Experts and muscleheads alike say to build a lean, muscular body you must follow three rules:
- eat a lot of protein
- have a variety of nutrient-dense foods
- eat every three to four hours
We’re told that trying to get big and strong without this trifecta is a waste of time. Especially if we ignore that last rule. But some have questioned whether meal frequency is really that important. Can you actually build muscle and lose fat faster by going long stretches without eating?
Those in the intermittent fasting (IF) movement think so.
It sounds counter-intuitive for building muscle, but the hardest of the hardcore “fasters” aren’t simply skipping meals. They’re combining periods of fasting with calculated high protein re-feeding — and are getting bigger and leaner.
By not having to eat so often, they’re enjoying less meal-time hassle, and all the while thumbing their noses at the so-called experts.
Dr. John Berardi is one of those experts.
For years he championed six-meals-a-day, and got awesome results with thousands of clients. But Berardi is also a scientist, and at the heart of the scientific method is objectivity. If new information comes to light that could improve upon current practices, it’s up to the scientists to swallow their pride and revisit their conclusions.
Sadly, many don’t. They say they want to see more or better research first, a fancy way of saying they’d rather hole up in their ivory tower than suffer the humiliation of admitting they may be wrong. So, Berardi took a different route. He jumped into the fasting fire and used his own body as a guinea pig for six different fasting protocols over an eight-month period. And like any good scientist, he documented everything along the way. In fact, he even published an entirely free e-book detailing all of his experiments and results, called Experiments with Intermittent Fasting. I know because I co-authored it with him. So, is intermittent fasting (IF) a crock of crap? Or is it the future of high performance eating? I talked with JB to get his thoughts.
Nate: Fasting? Are you just trying to capitalize on the IF hype?
Dr. Berardi: Not at all. Frankly, I’m exposing myself to serious scrutiny by even entertaining IF — after all, it’s counter to what a large part of my career has been built on. I’ve transformed a lot of bodies through a frequent feeding approach. But the benefits I’ve been reading, both in the message boards and in the literature, are intriguing. The more I looked at IF, the more I saw it as something that could help a lot of people, especially those who find frequent feedings a challenge. But before I endorsed it, I wanted to test it myself to see what kinds of physiological and psychological changes would come from it.
Nate Green: So what were your results?
Dr Berardi: Well, some really cool things happened. Getting into everything is beyond the scope of this interview, since I collected a hell-uva lot of measures. But, to sum up, I lost about 20 pounds of fat, while preserving most of my lean mass. I went from a fairly lean 10 percent body fat to a very lean 4 percent (as measured by ultrasound).
Here are some progress photos:
Nate: Wow. You’re diced! But you’re always pretty lean, JB. Did you test drive IF with any of your clients?
Dr Berardi: Yep, I put a few of my clients to the test, but not just with folks looking to lose weight. I used IF with a guy who wanted to gain weight – and he gained 20 pounds of quality lean mass in a matter of months.
Nate: 20 pounds of mass gained by not eating?
Dr Berardi: Not exactly. I used a bunch of different fasting ideas in my experiments, all of which I detail in a free e-book I just published called Experiments with Intermittent Fasting – more on that later. Some of the experiments involved strategic daily fasts combined with short intense periods of post workout overfeeding. Other experiments used one weekly-full day fast combined with four days of weekly overfeeding and two days of maintenance eating. In the end, whether the test subjects wanted to lose weight or gain weight, we used strategic periods of under and overfeeding to accomplish those goals. In the case of that client who gained 20 pounds, he fasted one full day a week (Sunday). He ate at maintenance three days of the week (on conditioning days). And he ate a huge surplus three days of the week (on strength training days). And not only did he gain 20 pounds, he improved every tested performance indicator – aerobic, anaerobic, and strength/power.
Nate: Cool, what about getting lean? What exactly have you been doing personally?
Dr Berardi: Well, I haven’t been doing one plan so much as I’ve been experimenting with a number of different intermittent fasting ideas. During the last eight months, I’ve played around with at least eight different IF protocols. Some of them worked okay, some were flops. One in particular was so bad I thought it would cost me my marriage! This included two full-day fasts each week. But, another worked as good or better than any other dietary protocol I’ve ever tried. I actually gained more lean body mass than I wanted. I was trying to lose weight and had to cut it short. This included fasting for 16 hours each day, followed by a fasted training session, and then three huge meals during the eight hours post-workout. Again, the free e-book goes into all the details. I outline all the protocols. And I kept meticulous notes on everything from scale weight, body-fat percentage, and blood/hormonal markers, to lifestyle markers like energy levels, and cognition. What can I say? I’m a scientist.
Nate: I’d still be kind of afraid of what fasting would do to my muscle mass.
Dr Berardi: Let me guess: you assume because you got big and strong by eating lots of food, frequently throughout the day, fasting would do the opposite? You’d get smaller and weaker?
Nate: Well, yeah.
Dr Berardi: Funny, it doesn’t really work that way at all. Not if you do it right.
Nate: Okay, so how does one “do it right?”
Dr Berardi: Again, depending on the goal, there are different fasting protocols, from weekly 24-hour fasts to twice-a-week fasts to daily fasts lasting anywhere from 16-20 hours. I get into them all in the book. But let’s just say more is not always better. It’s important to strike a delicate balance between undereating and overeating to stimulate the fat burning process while also seeing hormonal surges that help with recovery and muscle-building. For example, growth hormone is released in tremendous quantities during extended fasts. Of course, daily and weekly calorie intake is still important. You can’t grow if you’re in a calorie deficit, regardless of whether you’re eating 2 meals a day or 6 meals a day. Likewise, you can’t lose fat if you’re not in a calorie deficit. Also, there are certain supplements that help mitigate hunger and preserve lean body mass. Of course, by doing so it may no longer be “fasting” in the purest sense of the word, but I’m interested in results, not semantics. And a small handful of supplements definitely help deliver better results.
Nate: So competitive bodybuilders could try this?
Dr Berardi: It depends. You don’t just throw intermittent fasting into the mix without considering everything. The program has to represent an internally consistent system. The parts all have to fit together. If they don’t, it’s not going to work. For example, during high volume training, intermittent fasting would probably be a mistake. Further, I also find that IF works better with calorie and carb cycling during the training cycle. Again, everything has to fit together for this to work.
Nate: So, six meals-a-day is so 2010?
Dr Berardi: No way! IF works, but people have been getting and staying in awesome shape for decades without it. So I think more frequent eating still has a great place in performance nutrition. Whether to eat frequently or infrequently, to fast or not to fast; it’s about finding what works best for your own body and your own preferences. In my case, I found that IF didn’t accelerate my fat loss. But it did make it much easier to maintain a low body fat percentage. I’ve been able to maintain my 20-pound weight loss for five months. And I even outline some hybrid ideas where I use fasting some days and more frequent eating the others.
Nate: How can people learn more?
Dr Berardi: As you know, I just published an absolutely free book on the subject called Experiments with Intermittent Fasting. I cover everything, including details of my training programs and my exact eating plans for all the IF protocols I tried. You can literally do what I did step-by-step, although if you’re smart, you’ll skip my screw-ups and go straight to my successes. It’s 100% hosted on-line so anyone interested in more can pop over to the site and read the entire thing right now, for free, without having to give their email address or anything.
About Dr Berardi
John Berardi received his PhD in Exercise Physiology and Nutrient Biochemistry at the University of Western Ontario, Canada. He’s currently an Adjunct Professor at Eastern Michigan University and the University of Texas. As an elite nutrition coach and exercise physiologist, Dr. Berardi has coached hundreds of elite amateur and professional athletes. In fact, in the last two Winter Olympics alone, his athletes collected over 25 medals, 12 of them gold. He’s also a high performance consultant with Nike. Further, for the last 4 years, Dr. Berardi has acted as the director of the world’s largest body transformation project. This one-of-a- kind fat loss coaching program has produced more total weight loss than all 11 seasons of The Biggest Loser combined.
PDF 
Sounds like Berardi is trying to take the work of Martin Berkhan mainstream….
http://www.leangains.com
good article. It’s nice to see more research being done in this area. I’ve had quite a few clients have great success using IF methods. While I incorporate them mainly to break some pattern or cycle of reduced results that innevitably fall into any program I’ve found that clients like it a lot as long as it’s laid out for them and it gives them some kind of measurable result quickly…..which it has. Thanks for the info.
If you have any questions about this article or IF in general, feel free to ask here and I’ll be happy to help out. Alternatively, we’ve enabled comments directly within the “Experiments with Intermittent Fasting” E-book. You can post by visiting this link: http://www.precisionnutrition.com/intermittent-fasting
Great article, thanks for making your results available publicly. I’ve been experimenting with the same maintenance/hypocaloric conditioning days with hypercaloric strength days and it seems to be working, I’ll have to try throwing in a full fast day.
FYI: The links to the free ebook all go to an interview with Martin Berkan, correct link is here:
http://www.precisionnutrition.com/intermittent-fasting
Such BS.
I love the shaved, shadowed, professionally lit shots as a comparator to washed out pasty shots.
Elite is better than this
Awesome… thanks John
The links on this page don’t work, here is the correct link to the e-book:
http://www.precisionnutrition.com/intermittent-fasting
I love IF… after years of eating 6-7 times a day, I got to the point where it just felt awful to eat… I started doing IF with a 16/8 split and I’m making tremendous gains in strength and dropping bodyfat… once you get the idea of going catabolic out of your head and you get used to it, it’s like a burden lifted off you shoulders… not to mention your general productivity increases
JB,
With the client you had put on 20 pounds of weight, how much of a surplus did you have him on on the three overfeeding days?
Wouldn’t it have been easier, faster, and more efficacious to just hire Berardi himself to write the article?
It certainly seems as though it’d be more in line with how EFS articles are usually done…
Literally stole Berkhan’s concept, does he get any proceeds from the book?
“This included fasting for 16 hours each day, followed by a fasted training session, and then three huge meals during the eight hours post-workout.”
You could at least give Martin Berkhan at little credit.
@BS – Despite that, you can clearly see a huge difference in the before and after, shadowy shots or not.
@Fred – The book is free and he admits Berkhan as a big influence. Also, some of the IF methods in the book are not the same as Berkhan’s.
BS Meter, if you still can’t tell that there’s a huge change in the progress pictures regardless of lighting and “photo shoot” quality, you’re an idiot. Anybody who takes measurements on people consistently would have no problem believing that those pics are consistent with the claim of going from about 10% to low single digits.
Berkhan wasnt the first to come up with this concept. I do however think Berkhan’s approach is the first that works as geared towards athletes.
“This included fasting for 16 hours each day, followed by a fasted training session, and then three huge meals during the eight hours post-workout.”
didnt Martin Berkhan still that from the muslims during ramadam?
almost everything is built on knowledge that came from somewhere else.
Great article and the free e-book download is a good read. I really appreciate and respect the guys in the business who use themselves as human guinea pigs. I’m not a big fan of the professionals who say “Do as I say, not as I do.”
I am going about 13 hrs a day without eating, not smart enough whether that falls as in the IF category. I’m following Kiefer on that. However, I did notice it took a few days to adjust to not eating for a good 5 hrs after I wake. I like how Berardi went over those cons in the e-book. People need to be prepared when they give new things a try and not bail on them so quickly. I also really like how he stated your program is really what works within your lifestyle.
He looks much better at 10%. At low digits he looks like we should hold a “Save Berardi” food drive for him.
Berardi is just attempting to bring all the different approaches together for those that are interested in learning more about IF so I wouldn’t accuse him of stealing any concepts.
On the other hand though if you are going to give credit to someone else, pitch it Ori Hofmekler’s way. The Warrior Diet spawned everything else you see today in regard to IF. Including Leangains.
Hey everyone, thanks for the feedback.
The 8 months of experiments I write about above were a great learning experience for me. And I’m continuing to experiment with different fasting ideas.
Further, I’m now working with researchers at Columbia University on some cool research in this area. As that becomes available I’ll be happy to share our findings.
Couple of additional comments:
–for those of you who haven’t checked out the e-book, it’s totally free, really high quality, and goes into all the details you may be looking for. so, before getting upset about who I do and don’t give credit to, please check out the book.
–as far as those who think the after pictures are shady, I get what you’re saying. I was proud of my results so I did a professional photo shoot and that’s how they came out. and I like them so I included them. whether there are shadows or not, in the free book I publish all my weight, body comp, and health data. so you can see I’m not trying to trick anyone here. plus, the photos do show some pretty marked differences.
–as far as the guy who gained the 20 lbs, I didn’t really calculate his calories. (I rarely do as it’s not necessary – I go into this in the free e-book). he just ate nothing on Sunday, A LOT 3 days of the week, and a moderate amount 3 days of the week. we’ll likely publish something on this too so stay tuned.
Thanks again for the feedback everyone. This is our first article on Elite and it’s a pleasure to be here.
Oh yea, one more comment.
If you check out the free e-book you’ll see that I lost the weight for a specific reason. I’m competing in masters level track and field (100m and 200m sprints). So being lighter and leaner is essential for what I’m trying to accomplish athletically. That’s one of the reasons I tried this in the first place.
Results don’t lie I suppose. Lower body fat sounds great but I wonder how this would effect a performance athlete. I went down the “look good” road but I was not as strong as I am now. Granted I did not follow an IF style so the results may have been different but I can’t see how fasting could do anything but hinder an athlete. Whether they are an endurance or a strength athlete it would seem this style of eating may be counter productive. I’m open minded though. Maybe that will be the next book.
I’m interested in IF diets, but i side with BS Meter a bit. Somthing about the way this article is written and displayed feels fishy. Not to take anything away from Nate or Berardi. I realy don’t like the stile of how this was written. It doesn’t read like an EliteFTS article at all.
As for the pictures, yeah i can see theirs a difference, but both sets of pictures should have been taken under the same lighting and posing, that would set a legitimate control. The pictures the way they appear in the article feel like blatant advertising.
Again, i’ve got no problem with Nate or Berardi and i’m interested in trying an IF protocal but i hope this aticle isn’t a sign of whats to come.
I kind of eat like this anyway but let’s say I finish eating around 3 PM then, sleep for however long then I’ll eat again at around 7-8 AM. That’s 16ish hours but I’m not fasting entirely during the waking hours. Does it matter if in between the fast is broken up with sleep?
@Josh
You mean a well written, informative article written by one of the most respected guys in the nutrition business…Pd.d and Professor…consults with NFL/NHL players on diet and nutrition.
Who gives you a free e-book to review with no strings.
Yep, that sounds terrible….you should go look for something better.
/facepalm
@tony
There always has to be one lol
propaganda
First off, great read. I saw this posted in the T-Nation forums. I haven’t read much from JB in a long time, even though the guy knows his stuff (he just charges for that knowledge normally). This was one of the biggest reasons why I enjoyed JB’s stuff in the first place, he was willing to be different as long as the results proved worthwhile.
To those complaining about ripping off Martin, I’m pretty sure Martin didn’t invent not eating. He gave it a name, made a website, and now makes an astounding amount of money. The guy is smart, but not really an inventor of anything.
In your eyes, every single person who writes a weightlifting routine, is ripping off whomever invented weightlifting?
This is a well done article and Berardi is to be commended for his efforts and great results. As others have stated, every bit of knowledge we have, has some influence from contributors of the past. Berkhan did not create intermittent fasting any more than anyone else did. Ori Hofmekler was the inspiration for the modified warrior diet which I have helped popularize, which contains aspects of IF. We all learn from each other, experiment, make changes, hopefully improvements and then pass the new information along, to hopefully be improved upon by some one else somewhere down the line.
LOL at this being an actual interview.
MUSCLE JOURNALISM FTW!
@SPLCHRIS: your fasting sounds very similar, just shifted in time of day. If you check out the book you’ll see that we review some programs very similar to what you’re doing.
@W. Stout: you make a good point. In the book we talk about IF not being great for athletes training with high volume as it may contribute to a cumulative stress that they can’t recover well from. However, there are times of the year for every athlete (at least, there should be) and during this time, if weight management is important, IF can fit in nicely.
The idea of credit keeps coming up and in Chapter 3 of the book we give a nod to all the popular forms of IF and who popularized them. Also, in the resource area we link to their sites. Again, if you’re interested in more, check out the book, which is a complete and substantial read. This piece is just a quick interview on the fact that we did a book on the subject.
John you have really outdone yourself here, just awesome work and amazing that you don’t charge for this ebook! I have been following your work since the “creation of a T man” article so many years ago that helped transform my body. As a 240lb competitive powerlifter training 1.5 hrs 4X week, can you recommend a weekly calorie goal for gaining strength using the 16/8 3 meals plan? Thank you so much!
John b.
Good article.
In general, how many grams protein do you recommend for someone trying to lose some body fat (currently 205lbs and 12-15 percent bf looking to get under ten percent). I know you say you don’t count, but for those that do it would be nice to hear from a respected expert.
Thanks.
@Pete: your daily or weekly calorie goal would be the same as if you weren’t doing 16/8 fasting. You want the same relative energy balance as normal. You just want to shift your timing if you plan on trying 16/8 IF. Or you could just start with a once-weekly fast. I find that’s a better place to start. Hope that helps. And glad you like the book.
So Dr. If you dont calculate calories , when your client did 3 days of maitance and 3 days of feeding. One day he just eat normal and the others 3 days eat more? Or you do specific stuff for you can really have differences between these days.
Yeh this is nothing new in that mankind ate like this for millions of years, more because he had to than he wanted to, then somone decided that what allowed us to survive all that time was the wrong way to do things and everyone jumped on board. Now we have some actual science, theories, protocols and results that prove what we once did is not only not damaging but beneficial and people keep their heads in the sand and follow what the majority say without actually thinking about the reasons for why things work or dont work. Without people of the reputation of these guys putting this stuff out there we would still be eating like the governement recomends, thats worked real well for the population !!!! great work john
@Paul: I like at least 1g/pound for someone like you. Protein is pretty satiating so you might even benefit from a bit more. Maybe up to 250 or 300g. It all depends on the total calories you can take in while still losing fat. For me, I was able to eat about 2500kcal per day to lose fat. That allowed me to eat about 2-3 pound of meat per day. And that’s between 200-300g of protein.
Dr. Berardi-
You really are a class act in your responses to these idiots talking about ripping people off and using shady lighting- as if all of your previous work hasn’t established some credibility and INTEGRITY!
I am really interested in this ebook and just saved it to my iPad to read hopefully tomorrow.
Also, really great to see you and Nate on elitefts- I’m sure you’ve had stuff on here before, not sure about Nate, but it’s good to see him doing so well in the industry as I remember when he was just another t-nation member.
Keep up the good work folks,
M. Nealon
The author gives Martin credit should you read the book. The book seems to be an objective look at all the IF programs out there and HIS experience with those. Good read.
John, I am trying to figure out how IF would benefit me and I’m concerned about losing muscle more than losing fat. If I am understanding you correctly, you are finding that with IF you can lose fat and keep lean muscle mass. Yet, when I read your stats (190 to 170 / 10% BF to 4%), it seemed you lost about 8 pounds of fat which would mean you had to of lost about 12 pounds of lean muscle mass. It seems IF is good for fat loss, but you must be willing to lose significant LMM. Is this correct thinking?
@Brian: To begin with, my calculated lean mass would have been 171 at the start and 163 at the end. So 8 lbs of LBM was lost according to the ultrasound measures I collected. Looks bad at first, right?
However, it’s SUPER important to remember that lean mass does not equal muscle mass. (A lot of people confuse the two).
In the book I talk about the fact that lean mass is mostly water weight. In fact, lean mass is over 70% water weight and less than 20% muscle weight. And that when you’re strength training and you do lose lean mass, you save most of the muscle portion. So you’re pretty much losing water.
Of course, it depends on the protocol (lower carb means lean mass losses from the water compartment). I also talk about how water weight would fluctuate based on the specific protocol one was following.
If you also dig into the book more you’ll see that one IF protocol actually caused a bunch of lean mass gain (probably mostly water again) and I adjusted it so I wouldn’t gain any more weight.
So, in the end, I don’t think I lost much muscle mass at all. What I lost was a lot of fat and a bunch of water. And that was fine for me because of my sprinting goals.
Hope this makes sense.
A full day fasting is best done on a day were little to no physical activity is required i.e sunday?
Dr. Berardi,
Thanks for taking the time to put it all together in a nice package (the e-book.) Can IF be used by obese people or do they need to stick to a more conventional approach?
This is exactly how Muslims fast for a month every year, since a thousand years ago.
Is 8 months enough time to thoroughly test 8 different diet plans?
I am pretty sure the main goal of a Muslim’s fast during Ramadan is not to lose weight,
And I agree that the language of this article is below what I am used to seeing on EFS.
“Experts and muscleheads alike say to build a lean, muscular body you must follow three rules:
eat a lot of protein
have a variety of nutrient-dense foods
eat every three to four hours
We’re told that trying to get big and strong without this trifecta is a waste of time. Especially if we ignore that last rule.”
come on, seriously? This is like some tabloid talk here.
@Chris: absolutely…it’s best to do full day fasts, if you decide to try them, on low activity days.
@Nabeel: check out the book…we discuss the idea of who fasting is for and who it isn’t. Bottom line, it can work in obese folks. However, we recommend them take a completely different approach to begin with. Again, it’s all in the book.
I started doing IF a few months back with my own research from other various sites and I love it. Your e-book talks about points I have implemented into my life just by stumbling upon it, testing it, and making them an everyday habit of my own. I love the e-book and think it is good read for all. I have a degree in biology from MS&T so it’s good to see other scientists out there that are open minded such as yourself.
Hey guys don’t forget the King of Fasters “Jesus”, he fasted 40 days and 40 nights, muslims and weight lifters aren’t the only ones that fast.
There are many other benefits to fasting besides getting lean or buffed, a more focused mind, trains and disciplines the body, allows more time to do things, your digestive system gets to relax, a heightened sense of awareness etc…
A large portion of the world fasts whether by choice or forced so let’s not commercialize and make it into a new trend.
Fasting has been with us for thousands of years, we’ve just forgotten it’s benefits.
I am interested in trying to see how this would work for those who train later in the evening. I generally train from 9:00-10:30pm or from 10:00pm-11:30pm. I see a couple key differences here and question whether IF is the best plan:
-Since most of the feeding comes after a workout, I would be consuming my largest food intake around midnight.
-Rather than be active following my feeding, I would be sedentary (asleep, actually)
-Sleep allows one to curb their hunger pangs for ~half of the time they are fasting…I would be awake for more of the fasting time.
-Working out on an empty stomach would be highly improbable (supposing I train at 9:00, I would have to BEGIN my feeding at 11:00pm)…that isn’t going to happen.
Works/doesn’t work?
You mention “Drink 1 L (4 cups) of water + 1 serving greens powder” could you enlighten me to what the “greens powder” is, who it is made by?
You also mention “greens+”…
@Beast: you’d just shift your fasting around a little. For example, you might have a big meal post-workout, and a large breakfast. Then fast from breakfast to post-workout. Or you might have a big post-workout meal then fast for 16 hours then follow up with 1-2 small meals before your training. You could also just go with the 1 day per week fast. Of course, NONE of this is necessary. These are just options if you want to play around with the idea.
@Wayne: greens+ is a commercially available greens drink. It’s what I use. If you google it you’ll find a ton of info.
Hope that helps.
Interesting article, and good results in the end. I personally think you’d have done better on the 16/8 routine if you’d run that from day one, although that wasn’t the point in the book anyway.
I’ve tried a range of fasting options and the one that works best **for me** is always 16/8 (or similar – I don’t get too hung up on the exact timing).