Sweets and fat intake…Strong, Fit and FAT!…Athletic idiosyncrasies: absolute and sustained strength

Parrillo Muffins

Vic,

Any tips for a bodybuilder with a severe sweet tooth? I have been a competitive bodybuilder for a lot of years and while I don’t really crave sweets most of the time, when I swing into my pre-competition diet, I get intense sweet cravings. The deeper into my 12 week, low-fat pre-competition diet I get, the worse my sweet tooth gets! I had thought that at some point in my career I would outgrow these weird pre-competition sugar cravings – but it seems to be getting worse not better. Is my dilemma common among competitive bodybuilders? Am I a head case? Do I need to get hypnotized? Like a compulsive drinker, gambler or smoker? Seriously, I would do it if you thought it would help. I binged two weeks prior to a competition last year and it turned into a bad scene. I broke down and ate almost an entire cheesecake at a friend’s party – my system was so pure that I suffered sugar shock, fell down and almost went into a coma. No sh-t it was scary. I want to prepare for another show in August – but I am scared I will do something stupid. Have you ever heard of anything like this before?

PS – When I am not preparing for a competition my sweet cravings are almost nonexistent – this is why I am thinking maybe my problem is psychological.

Thad, Dallas

I really don’t have enough information to definitively say what the problem is. However I have a couple of possible answers and a couple of potential solutions. I suspect that the reason you mysteriously crave sweets when you swing into the full-on competition diet is fat – or more accurately the lack of fat in your pre-competition diet. I would bet dollars to doughnuts that your competition diet is super-strict and uses nothing but real food. I suspect your diet is virtually free of saturated fat. I would also bet the farm that you are not using any CapTri^® or Evening Primrose Oil^™. A lot of bodybuilders following the Parrillo dietary protocol limit their overall intake of fat to 5% (or less) of daily calories. This can be problematic for certain bodybuilders. A total lack of fat in the human diet has bad side effects – loss of hair, slowed mental cognition and blotchy, dry skin. Bodybuilders that eliminate almost all fat need to use CapTri^® and Evening Primrose Oil^™. Fat helps satiate all types of cravings. I do not think that your sudden sweet tooth is mental or coincidental. The dietary problem with fat is that long chain triglycerides, LCTs, are easily converted into body fat. Since LCTs and stored body fat are almost identical insofar as chemical construction, the body has a very easy time converting LCTs into body fat. CapTri^® is a medium chain triglyceride. MCTs have a different molecular structure and are preferentially used by the body for energy or for muscle construction. It is a virtual impossibility for MCTs to end up stored as body fat. CapTri^® has a ‘sweet tooth’ deadening effect, just like saturated fat, but without the LCT tendency to end up stored as fat.

One very real solution to dampening sweet cravings while on a strict bodybuilding diet is to supplement with CapTri^® each and every day. The simplest way to incorporate CapTri^® is to drizzle a tablespoon over each of your multiple bodybuilding meals. CapTri^® can also be used as cooking oil. Try putting Butter Flavor CapTri^® on your baked potato for a real treat. I love fried potatoes, fish, omelets or flank steak cooked in CapTri^®. Use CapTri^® as you would use olive oil or vegetable oil. CapTri^® cooking allows you to put some taste back into often bland diet foods. I strongly suggest you start supplementing with Parrillo Evening Primrose Oil^™: take 1 or 2 capsules in the morning and another couple before bed. Start using some of the various Parrillo “Engineered Foods.” These Parrillo Products allow the hard dieting bodybuilder to create sweet treats that taste sugary yet contain no sugar. Have you tried Parrillo Pancakes^™? The only thing better than a stack of Parrillo Pancakes^™ for breakfast is a stack of Parrillo Pancakes^™ drizzled with a tablespoon of Butter-flavored CapTri^®. Pancakes with CapTri^® are absolutely delicious and completely acceptable for the early stages of a strict bodybuilding diet. Parrillo Muffins^™ are made from the same powdered mix as the pancakes: mix with a cup of water and bake at 350 degrees for 18-22 minutes. Not only do pancakes and muffins satiate the sweetest sweet tooth, each power-packed muffin delivers 15 grams of protein, 5 carb grams with zero saturated fat and zero sugar. Parrillo Pudding^™ is another favorite. Each pudding serving contains 12 grams of protein. Parrillo Cake mix^™ is my favorite Parrillo food: I make mine into a fluffy cake in a toaster oven by baking the cake for 20 minutes. Each cake contains 13 grams of high BV protein, 11 grams of slow-release carbs and again, no sugar.

The various Parrillo Energy Bars^™, Protein Bars^™ and Sport Nutrition Bars^™ make for terrific sweet treats and contain no sugar. The latest Parrillo food is the mind-blowing Protein Ice Kreem^™. Each serving contains 42g protein, only 2g carbs, 0g sugars and 0g fat. If you have an inexpensive ice cream maker (available at any Wal-Mart for around $40) you can eat a delicious, imitation ice cream that will satiate the sweetest sweet tooth. To sum up: Try adding CapTri^® and Evening Primrose Oil^® into your pre-competition diet plan; try incorporating the various Parrillo foods and try Parrillo Ice Kreem^™. Let’s save the $150 an hour a hypno-therapist would charge and redirect the savings towards purchasing a pile of potent Parrillo products. Let me know how this approach works out – I am convinced yours is not a mental problem, rather a lack-of-fat problem.

IV,

I need to shed 20 pounds of fat by beach season – I am 29 and while not a bodybuilder, I am a longtime lifter and a pretty good athlete. Could you recommend a Parrillo supplement program? I figure I can recoup about $100 a month by not buying beer, frozen foods, chips, candy and desserts. I am serious as a heart attack and will do whatever you lay out – I figure I have the training part down – I need a diet/supplement program to compliment my lifting and cardio. I am fit, strong and FAT! I stand 5-8 and weigh 225. I can bench press 350 and play hardcore, run-and-gun playground basketball five days a week. I want to get rocked out by beach season so the hot babes will give me a serious second look! I got plenty of muscles – hidden underneath my lard! Help a fat Brother out!

Darius, Port Royal

You are typical of a lot of really good athletes: they have the lifting and the cardio down pat – but the eating trips them up. You guys can run a marathon, lift a house and mess it all up by living on fast food, microwave food, pie, pizza, booze, chips, sweets and candy. The problem is that at age 29 you are active as hell and still chubby; at age 39 when you drop the ferocious b-ball playing, you will undoubtedly balloon up to 260 pounds and start having all kinds of health problems. Being a smart guy, you recognize this. You have likely seen this happen to your older brothers and cousins: when they were young and active they were strong and fit; when they stopped training they packed on 50-100 pounds of blubber. Unless you make some dramatic changes now, you could end up weighing 300 by age 65! Let’s figure out a way for you to shed that deadly fat and still stay bull strong. The first thing you will need to come to grips with is cooking: you need to prepare your own food. Buy some pots and pans, learn how to steam veggies, fry fish, potatoes and flank steak in CapTri^®. Roasting chicken breasts is easy as hell. Once you learn how to prepare the bodybuilder basic foods ahead of time, once you learn simplistic cooking skills, you can make enough food on a Sunday afternoon to last you for an entire week! I would suggest purchasing a canister of Parrillo Protein powder, either Optimized Whey^™ or Hi-Protein^™. Drink a shake in the morning and another shake before bed. I would buy a canister of 50/50 Plus^™ and drink a serving after every workout. A box of Parrillo bars^™ is a must: these are used to dampen sweet cravings. Finally I would suggest a bottle of Parrillo Liver Amino Formula^™ tablets. Cheap and incredibly effective, take 4-5 liver tabs four times a day. Keep blasting away in the weight room; keep up the basketball; learn how to prepare your own food; start firing down those tasty Parrillo supplements and shed thirty pounds of fat in three months! The beach babes will look at you, leer, and say, “Who is that?!”

Vic,

Is there a certain way an athlete should train? I read all the muscle magazines and have a pretty fair idea about how top bodybuilders train. I am a football player and wonder if I shouldn’t be training differently than a bodybuilder. I watch the Ultimate Fighter reality TV show and the mixed martial artists are doing lots of crazy training. Should I be training like them? I am a good player looking to add size and muscle. What would you advise?

Confused, Port Arthur

Good question. Let’s talk about two completely different types of strength. A competitive athlete should always seek size and strength from his weight training. Size relates to muscle density per inches of height. A football player standing 6 foot 2 inches in height and weighing 160 pounds will use weight training and heavy eating to add muscle to his too-thin frame. It makes no sense for the too-thin football player to add fifty pounds of bodyweight if forty pounds of the weight gain is body fat. This is where Parrillo-style nutrition comes into play: any athlete seeking to add size and muscle mass wants the lion’s share of his weight gain to be muscle gain. Eating ice cream and pizza, combined with intense weight training will add body weight – but the majority of the weight gain will be body fat. The ticket to lean muscle gain is confining your foods to lean protein, fibrous and starch carbs and minimizing the consumption of saturated fat. Jettison any and all manmade foods and refined foods. Smart nutrition is the foundation. Intense weight training combined with Parrillo-style nutrition is the cornerstone. There are two distinct types of strength all athletes need: absolute strength and sustained strength. Absolute strength is best exemplified by how much weight a man can pick up in a particular lift one time. If two athletes are the same height and weight and if one can bench press 300 pounds and deadlift 500, that athlete has a distinct athletic advantage over the other fellow the same height and weight that has a 150 pound bench press and a 250 pound deadlift. Athletic absolute strength is best expressed in the compound multi-joint exercises: squats, bench presses, deadlifts, power cleans, overhead barbell and dumbbell presses – absolute strength as exemplified by curls, flyes or any of the isolation exercises done on exercise machines are essentially useless on the playing field.

Compound multi-joint exercises require many muscles to work together and this type of coordinated strength carries over to the ball field, basketball court, wrestling mat or swimming pool. The serious athlete needs to eat right in order to ensure weight gain is muscle gain; the serious athlete needs to train right (using multi-joint exercises) to ensure absolute strength is developed, this type of strength carries over into their respective sport. All serious athletes also need to develop sustained strength: sustained strength allows the athlete to exert significant strength output for a protracted period of time. It is one thing to be able to exert maximally for a single rep in a short burst, but it is quite another for the athlete to be able to generate significant strength for a sustained period of time. The mixed martial artists you describe devote most of their training efforts towards acquiring sustained strength. To that end they engage in activities that seem crazy to the outside observer: they might flip over a 600 pound tire for dozens of reps, they might then repeatedly hit the giant tire with a sledgehammer for hundreds of reps. They will push a wheelbarrow loaded with barbell plates up a steep grade, they will perform clean and jerks for 2-5 minutes straight or throw heavy medicine balls for time and distance. The MMA artist seeks to train his body to be able to generate significant strength late into a fight.

Ideally the modern cross-trained athlete eats like a bodybuilder – this ensures maximum muscle gain and minimal body fat gain. Ideally the modern cross-trained athlete trains to acquire absolute strength: this pure power is expressed in his ability to handle massive poundage for low reps in the basic movements. Ideally the modern cross-trained athlete trains to acquire sustained strength. One way to build sustained strength is to make use of the Parrillo 100-rep Extended Set. John has his athletes roll through five, 20-rep sets using five consecutive exercises. The 100-rep set attacks the same body part without any pause or rest in between the five different exercises. Three to five 100-rep cycles done back to back builds incredible amounts of sustained strength. Naturally if you have access to weight-laden wheelbarrows, massive tires or heavy medicine balls put these weighted tools and implements to good use. Finally, remember the old athletic adage: when everything else is equal, a good BIG man beats a good LITTLE man every time. The reason they have weight divisions in boxing, wrestling and Mixed Martial Arts is because when skills are equal, a large muscular athlete will overwhelm a similarly skilled smaller athlete every single time. In athletics, size does matter. Every serious athlete should seek to add muscular size while staying lean; every serious athlete should seek to increase his absolute strength while simultaneously seeking to increase his sustained strength – do not build one type of strength to the exclusion of the other type. Train in such a way that you build both absolute strength and sustained strength. This way you will have the strength to run over or knock the snot out of a football opponent and keep it up for four consecutive quarters! Become that good BIG MAN!