner table as a Bulgarian favorite-Monastery gyuvetch. Monastery Gyuvetch

Ingredients 2 lbs beef 4 tomatoes, chopped 1/2 lbs mushrooms 1 cup rice 1 onion, chopped 15 olives, whole a bunch of parsley 2 tbsp vegetable oil 1 tbsp butter 1 tbsp sugar 2 1/2 cups beef stock black pepper, paprika and salt

Preparation Cut the beef into cubes or small pieces and fry in a pan with a little oil for about 5 minutes or until brown. Add the onions, beef stock and paprika, 5 minutes later add the mushrooms and rice and simmer for about 15 minutes. Add the tomatoes, salt to taste, butter, sugar and olives, and cook for another 5 minutes. Preheat oven to 400F. Transfer the content of the pan into a baking dish and cook for about 30 minutes. Sprinkle with parsley and pepper before serving.

Or you could sprinkle that with some parsley and pepper before eating.

Maori Stew
When one thinks of the Maori, stew is likely not the first thing to come to their minds. For those of you who are unaware, the Maori are some of the hardest motherfuckers to ever walk the Earth, and earned their massive statures from a diet so meat-heavy that they eventually turned to cannibalism to supplement their diets after hunting most of the animals in New Zealand to extinction. When I say "massive" this is of course relative- the average Maori male was about 5'8" prior to colonization, which was considerably taller than Europeans of the time, and were much more heavily muscled, as the average Maori was generally between 170 and 200 lbs. Replete with a shitload of badass tattoos and more bludgeoning weapons than one would like to see in hulking, heavily muscled natives in a tropical paradise they wish to conquer, the Maori were the last major indigenous group to fall to European colonization, holding out until the mid 19th Century after eating more Europeans than a French cunnilingus specialist. As it is everywhere else I've mentioned, the mainstay of the Maori diet was stew- in this case, the Maori Boil-Up. Unlike many of the other stews I've thus far outlined, the Maori Boil up is interestingly Zone-ish- it's almost exactly 33% protein, 33% fat, and 33% carbohydrates. Given that it's still the mainstay of Maori cuisine and the fact that the All Blacks dominate rugby harder than Max hardcore dominates skinny chicks' tonsils, it stands to reason we could all stand to get a little Zone in our lives and rock this stew like it's Infant Annihilator's full lengthall the live long day. Maori Boil-Up (with pork tenderloin, though traditional recipes generally use pork bones and pork neck added to the broth) Servings: 6

4 cups chicken broth 2 cups water 1 lb pork tenderloin 2 bunches watercress 1 large kumara, peeled and chopped (sweet potato) 1/2 large onion, peeled and chopped 3 green onions, sliced 6 cherry tomatoes 1 teaspoon salt 1 tablespoon fresh cilantro, chopped (optional) Doughboys 3 tablespoons unsalted butter, in pea sized pieces 1 cup flour 1 teaspoon baking powder 1 pinch salt 1 pinch sugar 1/4-1/2 cup milk

Directions: 1. Add stock, water and pork to pot, bring to a boil then cover and simmer for an hour. 2. Soak watercress in cold water for 10 minutes. (This removes bitterness) Squeeze out moisture and break into pieces. Set aside. 3. Add kumara, onion, green onion and tomatoes to stock and simmer for 15 minutes. 4. Remove pork and chop into pieces. Return meat to stock and boil for 5 minutes. Add salt and watercress and simmer for 15 minutes. 5. Meanwhile make the doughboys. Cut butter into dry ingredients until it resembles coarse cornmeal. Stir in enough milk to make a stiff, slightly sticky dough. 6. Drop either teaspoon or tablespoon sized amounts of the doughboy mixture into the the boiling pot, cover and cook for about 10-15 minutes. Don't lift lid while cooking. Larger doughboys will take a bit longer.

7. Serve with a garnish of chopped cilantro.

Welsh Stew
When one thinks of Wales, they likely think of an incomprehensible language spoken by hill people who spend their time fucking sheep, if they think of them at all. While that is, I'm told, unequivocally true, the Welsh do have a long history of badassery spanning back to prehistory. According to a 15th century historian, "The ancient Britons being naturally a warlike nation did no doubt for the exercise of their youth in time of peace and to avoid idleness devise games of activity where each man might show his natural prowess and agility, as some for strength of the body by wrestling, lifting of heavy burdens, others for the arm as in casting the bar, sledge, stone, or hurling the bawl or ball, others that excelled in swiftness of foot, to win the praise therein by running, and surely for the exercise of the parts aforesaid this cnapan was prudently invented, had the same continued without abuse thereof" (Wiki) Cnapan, as it happens, is the forerunner to rugby union, the game at which the Maoris excel. When the Welsh played it, it had few rules, was played by teams numbering over a thousand a side, and often resulted in serious injuries and death. As such, it's not played anymore, as no insurance company will cover the players. Thus, the Welsh are left with shit like strongman, stone lifting, and Highland games, at all of which they excel. Of the former perhaps Gary Taylor is the most well-known contestant, a six foot, 300 lb behemoth who won the 1993 World's Strongest Man and who boasts a positively fucking ridiculous behind the neck push press of 600 lbs. The rest of the Welsh are hardly pussies, as they boast some of the toughest manhood stones in the British Isles- the Criccieth [390.5lb] and Ysbyty Ifan [300lb] stones. As I understand it, stew is traditionally the most-consumed food in Wales, and the most popular of the stews is Cawl, so again, we've got some bad motherfuckers sucking down stew like it's cum in a bukkake party.

Welsh Cawl

Serves six

6 x small Welsh lamb shanks 1.2L/2pts water 225g/8oz potatoes, peeled and diced 225g/8oz swede, peeled and diced 225g/8oz onion, peeled and chopped 225g/8oz carrots, peeled and diced 225g/8oz leek, cleaned and sliced thin A bunch of herbs: Bay, thyme, rosemary and parsley a small Savoy cabbage 2tbsp vegetable oil Salt and pepper

Heat the vegetable oil in a large pan, season the lamb shanks add to the pan together with the onion and brown all over (you may have to do this in batches if your pan is not large enough. Pour over the water and add the bunch of herbs. Bring to the boil then reduce the heat to a simmer. Cover and cook for 40 minutes. Add all the vegetables except for the cabbage, bring up to the boil again, reduce to a simmer and cook for a further 40 minutes. Shred the cabbage and add to the cawl, cook for about 5 minutes, then serve. Cawl can be made throughout the year, just adjust the vegetables according to the season. Chopped runner bean, broad beans and peas are wonderful during early summer, add a little chopped mint at the end of cooking. During cooking the stock will reduce somewhat, so top up with more water, or some wine. You may also wish to add pulses such as lentils, or beans, pearl barley is also good during the winter months. Substitute lamb with a piece of gammon, just make sure you soak it before cooking. The broth will make an excellent soup, add peas and fresh mint. Serve the gammon with creamed potatoes, broad beans and parsley sauce.

Next time, we'll close this one out when we hit up the Senegalese, Croats, Dutch/Belgians/South Africans, and Indians for the stew recipes that made them some of the meanest, baddest, most unforgiving motherfuckers in the gods' cruel kingdom, and prove once and for all that there's no food on the fucking planet that confers more badass, muscle building, face melting, cervix displacing nutrition than does a good old-fashioned stew. Sources: Hiroa TR. Maori Somatology. Racial Averages. 1922. J Polynesian Society. 31(121)3744. Web. 13 Aug 2013. http://www.jps.auckland.ac.nz/document/Volume_31_1922/Volume_31,_No._121/Maori_somat ology._Racial_averages,_by_Te_Rangi_Hiroa_(P._H._Buck),_p_37-44/p1

Hunter's Stew. Wikipedia. Web. 7 Aug 2013. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter%27s_stew Inch, Thomas. My friendship with Arthur Saxon. Tight Tan Slacks of Dezso Ban. 7 Jan 2009. Web. 8 Aug 2013. http://ditillo2.blogspot.com/2009/01/my-friendship-with-arthur-saxonthomas.html Inwood K, Oxley L, Roberts E. Tall, active and well made- Stature of the New Zealand M ori population, c.1700 - 1976. Paper for presentation at 34th Social Science History Conference. 12 Nov 2009. Web. 13 Aug 2013. https://www2.dti.ufv.br/noticia/files/anexos/php8rp64d_4262.pdf Scott, Greg. What Sumo eat. Lingualift. Oct 2011. Web. 8 Aug 2013. http://japanese.lingualift.com/blog/what-sumo-eat-wrestlers-diet/

Stew-Roids For The Win

Before I kick this one off, I'm going to post what I thought was a remarkably succinct observation on the popularity of this series, which I admit still has me rather flummoxed. "I can't explain why your stew articles have been well received by everyone, but I can explain why I thought they were awesome. I liked the stew articles because they were a rallying cry for a return to simplicity. Many things, I think, have been overcomplicated in recent years, lifting and eating foremost among them. For several decades now we have endured a barrage of conflicting information: low carb/high protein, high carb/moderate protein, high fat/high protein, "see food," paleo, keto, blah blah blah. I found some of this interesting, but at the end of the day, I can't be bothered to actually follow it. For one, I'm not a strength or muscular development level yet that would make any of those things make sense (and some of them don't make sense to begin with). For another, did any of the strongmen of the past follow diets this restrictive? I would imagine that most of them didn't. The most common point among all of them, aside from the regular consumption of stew and beer, is the heavy consumption of meat. It seems to me that we would do better to look to the past (or in this case, to more sensible countries) when it comes to figuring out how best to eat if you want to get as big and strong as possible. And besides, while I am certainly aware that too much of them isn't good for me and while I know others will think differently, personally I am rather fond of some starch and vegetables in my diet.

Also, the use of stews as you have described them is appealing on a mental level, and you have talked about the importance of the mental side of lifting many times. These kind of traditional stews connect us to the past. When we devour a bowl of chankonabe we can imagine in ourselves a kinship with the massive sumo; when eating kjotsupa for or medieval spiced beef stew, we can imagine ourselves as the kin of burly, stone-lifting, sword-swinging barbarian warriors; when eating borscht we can imagine a connection to gigantic Russian and Ukrainian badasses who are as strong as the ox that went into that borscht; when eating monastery gyuvetch we can recall Bulgaria's impressive accomplishments in weightlifting; when we eat Hungarian goulash, we can recall the history of Hungarian badassery, starting from Attila through the Magyars down all the way to their success at wrestling and weightlifting that seems out of proportion to their population and their national wealth; when we feast on a bowl of khoresht, we can do so thinking that the legendary Rostam e Dastan ate the same thing before striding forth to do something epic. By recalling the past, whether it is our own or someone else's, we can better imagine what kind of future we will build. A man with no past does not know who he is. If he does not know who he is, how can he be expected to act intelligently? Western lifters are like that. We don't know who we are anymore. Our ties with our past is frayed. We

do not have a very strong national lifting culture. There are localized instances of strength culture, but even these are not thriving as well as we might wish. We must build up a culture that celebrates strength, for its own sake and for use, while at the same time recalling to mind the strength cultures of the past; indeed, we cannot build new ones without remembering the old ones."

Thoughtful, indeed.

Whether or not it's correct, it's certainly one of the more well-written and thoughtful emails I've ever received. Had I known initially how popular this series would be, I'd have been writing about stews since I started this blog. Apparently, people could not love a human baby as much as they love stew, even in the middle of the summer. I live in Satan's Taint, South Carolina, for instance, and eat stew daily in spite of the fact that it's so hot that my dog appears to just be looking for a place to lay down and die when we go for walks and the air is so thick with humidity you can ball it up and eat the shit. When wintertime rolls around, I doubt there'll be anything better than stew to stave off catabolism in the cold, but even in the summer it's definitely worth eating at least once a day for the ridiculous nutritional content. Additionally, I'm finding that stew's pretty fucking good cold, and have thus given up on reheating it while it's hot so as not to drop dead of heat exhaustion while eating.

Fact: Viking women were occasionally impregnated by nothing more than a handshake, so virile were the men after eating Norse stews.

As we've seen thus far, pretty much ever corner of the Earth has a stew dish that's immensely popular, and as I mentioned in the last installment, the best thing of all about stew is that you can make it out of just about anything. Thus, I've been experimenting a bit with some simple stews one can make without going to much, if any effort. One such stew (which is delicious cold, I might add) is one I made in about five minutes, having only to brown the stew meat I added and then dump all of the ingredients.

Jamie's Jesus Fuck, I'm Lazy Stew Serves: 3

1 lb browned stew meat 1/6 bag Beef Flavored 15 Bean Soup 1 can Progresso Beef Barley Soup 1 can Progresso Lentil and Andoulle Soup

1. Soak beans overnight in water. Drain the water after soaking (this gets rid of the lectins and other nasty shit in beans). 2. Brown the meat in a pan with a bit of oil, seasoning liberally with mojo, chipotle, curry, and adobo. 3. Dump meat and drippings into crock put with everything else. 4. Simmer for a few hours

Nutrition per serving Protein: 46g Fat: 15.8 Carbs: 43.7g Fiber: 11.98g

Chechans- proof that the only thing keeping the Russians relatively "docile" is vodka. Allah apparently lacks the palliative effects necessary to keep nail bombs out of public places where Russians are concerned. [Ed. In retrospect, it might be dangerous to idly needle psychopaths, so "yay Allah" and "yay Chechnya". Please don't mail me anthrax, nailbombs, or nailbombs coated with anthrax.]

Clearly, it gets no fucking easier than that, and given that it tastes badass cold, there's no reason not to just bring this shit everywhere you go. I've more or less abandoned shakes of late out of boredom with them and love of eating real food, and the simplicity of stew's prep and ease of its transport makes my life immeasurably better. One more day of 6 protein shakes and I was going to have to ram my fist down someone's throat and strangle their soul out of misplaced rage. Well, not that misplacedin the last 6 months I've discovered that there is a considerable portion of the population who cannot even address a fucking envelope, which makes me feel like we need a few more Chechens motivated enough to fling bombs at random passers by. In any event, we'll take one more pass through the world's stews before I lay this series to rest like the super-flogged dead horse it is. If there's anyone out there who remains unconvinced that stew's fucking magical, nothing on Earth will do so at this

point.

Croatian Stew
For the unaware or uninitiated, one might think that the Croats have about as much to do with awesome as a dairy cow has to do with Hubble Telescope repair. Though they've had some unseemly anger management issues in recent years, the Croats have been hard motherfuckers since time immemorial. Beginning as the Alans, one of the Sarmatian tribes that drove the man-eating, scalp-taking Scythians out of existence and dominated all of southern Russia from China to the Ukraine. In the early part of the 1st century AD, the Alans controlled the Sarmatian confederation and fucked every group of sword-waving lunatics the ancient world had to offer in the ear on a daily basis, wrecking the Parthians for fun and annoying the Romans as a matter of course. Later, they moved into what's now known as Croatia and managed to impress everyone around them enough to get the massive empires between whom they were wedged to leave them alone just by baring their fucking teeth and flexing a bicep or two.

Having established the Croats come from a long line of hard people, you need only look to three modern Croats for proof of the power of their stew- Joseph Tito, tho only man to tell Stalin to go fuck himself and live, Mirko Crocop, the only professional fighter of whom I know to hold political office while knocking motherfuckers out with high kicks on the weekend, and the Great Antonio, one of the coolest and most insane strongmen of whom you've never heard but who you should definitely check out here. Having hung out with a Croat mercenary in Vienna quite a bit (and having done a lot of Brazilian jiujitsu on the floors of bars with him), I can personally attest to their awesome, and of their love for "Jota", the stewroids source of Croatian physical prowess. Croatian Jota Serves 4

200g beans 500g sauerkraut 300g potatoes

500g dried ribs 200g dried bacon few chopped home made pork sausages 3 heads of garlic salt Whole peppercorn 2 fresh bay leaves (which apparently prevents bean farts)

Directions: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. Cook the beans shortly, dry them, and let them cook again. Cook cabbage and ribs separately. When beans are half soft, add them (witht he water) to cabbage and ribs. Add Laurel leaves, pepper, salt, and chopped bacon,sausages, and garlic. Slice the potato to little cubes and cook it until it all softens. Take out the ribs and serve them on side with the stew.

This is a 4 person serving, but women apparently rarely eat meat and ribs and most often leave it for men to grab, which sucks for the broads but is awesome for the guys hanging out with them. On second thought, given that this is what Croatian broads look like, they can keep passing us the meat:

Indian Stew
Anyone familiar with my stuff should already be acquainted with the badassery of the Indian athletes of yore. Indian wrestlers were renown for being unbeatable in the last century, and their strongmen in the 19th and early 20th Centuries were some of the best in the world. Though it's not frequently discussed, a quick watch of Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations Indian episodes or my blog on Indian diet shows that meat has been a mainstay of the Indian diet right up until the modern era (not surprisingly, this coincides exactly with the period when they started getting their shit pushed in by colonialists), and continues to be so for the biggest and the baddest motherfuckers in India. Thus, I give you the most popular of India's meat stews (at least insofar as I understand it)- vindaloo. Chicken Vindaloo Servings: 4-6

Chicken Vindaloo Ingredients: Vindaloo Paste 1 tsp ground cumin 1 tsp ground turmeric 1 or 2 tsp Garam Masala 1/4 tsp ground cinnamon (you can add more cinnamon, but if can be over-powering, so be careful!) 2 tsp mustard powder 1 tsp ground coriander 1 tsp cayenne pepper 2cm cube of peeled ginger 3 tbsp white wine vinegar 1 tsp sugar Vindaloo Base 150ml vegetable oil 4-8 garlic cloves, crushed or blended 3 red onions, sliced finely or preferably blended Other Ingredients 4+ red chillies, chopped finely. This is what gives the heat, so you can use less if you like and also deseed before chopping if you want to make a milder vindaloo (but why?) 4 skinless chicken breasts cut into bite size pieces 500g good quality chopped tomatoes or chopped tinned tomatoes 1-2 tbsp of tomato puree to taste 1-4 tsp Hot Chili Powder to taste This is optional and if you do want to make it hotter, Id suggest adding a bit at a time Salt and pepper to taste

Chicken Vindaloo Recipe The Method: 1. Grate or slice the ginger finely and add the cumin, cinnamon, mustard, coriander turmeric, garam masala and cayenne pepper into a bowl and add the vinegar and sugar and mix thoroughly. 2. Heat the oil in a wok or large frying pan. Add the garlic and the onion and cook over a medium heat until they have softened for approx 5-7 mins, but take care not to let them burn or brown too much. 3. Once the onion and garlic have softened, add the chicken pieces and cook for approx 2-3 minutes until the chicken starts to colour. 4. Now add the chillies, tomatoes, tomato pure, and begin to stir in the pre-prepared Vindaloo paste. 5. Add salt and pepper to taste, and bring to the boil. Once boiling, lower the heat and simmer whilst stirring occasionally for approx 1 hour. during this period, its important not to let the chicken vindaloo dry out, so add a 1/2 cup of water as necessary. If you do want to make it hotter than the recipe, then during the simmering time is the right time to gradually add the chilli powder to taste. 6. If you wanted to be traditional, you would ideally serve this Chicken Vindaloo with pilau rice, chapattis, or Naan bread I especially like some of the Garlic and Coriander Naans that are available from most supermarkets, although if you were a bit more adventurous, you could try to make your own.

Tittays.

Dutch/South African/Belgian Stew

Before the Dutch just decided to throw down their weapons and surrender to anyone with a water gun (as they have been wont to do of late), they actually rolled fairly hard. Not hard in a Cossack sort of way, but hard in a lording-intelligence-over-everyone-while-pointing-a-.44 Magnum-at-their-faces-andtelling-some-broad-to-get-her-tongue-further-up-their-ass-or-everyone-dies sort of way. The Belgians and Dutch have long had good bodybuilders and strongmen, and the South Africans have rolled hard at everything they've ever done, ever. Dutchmen Ab Wolders, for instance, was a perennial runner up at the World's Strongest Man in the 1980s, and Pierre Van Den Steen blew everyone around the same time away with his ridiculous leanness. South Africa boasts Gerrit Badenhorst, frequent WSM competitor and former champion powerlifter, in addition to Arnold Schwarzennegger's idol- former champion bodybuilder and all around badass Reg Park. Clearly, anyone speaking Dutch or an offshoot thereof has a reasonable chance of being a hard motherfucker, especially when one factors in such badasses as the Rhodesian Seleous Scouts and SAS. Their stewroid of choice was Waterzooi, which might be the oddest of all of the stews thus detailed due to the fact that it's pretty much a meat-heavy cream soup. Waterzooi

Ingredients 1 whole large chicken 4 carrots 3 celery stalks 4 shallots or small onions Parsley 1 sprig fresh thyme 1 bay leaf Salt and freshly ground black pepper 2 leeks 400 grams mushrooms (about 14 ounces) 4 egg yolks 1 cup cream 1 lemon, juiced 2 tablespoon butter Pinch nutmeg

Directions Preparation for the stock: Place the chicken in a pot of water, covering the chicken entirely. Add 2 carrots, 2 celery stalks, and 1 onion, cut into approximately 1-inch pieces. Add parsley, thyme and a bay leaf and poach until chicken is cooked. Add salt and pepper, to taste. Cut the remaining carrots, celery, onions into 1-inch sticks and place them in a saucepan with water to cover. Cut the leeks into 1-inch sticks, slice the mushrooms and add to saucepan. Parboil vegetables in salted water. Take out the chicken when poached (no red color must be seen under the skin) and discard vegetables from stock. Strain the chicken stock through a fine sieve. Take the skin off of the chicken and cut chicken into 8 pieces. Put the chicken and the parboiled vegetables into the stock. Mix the egg yolks with the cream and add to the stock. Add the lemon juice and butter. Season with salt, pepper and nutmeg. Serve in soup plates with boiled potatoes or white steamed rice.

I fink she's freaky, and I like it a lot.

Senegalese Stew
When most of us think of Africa, we definitely don't imagine a bunch of jacked dudes beating the brakes off each other in a dirt pit like they're in a paleolithic fight club. Instead, it's much more likely we imagine two half-starved thirteen year-olds blabbering bullshit about Allah while committing numerous atrocities as part of a daily ritual to lay hands on a bag of moldy rice. Though neither the introduction of Islam or Western colonization has done a motherfucking thing other than make the lives of Africans immeasurably worse, they've managed to hold on to some of the tribal shit they did prior to the invasions of the aforementioned flaming assholes that made them so fucking cool back in the day. One such tradition is Senegalese wrestling, known in Senegal as laamb, which is by far and away the most popular sport in the country and has recently drawn the attention of the West. As you can see above, the lack of modern training facilities isn't hurting the physiques of the Senegalese, and their strength is attributed to brutal basic training and the dish considered to be the Senegalese national flag, Ceebu Jenn. Ceebu Jenn is, of course, a stew, and is the most commonly consumed dish in Senegal and is the preferred fuel for the hours-daily training for laamb. Senegalese Thieboudienne / Ceebu Jenn Serves: 8-12

Ingredients 3 Tilapia cleaned and cut into 4 pieces each 3 branches of parsley finely chopped 3 branches of cilantro finely chopped 3 bay leaves 1 tablespoon of thyme 3 green onions finely chopped, 2 tablespoon of Afro Fusion Cuisines All Purpose Seasoning 4 ounces of tomato paste 2 plum tomatoes finely chopped 3 medium onions finely chopped 3 lb broken rice (broken one once or twice) 1 cup of oil salt , black pepper Vegetables of your choices 2 large carrots root cut into 4 inches pieces 1 eggplant root cut into 4 inches pieces 1 cassava or yucca root cut into 4 inches pieces 3 okra

Instructions 1. Clean the fish very well and set aside 2. Prepare the special marinade called Nokoss by mixing in a blender all your spices and herbs 3. With a sharp small knife make small cut on the fish. Using of your marinade in step 2 stuffed the fish and immediately broil or fry then set aside 4. Parboil or steam your rice and set aside 5. In a heated pot, using 4 tablespoon of the oil used to fry your fish, put a dash of salt , add onion, tomato paste and plum tomatoes (cook for 5-7mn stirring) . 6. Add 6 cups of water to the pot, add the cut veggies, add the fish already fried and lastly add 7. The remaining half of the marinade Let simmer for 15 minutes for the fish and Juices to blend 8. Remove the fish roe from the pot and start plating 9. Then remove from the sauce the cooked veggies and add it to the plate. 10. Add the pre-cooked or steamed broken rice to the boiling sauce 11. Put the fire on low and let it reduceshould take about 15-30 mins depending on the nature of your rice. Your Thieboudienne is ready!

If you can find a pic of a Senegalese chick worth posting, you're a better porn hunter than I. I will happily watch this gif all fucking day.

Nigerian Stew
Like Senegal, Nigeria's got a tribal sport that make the violent games we grew up with, like Kill the Cow, for instance, look as violent as a no-touch game of pattycake- dambe. Dudes who compete in dambe throw more haymakers than drunken hillbillies at a Kenny Chesney concert, and just like those hillbillies throw them with just one hand. In fact, a quick google search appears to show that the haymaker is the sole strike employed in dambe fighting, which apparently only ends when you remove someone's head Mortal Kombat-style with a punch telegraphed from 1880's London. After watching a couple of videos, the parallels between hillbillies and dambe end, because while hillbillies hurt each other as infrequently in fights as do dambe fighters, hillbillies lack both the intellect and the flexibility necessary to throw the occasional kick you're likely to see in dambe. Nevertheless, any sport in which the participants rock out Art "One Glove" Jimmerson style as if they're in the first UFC is all right by me. The food of choice for these hilarious tribal combatants? You guessed it- motherfucking stew. Nigerian Beef and Chicken Stew Serves 10

Fresh Plum Tomatoes (referred to as Jos Tomatoes in Nigeria) 1.5kg Tinned tomato paste: 600g (or watery tinned Tomato Puree: 1.2kg) Vegetable Oil: a generous amount (see this video) Whole Chicken (hen) 1.2kg Beef: 15 pieces of medium cuts Onions: 2-3 medium bulbs Habanero Pepper & Salt (to taste) Seasoning: 3 large stock cubes & Thyme (2 teaspoons) Important notes on the ingredients Chicken: Hen (female chicken) is tastier than the cockerel or rooster so it is the preferred chicken when cooking all Nigerian recipes. Each of the different parts of the chicken (wings, drumsticks, hips etc) has its own unique taste and all these together makes the stew (and in fact all your cooking) taste better than if you use only one part of a chicken. Tomato Stew is fresh puree tomato and the tinned tomato paste that has been boiled and fried to remove all traces of water and the sour taste of tomatoes. It is the base for the Nigerian Beef & Chicken Stew. 1. Grind / Blend the chilli pepper and cut the onions into small pieces before you cook Tomato Stew 2. Wash and blend the fresh plum tomatoes. Remember to remove the seeds unless you are sure your blender can grind them very well. 3. If using the thick tinned tomato paste that is common in Nigeria, mix it with cold water to get a softer consistency. See the video below for how I did this. 4. If you are using the watery tinned tomato puree that is common in Europe and other parts of the world, open the tins or packets and set these aside, you'll need them soon. 5. Cut the onions into small pieces.

Cooking Directions 1. Pour the fresh tomato blend into a pot and cook at high heat till almost all the water has dried. If you have the watery tinned/boxed tomato puree, add these to the pot and reduce the heat to low. Cook till the water in the tomato puree have dried as much as possible. 2. Add the vegetable oil, the chopped onions and the thick tomato puree that you mixed in step 2 above (if it's the puree you are using). Stir very well.

3. Fry at very low heat and stir at short intervals till the oil has completely separated from the tomato puree. A well fried tomato puree will also have streaks of oil, unlike when you first added the oil and it was a smooth mix of the tomato puree and oil. Taste the fried tomato puree to make sure that the raw tomato taste is gone. With time and experience, you can even tell that the tomato puree is well fried from the aroma alone. 4. If you are happy with the taste and you are sure that all the water has dried as much as possible, pour out the excess vegetable oil like I did in this video, then use it in your cooking. 5. If you are not using it immediately, leave to cool down, dish in containers and store in the freezer. 6. - See more at: http://www.allnigerianrecipes.com/stews/tomatostew.html#sthash.Qe46H92G.dpuf 7. Cut up the chicken and cook with half of the chopped onions, stock cubes and thyme. When the chicken is almost done, add the beef and cook till well done. Then add salt, allow to simmer for about 5 minutes, transfer to a sieve to drain. Grill or fry the chicken and beef. This is optional but it gives them a rich golden look. 8. Notes about cooking the chicken: 9. Add water up to the level of the contents of the pot when cooking the chicken. 10. When cooking chicken, I do not add salt to the raw chicken. This is because salt closes the pores of the chicken (and infact anything you are cooking), this prevents the natural flavour of the chicken from coming out into the surrounding water and prevents the seasoning from entering the chicken to improve the taste. The result is that your chicken stock will not have a rich natural taste. It will only have an artifical taste of seasoning. Note: Only add salt when the chicken is done. A lot of people think that adding salt early makes the chicken taste better but there's a big difference between a salty taste and a rich taste. What gives food a rich taste is not salt but the natural flavor of the food so allow this natural flavor to come out into your stock by NOT adding salt too early. And remember, stock cubes already contain salt so you really don't need more salt.

Cooking Directions Continued 1. When you are happy that the tomatoes in your tomato stew are well-fried, pour out the excess oil as I did in the video below. 2. Place the pot of tomato stew back on the stove and add the chicken stock (water from cooking the chicken). There may be tiny pieces of bones at the bottom so be careful not to add those. 3. Add the chilli pepper and the grilled chicken and beef. Stir very well and add salt if necessary. You can also add some water at this point if the stew is too thick. 4. Cover the pot and cook at medium heat till the contents of the pot is well steamed. Stir again and you are done.

Africa appears not to lend itself well to porn, so here's Bailey Jay.

Korean Stew
Though they're not all that well known for being jacked or strong, Koreans eat burn-your-asshole-spicy soups and stews for almost every single meal. Given that they're chugging stewroids all the live-long day, it won't surprise you that Koreans are not the tiny yellow pussies they're generally credited with being. Instead, Koreans have a long lineage of being hard motherfuckers, as Korea is essentially the Poland of Asia- jammed between China and Japan, they've had to fight constantly for their entire existence to ensure that neither country was able to force them into a massive gimp suit and rape them with a horse dick-sized dildo until they're bleeding out of their eyes. To that end, the Koreans have focused more on martial prowess than strength, and have become some of the hardest hand-tohand fighters in the world. Currently Koreans are representing hard in K-1 and the UFC, boast the unbelievably badass Mas Oyama as one of their own, and have pulled down a shitload of medals in judo (40), taekwondo (14), boxing (20), wrestling (35), and weightlifting (11), in spite of the fact their country has only 49 million inhabitants and has only existed as a country since 1948 (which means they've basically got twice as many medals in those sports as the US when you account for longevity and population). Stew appears, once more, to be the nutritional formula for success if you want to be a fucking badass. Given the frequency with which they eat stew, it's hard to pick a single recipe for their stewroid of choice. As such, I'm picking my favorite, as I could not love a human baby as much as I love bulgogi. In fact, I will only consider myself wealthy when and if I can hire a Korean man to follow me everywhere i go with a hibachi, constantly grilling bulgogi for my consumption. Bulgogi Jungol Serves: 4

Ingredients 2 cups marinated bulgogi 1 onion, cut into strips 2 scallions, chopped Carrots, cut into strips 1/2 cup bean sprouts Other bite-sized vegetables (preferable colorful) like peppers and broccoli 1 cup water 1 cup mushrooms of your choice (enoki, shiitake, button or a combination) 1 block tofu Salt or soy sauce to taste Noodles, cellophane/dangmyun/sweet potato (optional)

Preparation 1. In a soup pot or a large wok, stir fry marinated bulgogi and onion(s) for a couple minutes. Put ALL the marinade into the pot, do not discard any liquid. 2. Add vegetables (except for mushrooms) and cover with water. 3. Bring to a boil. 4. Reduce to a low simmer.

5. 6. 7. 8.

After 5 minutes, add mushrooms, tofu, and scallions. Turn off after 3-4 minutes. Season to taste with salt and soy sauce. If adding noodles, add cellphane (dangmyun) with the mushrooms or add pre-cooked noodles at the end.

And there you have it- stew is the fucking balls. It's easy to make, easy to transport, and generally the shit. Like the guy who emailed me stated above, most people make diet and training way too fucking complicated. You don't need a calculator or an Excel spreadsheet to get jacked. You don't need gurus telling you what to do, how to eat, or what to think- this shit is too fucking simple. If you're a person who really needs guidelines because you're nearly retarded, eat twice your bodyweight in protein, make those calories half your daily intake, and if you want to lean out, keep your carbs low and fats high. If you want to gain weight, split your calories between carbs and fats for the second half of your caloric intake and eat more total calories. It's not as though Arthur Saxon or Earle Liederman

delved deep into programming and diet- they trained heavy, ate a metric fuckton of food (including a lot of stew), and drank their faces off, just like the Russians, Finns, sumo, and Icelanders do now. Moreover, if the Indians and Senegalese can get jacked in third world environments with this type of diet, so can you. Stop thinking about it and just do it- this shit is too simple to fuck up.