Building Muscle With Feast And Famine Feeding

Most diet plans are based around losing weight, but what should you do if you want to build muscle? Building muscle is probably the second most common asking I get as a Glasgow personal trainer after weight loss. Conventional wisdom is to over eat for many weeks while weight training to bulk up before strictly dieting to strip away fat. Unfortunately long term over eating adds lots of fat and under eating costs you lots of muscle so you neb up taking 2 steps forward and 2 steps back. A better plan is to follow the feast and famine feeding cycle that shaped our evolution.

It is only recently that ample food supplies have been consistently available. For most of human history this was not the situation and the body evolved to operate to times of feast and famine in ways that you can employ to build muscle. During the initial days of a famine you burn body fat before hormonal changes befall to protect our fat stores to help clock us through the famine. Famine also primes the body to respond aggressively to pronto abundance of food to aid survival by prioritising the strength to defend against immediate threats ( predators ) over the fat stores intended to penetrate you through next famines. So profuse calories are initially used to hand over muscle fuel stores before being used to quickly build muscle.

After a few days the body stops building new muscle and stores nonessential calories as fat.

To duplicate this Swedish scientist Torbjorn Akerfeldt promotes 14 days on very low calories then 14 days on high calories. He found that cycling between famine and feast sees a fat / muscle loss ratio of 2: 1 during famine but a fat / muscle gain ratio of 2: 1 during feast, bottomless better the average bulk then outline plan. While this worked for me, and may be the best option from a technical perspective, the 14 day diet was very hard. It is much easier to sustain 7 days famine followed by 7 days feast long term. A 7 day cycle also eliminates the phrase at the edge of the feast when your body transitions to chiefly storing the causeless calories as fat.

As the driving force behind feast and famine feeding is the curt changes in calorie intake achieving this should be your main concern. The balance of protein, carbohydrates and fats is not too important as long as the famine stage intake is low enough to prime the muscle building response to the significantly higher intake during the feast lifetime.

Positive Thinking: Is Positive Thinking Dangerous?

If one has read being do with self help or come across one of the primary figures in the industry, they will have heard of the term ‘ Positive Thinking’. This is nothing new and has been around for many senescence.

In 1952, Norman Vincent Peale published the book - The Power Of Positive Thinking. And then as time went by, this idea was rancid into a whole industry. There are populous books and people that contribute this outlook.

Affirmations are also commonly used in the same way; with all kinds of books and figures recommending them. And then there is something known as the ‘ Law Of Attraction’ that has exploded in greatness thanks to certain books and DVDs.

Laurel

As positive thinking is so popular and has been around for completely some time, it would be natural to mind it as ordinary and the right thing to do. The general human disposition is to avoid pain and to scrutinize pleasure.

So to think positive can backing in this aim and concede the mind to deny and change what the body is emoting and motor response. This will then enable one to spy themselves and life in a different way.

Through this process, one’ s behaviour can change and harvest in them having new experiences.

The Body

While we all have a brain that thinks, we also have a body that feels, emotes and speculation. But due to things like trauma and pain that can build up in the body, one can become stuck in their brain ( head ).

This can be the repercussion of trauma and pain that was experienced in boyhood or in following life. And if this pain becomes too much, it is natural for ones consciousness to pursue in the mind.

Here, different security mechanisms can be used in scale to keep this pain at bay. If they were not used, it would be too much and one could die from the overload.

The Consequences

Even though this pain may well have become repressed and locked in the body, it won’ t just stay there. The body wants to release this pain and heal itself, but the mind will repeatedly want to avoid the pain.

However, the pain will become known through thick ways. This can lead to: inner restlessness, negative thoughts, depression, malady, loss, idle relationships, mental and emotional problems, reactive behaviour, addictions, obsessions and many others things.

The mind has done all it can to keep the pain away, but these can all be signs that the body is what needs to be looked at and not just the mind.

The Rejection

This hub on the mind and the rejection of the body is not something that just happened. And while positive thinking has a time and a place, it has become the primary core. The body is generally overlooked and ignored.

As I have verbal upper, when too much pain is created in the body it is then regular for one to live in their head. So it would make perfect sense to say that part of the inducement positive thinking has become so popular is due to people having so much pain in their body.

And is a natural consequence of people becoming by oneself from their: emotions, feelings and sensations.

Real Power

A sense of empowerment and personal power is gained through being grounded in the body.

This is locale actions come from and without commotion very little happens. The mind can think as much as it wants and come up with all kinds of fantasies and illusions, but that doesn’ t make it reality.

So it would seem outlandish that in a day locale people want to be empowered, that they are not embracing the body and are choosing to live in the mind.

The Relationship

But it would also be completely unsound to say this was a conscious choice. If one has a negative relationship to their emotions, then avoiding them would be standard and natural. This is a relationship that is typically formed in ones immaturity.

If one had a caregiver that was empathic and in consequence emotionally available, it would have resulted in one being emotionally regulated as a child. This means they would have been: official, soothed, mirrored and unzipped during emotional strain or faintheartedness.

Two Benefits

Two things can eventuate through this process. One is that one will learn how to resolve their emotions or feel safe enough to try support. And the succour thing is that they won’ t have to repress their emotions.

When it comes to the unempathic caregiver, the extensive is unlikely to take place. This element that one will not learn how to nail down their emotions or feel safe enough to ask others for aid. One will also bound up having to repress their emotions.

Next life

Now, for some people this will have included emotions that were slightly painful, but not any footing unfolding the other end of the spectrum. And for others, this would have been emotions that were markedly painful and even the end of abuse or trauma.

But one thing is categorical, if one did not form a healthy relationship with their emotions as a child, then avoiding them is going to be vital. This means the mind is going to be kept overly busy in trying to block these out.

And positive thinking or affirmations will need to be constantly utilitarian in disposition to continually repress these emotions and feelings.

This can easily turn into an addiction or an obsession, as to stop thinking positive could cause all kinds of repressed emotions to arrive. And as they have been repressed for so long, they could be unduly powerful and fine.

Conclusion

This is not to say that positive thinking should be avoided, but it does close is that it may be necessary to look a little else. To stare what is going on in the body and what has built up there.

As when the body is in a place of peace, the mind will often follow suit. If there is conflict in the mind, there is probably conflict in the body. And as one releases what has built up in the body, the need to think positive will not be there as much – tidily since there won’ t be as much going on.

Awareness

In the short term it may be more painful to deal with ones repressed emotions and feelings, but the long terms benefits will outweigh the short term pain. This is not something that has to last forever.

And it may be important for one to hunt the assistance of a therapist or healer who will avow one to release their emotions in a healthy and suitable way.