When it comes to fitness-related nutrition, things are made way more complex then they need to be. What should be the ultimate goal of a nutritional game plan?
The studied use and diligent application of applied nutrition should enhance the user’s ability to build new muscle and aide in the mobilization and oxidation of stored body fat. That’s the irreducible goal of Purposefully Primitive nutrition.
I champion two diametrically opposed nutritional approaches: the classical Parrillo Nutritional Program and the deservedly popular Warrior Diet. It would be impossible to find two more dissimilar approaches towards the studied use of food and drink. I feel absolutely zero compunction about squaring this nutritional circle: to me each dietary approach represents a mighty tool in the nutritional toolbox—in fact, likely the only two dietary tools you’ll ever need. Both approaches are effective arrows in the nutritional quiver. Both methods work—of this there can be no doubt. There are far too many flesh-and-blood examples of transformed adherents…elite athletes, military Special Forces members, regular people, the obese…literally legions of adherents have used each dietary approach and reaped incredible benefits.
A sound nutritional plan magnifies and amplifies the exercise effort. Expert use of nutrition revitalizes and regenerates the body. Proper nutrition provides the body the ample amounts of beneficial nutrients needed for the construction of new muscle tissue. The expert usage of targeted nutrition accelerates the healing and recovery process. Food (and rest) helps dampen the after-training body shock, the self-inflicted physical trauma that envelops an athlete after a hardcore weight training session or an intense aerobic workout.
I recommend two diametrically opposed nutritional approaches: each one successfully stakes out a logical dietary extreme. In relation to one another, these two strategies are black and white, thesis and antithesis, Yin and Yang. The Parrillo approach is based upon bodybuilding methodology and its philosophy of food relies on the continual consumption of meals throughout the day. The Warrior Diet has a military pedigree and its philosophy of food is to eat a single, major daily meal. I think you would agree that that is one hell of a philosophic chasm.
The Parrillo nutritional system requires the individual eat selected foods in a continual stream of calorically equalized mini-meals. The meals are consumed at equidistant intervals throughout the day. In bodybuilding, at all levels, this approach (or structurally similar nutritional plans) is used to near exclusion. The Parrillo system demands tremendous attention to detail: foods are often weighed or measured and detailed exercise and nutrition logs are kept. Intense physical training is integral to the Parrillo nutritional philosophy. Precision eating actually amplifies training results. Athletes today are demonstrably larger and stronger than in decades gone by, due in large part to a superior understanding of the role of nutrition. Used correctly, nutrition can make a fat person lean, a thin person muscular or a good athlete great.
The Warrior Diet protocol is based on the principle of “intermittent fasting.” The goal is to awaken long dormant primordial hardwiring by detoxifying the body. The Warrior Diet creates a daily anabolic burst. Daytime fasting is followed by nighttime feasting. Warrior protocol insists followers do not eat after awaking from the sleep cycle. The previous night’s sleep is actually the start of the next day’s fast. Not eating breakfast allows the Warrior Dieter to continue the nighttime detoxification process nature has already set in motion. By not eating during the day, the poisoned body is allowed to detoxify itself. By not eating, primordial defense and survival mechanisms are reawakened. Eat all natural foods and if possible, eat organic. Low-glycemic, chemically-free foods are used whenever possible. Detoxification is a huge part of the Warrior Diet philosophy: Ori Hofmekler presents a compelling case that we are a poisoned race in need of remedial detoxification.
Each of these two magnificent nutritional systems is rooted in science, biology and logic. Both have hordes of transformed followers. The Parrillo nutritional system came out of the elite competitive bodybuilding tradition while the Warrior Diet emerged from an austere military tradition. Each approach is admittedly extreme. If mild methods worked we’d all be lean and muscular. Each approach has proven itself effective at forcing and tricking the body to mobilize and convert stored body fat into energy to fuel physical activity. Both approaches proclaim that regimented eating and intense physical training are inseparable. Food is used to nourish and heal a body continually reeling from the bone-crushing, hypertrophy-inducing weight workouts and the near daily cardio sessions both systems insist on.
Fad diets live in a vacuum. Regimented dieting without a coordinated exercise regimen will only take you so far. Fad diet books place all the emphasis on food content and not enough on dietary structure. Almost every diet plan spends an inordinate amount of time telling you what you can and cannot eat. Few food strategies take into account meal size, meal timing, how different foods interact with one another, when eaten in combination, or the impact of intense exercise on the overall dietary effort.
Both Parrillo and Warrior recognize and purposefully create windows of opportunity. These windows are fertile metabolic states created by using a specific set of diet and exercise procedures. Create the window then take advantage of this contrived physiological anomaly by consuming a precise combination of nutrients. Periodization principles are applied to weight training, aerobic training and nutrition to create physical momentum.
Our Purposefully Primitive approach is to select one of these terrific nutritional systems and give it a test ride for a protracted period. Purposeful Primitives apply periodization principles to both exercise and nutrition, enabling the user to stair-step upwards towards a predetermined physical goal. Elite athletes always have a goal. So should you. Place the goal within the context of a periodized timeline. How do you eat an elephant? You eat the elephant one bite at a time. We transform the body one periodized step at a time.
If the Parrillo Nutritional Program were to be encapsulated in a single sound-bite, it could be: eat seven times a day.
If the Warrior Diet were to be encapsulated in a single sound-bite, it could be, eat seven times a week.
The philosophical differences could not be more profound. My sound-bite encapsulation of each system is a purposeful oversimplification. Within each system exists a universe of nuanced exceptions, subtleties, shades of grey, provisos and adaptations to the general rules, all based upon particular or peculiar individual situations. As with any fluid philosophy, success is based on the individual’s ability to adapt the general guidelines.
Now for a reality check: There is no sense getting fired up about using the Parrillo Nutritional System if circumstance prevents you from preparing and eating multiple meals. There is no sense becoming enamored with the Warrior Diet approach if you cannot or will not limit daytime eating.
John Parrillo has guided thousands of competitive athletes through his process over the last three decades. Ori Hofmekler has an army of adherents. Both men have infused their respective approaches with a streak of practicality that comes from having obtained real results for real people in real life situations. These men do not live in a vacuum: they make their livings transforming people. Both are extremely successful because they are extremely adept at what they do.
How can I recommend two systems so diametrically opposed? Extreme opposites set up the tantalizing possibility of cyclical rotation. Both inventors would disagree and rightly state that enough contrast and variation exist within each system to ensure year round use without any need to resort to any other dietary approach. If your personality, needs or situation are such that one system or the other is all you need or want, then by all means, stick with that lone system in perpetuity. On the other hand, to use another hackneyed yet appropriate analogy, variety is the eternal spice of life.
Because of the immense chasm between the two approaches, a profoundly beneficial possibility emerges, that of dramatic contrast. If the chosen nutritional system is eventually neutralized by the amazingly adaptive human body, then leaping to the other extreme could jolt the body back into motion. If change sufficiently contrasts the status quo, progress can be reignited.
These two systems are the epitome of thesis and antithesis. The contrast between the two systems could not be greater; they differ to such a dramatic degree that their periodic rotation could be used to create a cyclical synthesis.
Do you have to rotate these systems? No. As a matter of fact each man behind his system would recommend you not do so. As a battle-scarred Purposeful Primitive I know that no one system trumps all others and that every mode and method, no matter how clever or sophisticated eventually ceases delivering results. The founders of each of these systems have addressed the issue of contrast within the confines of their particular system: I periodically choose to step completely outside of whatever nutritional or exercise box I am currently in. I have found that periodic dietary rotation can be beneficial. Necessary? No. Mandatory? No. However I could think of no better alternative system to take up, were I using one system and it ceased delivering results. Eat seldom or eat often, but do so in a regimented fashion. Clean up the food selections and learn how to prepare your own food. Learn how to infuse taste into “diet foods” and learn how to be patient and methodical. Four weeks is a reasonable amount of time to commit to for a nutritional test ride. If mild methods produced radical results we’d all be ripped: radical methods yield radical results. Time to get nutritionally radical.
John Parrillo is a true master of bodybuilding nutrition. John is the steadfast revolutionary. Brilliant, iconoclastic, intense, enigmatic, articulate, occasionally abrasive, Parrillo is above all else an innovator. Radical postulations come easy to this guy. Back in the late 70s Parrillo became enamored with the idea that a competitive bodybuilder, seeking to grow as large and lean as humanely possible, should eat massive amounts of quality food on a consistent daily basis. Massive caloric intake would “underpin” the blisteringly intense weight training and savage cardiovascular training that he routinely proscribed. Parrillo’s postulations were considered heretical when he first presented them. At the time, the late 1970’s and early 1980’s, bodybuilding was having an identity crisis: men like Frank Zane and Chris Dickerson, small guys with lots of defined muscles, were winning the biggest titles in bodybuilding. In the early 80’s Chris Dickerson won the Olympia one year with a 16.5 inch arm! Parrillo, a native of Cincinnati, Ohio was a power-lifter dumbstruck by the gargantuan physiques of the oversized, brutish lifters. John marveled at the elite lifters’ sheer size. How did they get so big? He wondered. He noted that humongous power-lifters hoisted huge poundage for low reps in a limited number of basic barbell exercises. They trained infrequently. Their training sessions were extremely heavy and extremely intense. Afterwards top lifters would rest for days. Parrillo also marveled at how much food these men ate—their appetites and capacities were gluttonous.
Parrillo deduced that extremely heavy weight training combined with extremely heavy eating (powerlifters ate thousands and thousands calories at a single sitting) would result in tremendous gains in muscular size and strength. On the downside, the indiscriminant consumption of calories was a health catastrophe: pizza, pasta, cheese, fried foods, saturated fat, sugar, Jack Daniels and beer were seemingly the staples of the powerlifter’s diet. Massive caloric intake combined with hardcore power training built massive muscles: Parrillo pondered long and hard on how best to improve and refine upon this profound premise.
Bodybuilders of the day turned up their collective noses up at the idea that there might be anything of the slightest interest to be learned from thuggish “power oafs.” Parrillo thought that shortsighted and mused, “What if bodybuilders expropriated the training tactics of the powerlifter and copied their massive ingestion of calories? How do we replicate the powerlifter’s massive muscle size - yet somehow manage to stay lean and fat free?
At the time top bodybuilders engaged in endlessly long weight training sessions using light weights and high reps. Sessions were long and drawn out. The standardized training protocol was to perform 20 sets per body part. This, it was thought, would sculpt and refine muscles. The elite bodybuilders weight trained twice a day, six-days-a-week, using the mind-numbing “double split” routine. Parrillo thought this training approach was a physiological dead end. What if bodybuilders were to cut back on training volume while radically upping the poundage? Reduce the reps, start slinging some serious iron and after these bar-bending sessions ended, feed the body huge amounts of food—good food, beneficial foods. Instead of eating all the day’s calories in two or three mega-meals, spread the calories out, eat 5-7 times a day, and reduce the caloric intake at any one time. Eat equalized mini-meals spaced at periodic intervals throughout the day.
What if, Parrillo postulated, instead of consuming gobs of calorie-dense saturated fat, insulin-spiking sugar, refined carbs galore and beer by the case—what if food selections were limited to “quality” food sources? Lean fat-free protein, fibrous vegetables, starchy carbohydrates—and little else. Eat massively but eat “clean,” a descriptive adjective denoting a food or beverage devoid (or nearly devoid) of saturated fat, sugar, or insulin-spiking tendencies. A chicken breast is a clean food whereas a fat-laden piece of prime rib is “dirty.” The food selections become more discriminating: Dirty calories are replaced with clean calories.
Heavy power training would stimulate muscular growth and the consumption of copious clean calories would accelerate recovery and trigger anabolism. The only foods allowed would be those foods preferentially partitioned into muscle construction or used for energy production. Parrillo would have his trainees eat big, but avoid foods preferentially partitioned into body fat. The goal was to create a new generation of gargantuan bodybuilders: 250 pound monsters with single digit body fat percentiles. Parrillo proceeded to change his own eating and training habits. In no time at all his body exploded with growth: by combining heavy power training with clean mini-meal mega-eating, he transformed his own physique in a matter of months. He set state powerlifting records. The bodybuilders that trained at his gym wanted to know what he had done to trigger such a dramatic transformation in such a remarkably short period of time. He soon found himself in the role of a muscle guru, structuring the diets of competitive bodybuilders. Being detailed by nature, he began systematizing his embryonic philosophy.
Every single time a bodybuilder working under John’s auspice fully adopted the Parrillo approach, the bodybuilder became significantly larger and significantly leaner. By the early 1980’s Parrillo’s “bodybuilder preparation” services were in tremendous demand. Bodybuilders were beating down his door seeking his services. He would design the bodybuilder a customized pre-contest nutritional game plan. In some instances he oversaw training sessions. He became a master at plotting progress and making critical in-flight adjustments and course corrections. Men that had been stuck at a particular level of physical development for years, men consigned and resigned to placing in the middle of the pack at state and regional competitions, suddenly added 30 pounds of muscle while simultaneously losing body fat.
Losers became winners.
The word spread as Parrillo’s fleet of bodybuilders began wiping the floor with the competition at the local, regional and national level. Soon IFBB professional bodybuilders began seeking his dietary counsel. Several Olympia winners surreptitiously used his products and sought his nutritional guidance. This was on the QT as the Olympia winners were all under exclusive endorsement contracts to giant supplement makers. They endorsed products they did not use. Word spread to the muscle magazines: there was talk of a mystical muscle guru who was using natural methods to obtain supernatural results for men already at 98% of their genetic potential. The underground magician went mainstream. He began penning a column in one of the world’s premier bodybuilder publications. The word was out and a revolution gained traction.
Parrillo received a lot of flack from defenders of the status quo. Not everyone was enamored with the idea of 260 pound mega-monsters with 4% body fat percentiles. Bodybuilding opinion makers were fine with the idea of a diminutive David being judged a better bodybuilder than a Farnese Hercules. Eventually the bodybuilding public grew restive and demanded changes in judging criterion. Up until the revolt, massively developed, ripped to the bone bodybuilders like 250 pound Bertil Fox were relegated to sixth place, losing to men Arnold once described as “chickens with 17” arms.” All this changed when the fans essentially took to the streets to demand change.
The era of the muscle monster had arrived and John Parrillo was Doctor Frankenstein.
Parrillo is an odd mix: simultaneously a cutting-edge revolutionary and an Old School throwback. He is a revolutionary in that nothing in the world of bodybuilding was ever the same after his high calorie thesis took root. He boldly proclaimed that an athlete could “build the metabolism” and teach the body how to handle ever increasing amounts of calories and do so without getting fat. He was immediately set upon by the bodybuilding ruling class. They labeled his pronouncements about being able to eat upwards of 10,000 calories a day and not get fat as “Insane!” It defied the laws of thermodynamics, they screamed, to insist that anyone could eat that much food and not have vast portions shuttled into fat storage. Had it been the Middle Ages, this heretic would have been burned at the stake.
Parrillo’s pronouncements were greeted with the equivalent of the Bronx cheer by defenders of the prevailing orthodoxy. In assembly-line fashion he just kept churning out bigger and leaner bodybuilders. The professional bodybuilders took notice and were a lot more receptive to Parrillo’s ideas than the opinion makers, the supplement manufacturers or the magazine article writers. Athletes continually seek out new avenues of progress and elite athletes will try any crazy substance, training tactic, idea or approach they believe might give them a leg up over the competition. The Parrillo precepts made sense to them. Top competitive bodybuilders noted that after having starved down for a competition, (the accepted contest preparation orthodoxy of the time) when “regular” food was reintroduced into their post-competition eating, after being so drained and depleted for so long, they blew up, often gaining 10-20 pounds within 36 hours of the competition-without any loss in muscle clarity, definition or delineation.
The “super compensation” phenomenon was widely noted among the elite and tied in nicely to Parrillo’s talk about “windows of opportunity.” The elite bodybuilders were equally receptive to Parrillo’s theories about elevating the metabolic thermostat using specific combinations of nutrition and exercise. Parrillo had confirmed the elite bodybuilders’ unarticulated suspicions. John Parrillo had bottled bodybuilding lighting: he had figured out how to manipulate the metabolism through the expert use of regular food.
Parrillo preached that to ratchet up the metabolism the bodybuilder should eat 5 to 8 times a day. Multiple meals, “feedings” should be spaced at equidistant intervals and only approved foods should be eaten. These foods would be eaten in certain combinations. The continual intake of quality nutrients would stoke the fires of the metabolic furnace. Over a protracted period of time, more calories could and would be consumed at each feeding. Mini-meals were to be eaten every two to three hours. The idea was to never overload the digestive system at any one meal. By spreading the day’s calories out in a never ending succession of mini-meals, the bodybuilder’s digestive system would become adept at digesting, distributing and utilizing quality nutrients. Parrillo pointed out that the metabolism accelerates when forced to digest certain foods. i.e., lean protein and fibrous carbohydrates. The conscientious consumption of ample amounts of lean, fat free protein and fibrous carbohydrates form the backbone of the Parrillo nutritional approach. Saturated fat, sugar and alcohol are eliminated under Parrillo guidelines. Foods that spike insulin are verboten. The highly systematized Parrillo nutritional approach is disciplined, demanding and effective. The bodybuilders of the 1980’s loved it: the orthodox dietary procedure of the day was to starve. Now they were told to eat and eat a lot. They were gleeful and ecstatic.
By eating throughout the day the bodybuilder established Positive Nitrogen Balance and stayed in a state of perpetual anabolism. PNB is created by eating an ample amount of calories. While in PNB muscle growth is possible—not that it occurs in and of itself, but the growth field is made fertile. If while in PNB an intense weight workout is undertaken, hypertrophy occurs. To spike the metabolism consume multiple mini-meals comprised entirely of quality nutrients. Avoid high glycemic foods and avoid refined foods and manmade foods. Engage in intense exercise. Over time the metabolic set-point will be ratcheted upward. “Building the metabolism” is the central tenet of the Parrillo Philosophy. The best analogy for building the metabolism is building and maintaining a blazing fire. If dry hardwood logs are used (quality food fuel) the fire burns hot and intense. If every few hours new hardwood logs are thrown onto the already blazing metabolic fire, the fire is kept blazing and all the logs are burned completely. The hotness of the fire ensures no partially burnt logs remain.
The metabolism is ignited in the morning by eating a quality food meal. The metabolism is then kept blazing throughout the day. The competitive bodybuilder teaches the body to expect food every 2-3 hours. By never overwhelming the digestive system at any one time, by using foods difficult to partition into fat storage, by eating foods difficult to digest, the metabolism is forced to periodically elevate. Intense exercise elevates an already elevated metabolism. The bodily thermostat is raised repeatedly by ingesting specific foods at specific times and by engaging in intense weight training and intense cardiovascular exercise. The metabolism is stimulated in some manner or fashion every few waking hours.
Champion bodybuilders can consume 8,000 calories a day, spread over five to eight meals, and not gain an ounce of fat. They have worked up to this massive caloric intake over a protracted period of time. They avoid foods that deaden or make the metabolism sluggish and eat upwards of 50 mini-meals each week. Every two to three hours the body burns through its current supply of food/fuel and the bodybuilder becomes ravenous for more food/fuel. Over a protracted period of time the size of the meals is imperceptibly increased. This enables the bodybuilder to grow additional muscle without adding body fat in the process.
It is far better, Parrillo postulates, to ingest 5,000 clean calories per day spread over seven meals of 700 calorie apiece than to consume 3,000 dirty calories eaten in three 1,000 calorie chunks at breakfast, lunch and dinner. Parrillo bans nutrients easily and preferentially partitioned into body fat. The multiple-meal eating schedule uses only approved foods. He insists that each of his students have a long-term nutritional game plan and track progress daily by logging each meal they consume. Parrillo has competitive bodybuilders weigh their food, counting grams of protein, carbohydrate, fat, sugar and sodium. Food intake is tweaked and manipulated to an infinitesimal degree…
Parrillo created the BodyStat Kit—a nine-point skin-fold pinch test used to determine body fat percentiles. The kit consists of a set of skin-fold calipers and log sheets. Each week the bodybuilder checks his/her body composition: the fat to muscle ratio. To maximize increases in muscular size and stimulate decreases in body fat, adjustments are made weekly in both diet and exercise. The BodyStat results act as the ultimate weekly benchmark. While skin-fold calipers might not be 100% accurate, when used properly the body fat measurements obtained using calipers are quite accurate and more importantly create a terrific benchmark for week to week comparison and analysis.
In 1985 Parrillo began producing potent, customized supplements for his growing army of competitive bodybuilders. The supplements of the day were pathetic. Weak, lacking potency, loaded with sugar to make the wretched concoctions palatable, Parrillo devised an armada of powerful supplements: his goal was potency. He needed powerful natural products to augment the training and nutritional efforts of his competitive bodybuilders. His nutritional system continued to evolve as he worked with an ever wider range of clientele: athletes from different sports, all with differing needs and goals; Bodybuilders at every level were seeking Parrillo’s counsel. They wanted to learn how best to maximize muscle mass while melting off body fat. Regular people began using modified versions of his elite methods with great results.
Thirty years down the road and Parrillo has become an institution. His corporate headquarters are sleek and expansive. His supplements are manufactured onsite. He has an onsite research lab and custom mixes and constructs his products. He exerts maximum control over the integrity and potency of his already potent products and this allegiance to product potency has created a legion of fans and followers. He remains as inscrutable and innovative as ever.
John’s advice is unbending and consistent: eat lots of clean, quality calories that contain extremely low levels of saturated fat. Eliminate sugar and alcohol and high glycemic foods. Train a lot. Train intensely in both weight training and cardiovascular training. Settle in for three full months. Let us set up a hypothetical situation to illustrate how a full-bore Parrillo nutritional game plan would lay out and look on paper. We will assume our hypothetical athlete is intent on adding muscle mass and has the time and inclination to commit fully and completely to the comprehensive Parrillo approach. In the perfect Parrillo World, the athlete wakes up early and before breakfast performs aerobic exercise for 40 to 60 minutes, five or six days a week. The athlete weight trains in the evening for 50 to 70 minutes, four to six times per week.
Three times a day (with meals) he ingests the following Parrillo pills and tablets: Beef Liver Amino tabs, Vitamin C & E, Mineral Electrolyte, Essential Vitamin formula, Muscle Amino capsules and Creatine Monohydrate. The Parrillo MCT oil, CapTri is used to kick up the “clean calorie” count of each meal. The athlete trains hard and eats often, consuming loads of lean, low fat protein. A portion of fibrous vegetables is eaten with every food meal, as is a portion of starchy carb. Fiber consumption dampens the insulin spike associated with starch. Protein intake is pegged at 1 to 1.5 grams of protein per pound of body weight per day.
Our hypothetical athlete weights 200 pounds and intakes 200 to 300 grams of protein each day in order to “support” intense weight training and cardiovascular training. Cardio is done first thing in the morning to create a fat burning window of opportunity. The window opens upon waking and stays open until food is eaten. Another window of opportunity opens after intense weight training and lasts roughly one hour. A smart-bomb shake, Parrillo 50-50 Plus, is consumed after training. Every 2-3 hours nutrients are consumed to stoke the already blazing metabolic fire.
Muscle gain and fat loss are controlled by hormones, i.e. chemical signals sent out by the endocrine glands. These signals direct and control the body’s metabolism. The hypothalamus gland has a regulating “set point” that decides how much body fat we will carry. Insulin is the body’s most powerful anabolic hormone and transports glucose and amino acids into cells. Insulin is required to trigger muscle growth and its hormonal opposite is glucagon, a protein hormone secreted by the Islets of Langerhans. Glucagon increases the content of sugar in the blood by increasing the rate of breakdown of glycogen in the liver. Glucagon moves glucose and amino acids out of the liver and into the bloodstream when blood sugar plummets. These two pancreatic hormones work together to provide uniform blood glucose levels.
The good news is that the respective levels of insulin and glucagon, the insulin/glucagon axis, are determined solely by diet. We can exert an amazing degree of control over each of these hormones through modification of our dietary habits. The Parrillo Performance Nutritional Program is designed to take advantage of this fact and keep insulin and glucagon at precise levels to ensure maximal muscle acquisition and maximal body fat oxidation. Insulin can be a powerful stimulus for body fat accumulation by storing fat inside cells as well as storing protein inside cells. In the Parrillo approach, meals are constructed in such a way as to release carbohydrates into the bloodstream slowly. Lowered insulin minimizes the accumulation of additional body fat.
While glucagon stimulates body fat breakdown (lipolysis) its actions are mostly confined to the liver. Glucagon is released from the pancreas and transported to the liver via the portal vein. Glucagon is not a potent stimulator of lipolysis in peripheral body fat storage compartments. However when intense exercise is introduced into the hormonal equation, epinephrine, also known as adrenaline, is secreted. Epinephrine is the body’s most powerful stimulus for fat breakdown. We keep the insulin/glucagon ratio in check through precision eating. Intense exercise causes epinephrine to surge into the system, mediated by a sympathetic discharge in the adrenal medulla. This mobilizes fat from adipose tissue to provide energy.
Under normal conditions epinephrine is delivered to fat cells by direct innervations of fat cells by the sympathetic nervous system. Epinephrine release is increased dramatically during intense exercise. Epinephrine binds to receptors on fat cells and generates a metabolite called “cyclic AMP” or cAMP. This binding causes AMP to activate an enzyme called protein kinase—which in turn activates another enzyme known as Hormone Sensitive Lipase. HSL breaks down triglycerides (the molecular form in which body fat is stored) into free fatty acids (FFAs) and glycerol. The FFAs leave the fat cell and are carried by the blood to the muscle where they are burned for energy. We keep the insulin/glucagon axis under control via precision eating and use intense exercise to mobilize free fatty acids. If you were to lose weight strictly by cutting calories precipitously, half the weight loss would be muscle loss!
In the continually shifting and expanding universe of performance-related nutrition, Ori Hofmekler offers up a nutritional philosophy unlike anything I have ever encountered in my 40+ years of study on the role of food in the transformational process. Hofmekler contends that we eat the wrong foods at the wrong times. He further postulates that as a species we have never “adapted” to the manufactured foods that so dominate modern man’s diet. The human body was never designed to utilize the detrimental types of foods we routinely consume. Ori asserts we are a poisoned species, at least in the Western World, and detoxification is critical. He melds his unusual nutritional theories with an equally unusual approach towards exercise: his is an ambitious exercise protocol aimed at transforming the actual composition of muscle fiber. Ori Hofmekler is a visionary and a thinker; his writings on optimal human archetype are fascinating and thought provoking. He is part anthropologist, part military historian, part scientist, part soldier and part artist.
Ori has made a lifelong study of how best to renovate the human body. His is extremely knowledgeable and opinionated on the subject of food toxicity and how best to detoxify. Much of his approach is about recreating and reintroducing primordial physical attributes we as a species have lost. He reaches back in time; back into man’s evolutionary past, searching for clues and methods. Ori has done extensive research on primordial man’s food selections and dietary habits looking for answers to modern maladies. Is it a coincidence, he asks that man stopped evolving as a species in about the same time that modern agriculture was introduced? Modern agriculture led to the widespread consumption of high glycemic foods. For the first time in human history farm-raised grains were configured and eaten in a variety of ways. Ori points out that as a species we never “adapted” to high GI food. Any time we consume insulin-spiking nutrients it produces a detrimental effect on the body.
Ori contends we compound continual caloric overload with chemical poisoning. Artificial, chemically-drenched foods devoid of quality nutrients make up a large part of the modern American diet. Highly glycemic foods pickled in chemicals are not merely empty calories they are toxic calories. The over consumption of impure foods interferes with the human body’s inherent cleansing and fat burning mechanisms. Ori outlines the problems and offers tough love solutions. As you might expect from an ex-Israeli commando, his physical and nutritional solutions are not for low-pain tolerance, politically correct sissies.
Ori writes at length on what he believes is a huge undiagnosed societal problem: estrogenic poisoning. A fast food outlet recently introduced a single sandwich containing 1400 calories and 100 grams of saturated fat. The cumulative effect of eating highly processed, highly estrogenic foods is not a pretty sight. Go to the food court at any local mall and observe the preponderance of obese, obviously sickly individuals… men… women… children. Innumerable modern maladies can be traced back to the artificial, highly processed, chemically-loaded foods we eat and the sedentary lifestyles we lead. Is it any wonder, Hofmekler asks, that obesity, cancer, diabetes and heart disease are epidemic? Is it any wonder that for the first time in American history, children, on account of their dietary habits and sedentary lifestyles, are not expected to live as long as their out-of-shape parents? His messianic-tinged prophetic postulations are a natural outgrowth of his eclectic background.
Ori Hofmekler is an iconoclastic eclectic by any yardstick or benchmark you care to apply. Raised in Israel, he was identified as a child prodigy-a painter. He pursued art and was touted and awarded at every stage of his artistic career. As a teenager, he joined the army and became a Special Forces commando. After his military service, he pursued his passion for art while simultaneously obtaining a degree in biology. His art career took off and his work was soon featured in The New York Times, US News and World Report, Rolling Stone, Time, Newsweek, Der Spiegel and Playboy, to name but a few. Catch 22 author, Joseph Heller, labeled Hofmekler, “The world’s foremost political satirical painter.”
In a cruel twist of fate, Ori’s art career was derailed when (Beethoven-like) he began to lose his eyesight. He was forced to quit painting or risk permanent blindness.
Since childhood Ori has been fascinated by the exploits and attributes of ancient warriors. He was enthralled by ancient military cultures and studied the lifestyles, physical abilities and the training techniques of ancient warriors-particularly the Roman Legions at the apex of their military dominance. After years of intense study on the Roman Warrior culture, Ori came to a counterintuitive conclusion that the ancient fighters would best our modern soldiers were head-to-head military competitions possible. How had he arrived at this strange conclusion? Ancient warriors possessed rare skills and physical attributes. Their physiques and capacities were built as a direct result of their daily routines and dietary habits. Ancient warrior skills were broader then the specialized skills of the modern elite athlete.
Ori developed a unique approach towards training that actually sought to replicate the physical abilities and attributes possessed by ancient Roman Legionaries. He melded modern tools with esoteric exercise protocols to create Controlled Fatigue Training. CFT was designed to recreate ancient warrior capabilities and capacities.
Hofmekler’s optimal physical archetype is a military archetype, not an athletic archetype, and while there are many similarities between the optimal athlete and the optimal soldier, there are considerable differences in both capacity and capability. Ori’s optimal military archetype developed a functional physique, shaped in response to the daily demands placed on the foot soldier forced to carry heavy armor and weaponry for long distances. Ori’s CFT training improves specific capacities in order to improve overall function: his training seeks to meld strength with endurance. Training for sustained strength results in the formation of additional mitochondria within the working muscle Hofmekler’s ultimate goal, the construction of a retro military archetype, is in dramatic contrasted to the “vanity motivation” common to mainstream fitness.
“Fitness cannot and should not be about simply seeking to look better in the mirror. Nor should it be solely about feeling better or adding muscle for the beach. Nor should it be about losing body fat to attract members of the opposite sex. Fitness-related endeavors and efforts should be directed towards creating a functional body, one with enhanced survival skills. As a species we are degrading and degenerating. “
His initial efforts and postulations were met with intense skepticism by the fitness establishment. However, the amazing results obtained by individuals who followed his comprehensive system generated widespread interest among elite athletes, law enforcement officers and military professionals.
Ori Hofmekler’s contentions and assertions flew in the face of every prevailing fitness and nutritional orthodoxy. Philosophically, his was an entirely new approach on how best to favorably alter and reconfigure the human body. His prototypical archetype was a throwback, a purposefully primitive replication of what we were (in a heartier age) as a species. Warrior attributes could and should be built using modern methodologies. His throwback methods were designed to construct a modern man able to function and flourish in our pressurized, industrialized society. A man with superior capabilities and capacities; a detoxified man, a man possessing ancient warrior attributes: a formidable man by any measure
“I was always interested in ancient warrior archetypes. I was convinced the ancients were superior in many ways to modern man and that as a species the ancients were better survivors.”
Hofmekler developed highly formalized ideas about what we should eat, when we should eat, and how much we should eat. We cannot gorge for years (or decades) on artificial, processed, highly refined foods containing noxious elements, without consequence. If fed a continual diet of food garbage, over time we destroy ourselves: Super Size Me. Ori takes aim at everyone and everything: he feels soy products (flooding the market today) are toxic, worse than processed foods. Soy, Ori contends, causes the body to over-produce estrogen. Too much estrogen in the body creates a variety of health problems, including cancer and obesity
Estrogen infects and poisons much of our food sources. Estrogen thrives in our toxic environment. The rampant use of petroleum-based pesticides, according to Hofmekler, “has castrated our soil and water.” The plants and animals we feed on now are pale imitations of the potent produce and chemically-free live stock consumed prior to 1950. Ori feels estrogenic poisoning of our food, water and environment potentially threatens our future existence as a species. Female infertility and male impotency rates have skyrocketed since 1950. In the industrialized Western World estrogenic poisoning, according to Ori, is a widespread yet relatively undiagnosed societal malady.
He wrote The Anti-Estrogenic Diet to help people suffering from undiagnosed estrogenic poisoning. He devised an entire food philosophy designed to lower estrogen. He identifies estrogenic foods and identifies anti-estrogenic foods. Ori shows those suffering from Type II diabetes, hypertension, digestive disorders, cardiovascular disease and insulin-related blood sugar problems how to alleviate their condition through the use of precision nutrition. Hofmekler identifies an arsenal of estrogenic inhibitors including flavonoids and mysterious plant compounds that have been shown to possess powerful anti-oxidant/anti-carcinogenic/anti-estrogenic properties. Conjugated linoleic acid, indoles and lignans shift estrogen metabolites into the production of anti-estrogenic metabolites.
Ori approaches food from a completely unique angle: while the rest of the civilized world says, “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day.” Ori says, “Bah Humbug! Breakfast sucks! Don’t eat it! Allow the natural detoxification process that commenced the previous night to continue on into the next day.” Eat little if anything during the day. Avoid breakfast, particularly a chemically-laden breakfast of highly estrogenic and high glycemic foods. Allow the body to continue the natural detoxification process already underway. Then at night eat a single major meal, a veritable feast, with ample amounts of low glycemic, all natural, preferably organic food, food free of petroleum-based pesticides and chemical preservatives. If the body is allowed to operate without being continually overloaded or poisoned, primordial protective mechanisms are reawakened and allowed to work as Nature intended. Body fat is used for energy, detoxification occurs, metabolic balance is established and the body reestablishes ancient circadian rhythms and patterns. Modern man needs to reawaken dormant, primitive, protective circuitry and hardwiring.
In The Warrior Diet and The Anti-Estrogenic Diet Ori contends we should eat far less food and eat natural foods free of chemicals and preservatives. Regular exercise amplifies results. He contends that we should consume foods, “lower on the food chain,” foods eaten by man before our evolutionary apex was reached. Ori suggests that nuts, seeds, fruits and vegetables were a large part of the primordial man’s diet and are extremely beneficial for modern man. He recommends a heavy intake of cruciferous vegetables: broccoli, cabbage, collards, kale, rutabaga, Swedish turnips, seakale, turnips, radishes, rapeseed, cauliflower, canola, mustard, horseradish, wasabi and watercress—along with fibrous vegetables such as asparagus, green beans, carrots, bell peppers, onions, cucumbers, egg plant, lettuce, spinach and Zucchini squash. Seeds and nuts are also highly recommended. Organic meats and free-range fowl trump steroidal-infused beef and poultry. Low glycemic foods are always preferred. All natural and (if possible) organic foods should replace artificially produced, chemically-loaded foods. He views refined carbs as mildly poisonous.
Ori’s ultimate human archetype is a warrior archetype possessing a certain combination of physical attributes. Acquiring these attributes results in the construction of a certain type of physique. CFT training is designed to create such a physique. The Hofmekler protocol purposefully blends strength training with endurance training. His physical ideal possesses ancient warrior attributes. Warriors were required to exert sustained strength for extended periods of time during hand-to-hand combat. Warriors needed endurance to engage in forced marches for long distances while carrying heavy weapons and armor. They needed foot speed to quickly charge or retreat, as the battle situation demanded. On average, Roman warriors weighed 140 pounds and carried 50 pounds of armor and weaponry. They routinely marched for 20 to 30 miles a day and ate once, at night. They possessed 7% body fat percentiles and were remarkably adept at fighting or fleeing. Ori has no interest in building humongous muscles. His interests lie in building functional muscle. He has devised a training system that, over an extended period of time, reconfigures the composition of muscle fiber. Hofmekler’s training regimen morphs muscle fiber into a hybrid type that possesses a balanced blending of both fast twitch fibers (optimal for strength) and slow twitch fibers (optimal for endurance). Ori labels this particular muscle fiber amalgamation, Hybrid Super Muscle. The hybrid super muscle is the end product of his unique training protocol: Controlled Fatigue Training.
His CFT training methodology is designed to increase mitochondrial density within a targeted muscle. CFT seeks to replicate the muscle fiber type ancient warriors possessed. The hybrid super muscle possesses an ability to generate significant strength and sustain that strength output for a protracted period of time. Ori’s CFT produces the abilities that Danish Olympic coach Kenneth Jay referenced when he wrote,
“Back in ancient Greece…the human race had superior genetics when compared to us. Exercise physiologists, engineers and historians from several European universities set out to determine the level of conditioning {ancient warriors} possessed. Historical analysis of information on ancient training and their ability to sail ships and cover great distances on foot {while wearing armor} showed that it would be hard if not impossible to find men today who could replicate the ancient’s feats. The scientists wrote: ‘It would be hard today to find enough world class athletes in the entire world to row a single copy of ancient battleships at the same speeds and for the same durations as men in the past were able to do. We would not stand a chance against these men.”
Ori Hofmekler seeks to replicate the physical traits the ancients possessed using a modern exercise protocol of his own invention. He integrates a unique nutritional philosophy with an equally unique training philosophy. Those who adhere to his precepts construct unique, functional, fat-free physiques. His military archetype stands in stark contrast to the orthodox athletic archetype. He offers a stunning alternative to the lock-step, group-think of conventional fitness. Ori Hofmekler is a true nutritional Master, an iconoclastic innovator by any benchmark.
The Warrior Diet is based on a daily feeding cycle that uses under-eating during the day and over-eating at night. The under-eating phase maximizes the Sympathetic Nervous System’s (SNS) ‘fight or flight’ reaction to stress. Under-eating promotes alertness and generates energy while igniting the fat-burning process. Triggering the SNS improves the capacity to endure physical stress.
The nightly over-eating phase can last up to four hours. The goal is to maximize the Parasympathetic Nervous System’s (PNS) recuperation effect on the body, thereby promoting calmness and relaxation. Digestion improves, as does the utilization of nutrients for repair and growth. The nightly “feast” stimulates the production of cellular Cyclic AMP or GMP, which stimulate hormone synthesis and fat burning during the day. Growth hormone release occurs during deep sleep.
“People who lose weight need to keep their metabolic rate high. Think of the metabolism as the body’s thermostat. We want to keep the thermostat set high in order to burn calories. When the metabolic thermostat is set low, weight gain is all too easy and fat loss becomes physiologically impossible! When a dieter goes on a highly restrictive low carb/low calorie diet they often shatter their metabolism. The body reacts in accordance to the amount of food-energy you put into it.
Using the Warrior Diet and the Anti-Estrogenic Diet, we input most of our food-energy at night, eating large meals that spike the body’s metabolic rate every night. This nightly overcompensation shoots the metabolism into overdrive. During the day you under-eat while pushing a lot of energy out. You burn off body fat stores in the process. Nonetheless, by the end of the day you need to recuperate and replenish energy stores and that is where the Warrior Diet/Anti-Estrogenic Diet procedure of nighttime feasting comes into play. Another bonus to eating large nightly meals is the correlation between ingesting high calorie meals and the resultant thyroid hormone boost; a stimulated thyroid increases body heat and elevates the metabolism. There is also an undeniable correlation between high calorie meals and boosting testosterone levels. Three things can drop your sex hormones level and shut down your metabolism: low calories, overtraining (too much exercise), and ingesting chemical additives.”
“Another major cause for metabolic shutdown is food toxicity. Avoid refined, overly processed, chemically preserved foods such as ‘fast foods’ and, ironically, chemically-loaded, commercial ‘health supplements’ such as low carb products and diet products. The chemicals in foods and nutritional supplements shatter the metabolism by interrupting the body’s hormonal balance. The typical, low carb nutritional supplement, be it a sport nutrition bar, a protein shake or a diet ‘health food’ snack are so ‘dirty,’ so chemically loaded, that their toxicity overwhelms the body, counteracting the body’s command center: the neural, glandular and hormonal system.
Chemical additives are known to cause estrogenic problems: petroleum-based chemicals mimic the female hormone estrogen causing undesirable weight gain and metabolic disorders such as female disorders (PMS, fibrocystic disease, etc), softening of the male body, prostate enlargement and potentially cancer among men, women and children. Chemicals cause excessive strain on the liver, which leads to insulin resistance, elevates blood lipids and cholesterol, and causes a total metabolic decline. The way to stop this vicious cycle that causes metabolic shutdown is to eat a sufficient amount of food: low glycemic, all natural, “clean” foods that don’t tax the liver; foods that help the body generate energy, burn fat, build up muscle and recuperate quickly from exercise; foods that support the body’s metabolism.”
