Curated By: Matt "Wiggy" Wiggins
“Resident BAMF” & “Lead Badass” at WCFnation.com
Creator: #GetJacked Project

They say that "breakfast is the most important meal of the day".

Pffft...whatever.

I pretty much never eat breakfast.  In fact, I think it's legit been years since I've eaten first thing in the morning.

In fact, I don't eat lunch, either.

See, I like to follow a diet protocol called "intermittent fasting" (IF for short).

There's a few different versions of IF out there, but the basic tenants are that you follow a long period of fasting (not eating) with a shorter period of consuming all your calories.

Personally, I like to follow something pretty close to what you see in Jason Ferruggia's "Renegade Diet" book, where I consume most of my calories for the day within a smaller window in the evening.  (Rare is the occasion that I'll eat before 5-6pm.)

Now you might think that this is gonna leave you catabolic (that's incorrect "bro-science"), that your workouts will suffer, or that you'll feel tired all the time.

Truth is that my workouts (as of this writing, I'm currently doing this program) are off the charts awesome, and while IFing can indeed take a few days to get used to, once you do, you usually find that your energy is through the roof.

I actually feel lighter on my feet & have more "pep in my step" because I don't constantly have food digesting all the time.  And don't even mention how much time it saves not having to cook (or eat) several times each day.

That's not all that IFing can do for you, though.  Check out a bunch of the benefits recently published over at Generation Iron:

"Intermittent Fasting: Why Eating Less Can Lead to Massive Gains"

Intermittent fasting is described as fasting for anywhere from upwards of 8 hrs. Now we know what you’re thinking, I do that every night, it’s called sleep. Good one, but according to multiple studies this way of eating (or not eating) is no joke. Intermittent fasting can help you live longer, repair muscle faster, burn that stubborn fat that keeps laughing at you in the mirror and improve those always elusive T levels. So we know we’re getting a little ahead of ourselves here, all these claims and no details – so let’s jump into how this could possibly benefit a bodybuilder.

Fasting burns fat. How? Because when you get hungry it’s a sign that your blood sugar’s low, when your blood sugar’s low your body snacks on fat instead of the already depleted sugar it gets from carbs. Also when your get hungry your stem cells produce cytokines . Cytokines are proteins that cause the production of rejuvenating hormones responsible for replenishing the body. Functions such as repairing muscle and cell replication. This means intermittent fasting not only helps you with your lift session but also to live longer.

But what about your workout? While we’re sure this is not the first time you’ve heard of this diet; it’s pretty much always accompanied by the warning that you will lose muscle and this is more for endurance runners not for a strapping young man such as yourself. That’s horse manure, you can still have massive gains while fasting. It’s been found that fasting is really more about the time you eat as opposed to how much you eat, meaning it’s the state of being hungry that produces all this hormone goodness not so much the calories.

Ideally you want to eat the majority of your calories post work out. Meaning you want to fast while training. Since sleep is a natural form of fasting, the most natural way to incorporate this is to not eat right before or after bedtimes. So this is what you’re day would look like: You get up, skip breakfast, and then eat a healthy lunch. Then you train hard and heavy, have a big dinner/post workout meal and consume nothing but things with minimal calories until around lunch time the next day. This sounds pretty crazy considering most bodybuilders make a living carrying around tupperware so they can fit in their 6-8 meals on the go at very specific times. But this can be an alternative…

According to this study, fasting non-obese single men showed a 67% increase in luteinizing hormone (precursor hormone of testosterone) and 2000% baseline increase in the highly anabolic human growth hormone after just 24 hrs. Another study found fasting induces autophagy which is the process the body uses to expel toxins and estrogenic chemicals which is definitely Pro testosterone levels!

Ultimately this is just a guide, and if you want to try this you’ve got to make it your own. We’re just giving you another tool to your arsenal to make massive gains in a little time.

**Wiggy note - as I mentioned before, if you're new to intermittent fasting, this book can be a great resource guide & place to start.

(Content found / originally published at Generation Iron - Parts 1 & 2; featured image from Muscle & Fitness)