John travelled the world to learn the best training and nutrition principles and trained alongside top pro bodybuilders at Gold's Gym California. He was a student of Arthur Jones, inventor of Nautilus and Medx Fitness machines, and the pioneer of hi-intensity training. John developed the HIT3 Training System, which transformed his physique to win countless bodybuilding competitions at just 18 years of age! He was also the first bodybuilder to utilize Faradic Electric Muscle Stimulation in his training and intermittent fasting during his competition prep. John’s SHREDDED Nutrition Diet helped him build one of the most shredded physiques of all time. His diet program incorporates fasting and nutrient timing to help athletes build lean muscle while losing body fat.
To understand the benefits of intermittent fasting, we must first understand how the body uses macronutrients. To do that, it’s best to take a look at our distant ancestors. Let’s say you could take a ride on a time machine back to the age of our hunter-gatherer forebears. Once you stepped off the time machine and took a look at your ancestors, you would be shocked to see how impressively built they were. Your ancient relative stood tall, was lean and muscular, had broad shoulders, was devoid of a potbelly and could run down animals. Your ancient relative was much more physically impressive looking than we are today (minus the long hair, body hair and loincloth). The physiques of our hunter-gatherer ancestors were the result of the lifestyle of the time: days filled with lots of walking across great distances of terrain, setting up shelter and hunting dangerous game. Now, before understanding how this hunter-gatherer lifestyle plays into how intermittent fasting works and how our bodies use macronutrients for fuel, we must understand that the human body and physiology still thinks it is in the age of hunter-gatherers.
First Source of Energy
Contrary to popular belief, the preferred energy source that your body wants to use is fat. When our hunter-gatherer brethren were trekking across the tundra for dozens of miles per day without food, they were surely burning body fat for energy. This is what maintained a lean physique. However, when it came time to chase down the animal that would become dinner, carbohydrates in the form of stored muscle glycogen would be used. The key differences here lie in the intensity of the chase. For lower intensity activity, the body’s preferred fuel source is fat. This is because fat will give a longer, steady level of energy that can last for days, which is the basis of intermittent fasting.
High-Intensity Energy
In the case of our hunter-gatherer ancestors, for higher intensity activities, such as running down and killing an animal, bursts of extreme energy are required. Therefore, carbohydrates become the main fuel source. Carbs offer an easily available fuel source that will power us during high intensities. However, the carbohydrate fuel source is limited and will not last nearly as long as fat. A 170-pound male has 650 grams of carbohydrate (2,600 calories) stored as glycogen in his muscle cells and liver compared to an average of 20 pounds (70,000 calories) of stored body fat. If we were burning only carbs, we would run through our resources relatively quickly and would have no fuel source for any high-intensity activity such as fighting or hunting. A hunter-gatherer’s day revolved around lots of low-intensity activity with bouts of high-intensity activity. For fuel sources, we rely on fat to fuel our low-intensity activities and carbs for high-intensityactivities. By practicing daily intermittent fasting and keeping dietary fats as low as possible, we force our bodies to resort to using stored body fat for energy, which is why I’m a huge proponent of fasting with my diet system.
Therefore, the weight training that you do in a gym should be of a high-intensity nature, as advocated by my HIT3 workout system. This means your body will be burning glycogen to fuel weight training. During a daily 22-hour intermittent fasting period (which I advocate in my nutrition program) the body will use stored body fat for energy in a process called gluconeogenesis. In this state, you can literally melt fat off your body. Today, our lifestyles and diets don’t resemble anything close to those of our hunter-gatherer ancestors. We’re cooped up inside all day sitting in front of a computer screen and are wreaking havoc on our physiology. Despite our sitting down and not receiving anything close tonormal daily activity, the North American diet consists of what I believe is too many simply carbohydrates that lack nutrients, and if we’re not doing intense workouts, we store the fuel. This paradox is what has led to a great prevalence of obesity in our population.
To get shredded in the fastest time period possible, I believe the most effective method is following an intermittent fasting regimen for 22 hours daily followed by a two-hour eating period. I will cover exactly which foods are permitted during this two-hour window in a future article on the Shredded Nutrition Diet.
For more info on John Cardillo, check out his website at johnrobertcardillo.com or right here at Muscle Insider at John Cardillo.
