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Diet != losing weight. The GOMAD (gallon of milk a day) diet is not designed for you to lose weight. It's designed to maximize daily caloric intake, which in tu

Diet != losing weight. The GOMAD (gallon of milk a day) diet is not designed for you to lose weight. It's designed to maximize daily caloric intake, which in turn maximizes speed of recovery. Once you're done with starting strength, you switch to something like IF (intermittent fasting) to cut the excess fat. Then you end up with lots of muscle and no fat. You can either lose fat or gain muscle. It's incredibly difficult to do both at the same time.

cjf4 12y ago
GOMAD is also specifically designed for teenagers with no fat or muscle that don't know how to consume 3000 + calories/day (and I believe Rip usually wants them in the 4-5000 range). What I'm saying is that this is an inefficient approach for almost everyone outside that demographic that has any sort of interest in improved appearance (i.e. almost everyone). Your body can only build muscle at a certain rate, and the rest of the caloric surplus is going to be converted to body fat. So what I'm saying is if you are willing to pay a little bit of attention to macro nutrient intake, you can gain muscle with much less of the associated body fat that comes with bulking. This way, you have to much less to cut. More importantly, you learn how to eat properly which is essential for long term success.
- zacharycohn 12y ago
  The point is to have a caloric surplus. Because then you can guarantee maximum recovery.
s_husso 12y ago
"difficult to do both at the same time" With right combination you can do it. Targeted Keto/IF combination seems to be quite effective. Sheds fat while maintaining (or gaining) muscle mass and minimizing the impact of the diet to your strength levels. I've dropped +25kg BW while gaining +5kg of muscle mass and gaining/maintaining my big-lifts. I noticed that going from Stronglift 5x5 to Madcow really helped my recovery. Mostly as my body couldn't keep up with the heavy squatting and deadlifting too many times during the week.
- zacharycohn 12y ago
  Yup. But if you're doing both at the same time, you are not maximizing your gains. You could be increasing strength much faster, then cut much faster afterwards.
  - s_husso 12y ago
    But I would assume that heavy cut will end up eating your gains too?

cjf4 12y ago

GOMAD is also specifically designed for teenagers with no fat or muscle that don't know how to consume 3000 + calories/day (and I believe Rip usually wants them in the 4-5000 range). What I'm saying is that this is an inefficient approach for almost everyone outside that demographic that has any sort of interest in improved appearance (i.e. almost everyone). Your body can only build muscle at a certain rate, and the rest of the caloric surplus is going to be converted to body fat. So what I'm saying is if you are willing to pay a little bit of attention to macro nutrient intake, you can gain muscle with much less of the associated body fat that comes with bulking. This way, you have to much less to cut. More importantly, you learn how to eat properly which is essential for long term success.

zacharycohn 12y ago
The point is to have a caloric surplus. Because then you can guarantee maximum recovery.

s_husso 12y ago

"difficult to do both at the same time" With right combination you can do it. Targeted Keto/IF combination seems to be quite effective. Sheds fat while maintaining (or gaining) muscle mass and minimizing the impact of the diet to your strength levels. I've dropped +25kg BW while gaining +5kg of muscle mass and gaining/maintaining my big-lifts. I noticed that going from Stronglift 5x5 to Madcow really helped my recovery. Mostly as my body couldn't keep up with the heavy squatting and deadlifting too many times during the week.

zacharycohn 12y ago
Yup. But if you're doing both at the same time, you are not maximizing your gains. You could be increasing strength much faster, then cut much faster afterwards.
- s_husso 12y ago
  But I would assume that heavy cut will end up eating your gains too?