"The Great Bodybuilding Debate" - Ian McCarthy and Dave Pulcinella

[Lvisaa2]

And how did you hit all your macros in that one meal?

Ate food. I used 1 meal a day to get the leanest I've ever gotten. I wouldn't go back to it due to personal preference, but really isn't that hard to eat food

[ch3v3ll3]

Does that have anything to do with what the person you quoted said?



It's possible (though I'm not saying this actually is the case) that higher meal frequency affects body composition rather than body weight. Body weight is about calories, and calories only. Body composition is affected by multiple things.

IIRC, wasn't there a study done that showed multiple meals to be beneficial, and Aragon made some sort of response/critique to it. Always had a feeling he was trying to protect Berkhan/the IF crowd on that one.

Edit: Here's what I was talking about.

http://www.leangains.com/2011/04/cri...d-on-meal.html

[lancs_hotpot]

I may be being a bit closed minded, but i dont believe anyone gained muscle or maintained any decent amount by eating one meal a day. Possibly with shakes or milk but i count that as meals. I could be wrong but i think some people are talking ****.

[Lvisaa2]

I may be being a bit closed minded, but i dont believe anyone gained muscle or maintained any decent amount by eating one meal a day. Possibly with shakes or milk but i count that as meals. I could be wrong but i think some people are talking ****.

Why would I have any reason to lie about how meals I consumed? I have no benefit from that. Not to mention someone like Serge Nubret is well-known for only consuming 2 meals a day

[lancs_hotpot]

Why would I have any reason to lie about how meals I consumed? I have no benefit from that. Not to mention someone like Serge Nubret is well-known for only consuming 2 meals a day

Id say Serge was a freak then if thats true. How many cals was your one meal? Did you take in anything else during the day? And you may have beem lean but so is an anorexic. Did you lose a lot of muscle in this diet?

[Groggery]

Id say Serge was a freak then if thats true. How many cals was your one meal? Did you take in anything else during the day? And you may have beem lean but so is an anorexic. Did you lose a lot of muscle in this diet?

You don't have a lot of experience with fasting do you?

No jackass, just saying.

[lancs_hotpot]

You don't have a lot of experience with fasting do you?

No jackass, just saying.

Not really no. I have been depressed before and for 3 months consumed nothing but beer and the occasional bacon sandwich. Lost loads of weight. But then thats to be expected.

[zmcdole]

I may be being a bit closed minded, but i dont believe anyone gained muscle or maintained any decent amount by eating one meal a day. Possibly with shakes or milk but i count that as meals. I could be wrong but i think some people are talking ****.

it does seem hard to believe, but it's not impossible. The hardest part to believe would be that someone would have to eat all of their calories in one sitting. If you're only eating 2500 to bulk on (some do) then it wouldn't be that hard. If you're eating 3500 to bulk on it would be much more difficult to do, but not impossible. You simply eat calorie dense foods to get your carbs and fats and shakes are pretty much gonna be a must unless you can handle large volumes of food. Also, whoever eats 3500 cals in one sitting doesn't do it in 30 minutes. They might spend 2 hours eating then go to bed in a coma. I'm pretty sure I've read that spiking insulin is great for sleeping. What's sleepin good for? Recovery. And no your metabolism doesn't shut down when you go to bed.

Your body doesn't have windows of time that you have to eat or eat certain things for it to process nutrients efficiently. It doesn't know. It just knows when calories are given they need to be processed. It doesn't care what or how many, it just processes them. Some get stored and some are used to replenish glycogen stores or for rebuilding and repair of muscle tissue. If you've gone all day 10 without eating and then eat your calories over a 2 hours span of time your body will use every one of them. During that 10 hour fast your burned up quite a few calories, used up a fair amount of glycogen, and assuming you trained you broke down your muscles so they're gonna need aminos for repair. Your body knows this and it's great at adapting and survival so why would it do the opposite of what it needs to do to continue living?

The next day you start your fast again. Where's your energy coming from? The calories you consumed in that 2 hour window before going to bed. You're most likely still digesting food and replenishing glycogen stores. As long as you're not burning off more than what you're putting in, why wouldn't you be able to make progress?

[DPNZ]

To eat a days worth of calories in one sitting (without a load of junk food) sounds near impossible to me.

Why would anyone do it?

[Groggery]

Not really no. I have been depressed before and for 3 months consumed nothing but beer and the occasional bacon sandwich. Lost loads of weight. But then thats to be expected.

I've done up to a week of nothing at all. Muscle loss was slightly noticeable, but then again it's obviously too long.

An actual loss of muscle takes longer than 24h and fasting (while staying active, lots of walking implied) even without exercise gets you pretty lean. So some fasting followed by tons of food and rest gives good results for a lot of people. Insulin sensitivity and all that.

[ch3v3ll3]

To eat a days worth of calories in one sitting (without a load of junk food) sounds near impossible to me.

Why would anyone do it?

There are supposed insulin sensitivity benefits to eating fewer, but larger meals and fasting during a specified window. Dunno if I really buy that. I know Lyle McDonald believes it mostly a behavioral benefit for some individuals. Most fasting protocols give you a window of time (usually 6-8 hours) to consume 3-4 meals. After that you are usually (!) allowed coffee and sugar free gum, zero cal drinks, etc. that's it.

If I were to eat the 3,000 calories I do on a bulk in one sitting, I wouldn't stop shatting for at least a few hours, lol.

[lancs_hotpot]

it does seem hard to believe, but it's not impossible. The hardest part to believe would be that someone would have to eat all of their calories in one sitting. If you're only eating 2500 to bulk on (some do) then it wouldn't be that hard. If you're eating 3500 to bulk on it would be much more difficult to do, but not impossible. You simply eat calorie dense foods to get your carbs and fats and shakes are pretty much gonna be a must unless you can handle large volumes of food. Also, whoever eats 3500 cals in one sitting doesn't do it in 30 minutes. They might spend 2 hours eating then go to bed in a coma. I'm pretty sure I've read that spiking insulin is great for sleeping. What's sleepin good for? Recovery. And no your metabolism doesn't shut down when you go to bed.

Your body doesn't have windows of time that you have to eat or eat certain things for it to process nutrients efficiently. It doesn't know. It just knows when calories are given they need to be processed. It doesn't care what or how many, it just processes them. Some get stored and some are used to replenish glycogen stores or for rebuilding and repair of muscle tissue. If you've gone all day 10 without eating and then eat your calories over a 2 hours span of time your body will use every one of them. During that 10 hour fast your burned up quite a few calories, used up a fair amount of glycogen, and assuming you trained you broke down your muscles so they're gonna need aminos for repair. Your body knows this and it's great at adapting and survival so why would it do the opposite of what it needs to do to continue living?

The next day you start your fast again. Where's your energy coming from? The calories you consumed in that 2 hour window before going to bed. You're most likely still digesting food and replenishing glycogen stores. As long as you're not burning off more than what you're putting in, why wouldn't you be able to make progress?

What about your body going into a catabolic state after a certain amount if time without protein? I cant argue with anything you say. All ive ever done is eat 4-6 meals a day.

[RoroCwalker]

What about your body going into a catabolic state after a certain amount if time without protein? I cant argue with anything you say. All ive ever done is eat 4-6 meals a day.

I eat 2-3 meals at a total of 3900cals a day in about a 6-8 hours and bulk just fine.
The catabolic state thing is broscience, I go 18-16 hours without eating everyday and still bulk great.

[Lvisaa2]

To eat a days worth of calories in one sitting (without a load of junk food) sounds near impossible to me.

Why would anyone do it?

To eat a days worth of calories in 6 350 calorie sitting sounds near impossible to me.

Why would anyone do it?

Point is, people are different.

[Lvisaa2]

Id say Serge was a freak then if thats true. How many cals was your one meal? Did you take in anything else during the day? And you may have beem lean but so is an anorexic. Did you lose a lot of muscle in this diet?

Between 2.5-3.2k calories. No, I did not eat anything else. No, I did not lose any appreciable muscle.

[spamy]

It's possible (though I'm not saying this actually is the case) that higher meal frequency affects body composition rather than body weight. Body weight is about calories, and calories only. Body composition is affected by multiple things.

The only argument for higher meal frequency having the same total calorie intake as less meals would be when someone is on a really harsh diet with very few calories to keep a constant flux of nutrients and prevent the body to consume its own muscles and resources. But even then there should be quite a lot of time between meals and the daily calorie intake should be really low for a significant case of autocannibalism of the muscles.

[zmcdole]

What about your body going into a catabolic state after a certain amount if time without protein? I cant argue with anything you say. All ive ever done is eat 4-6 meals a day.

Your body needs a considerable amount of time to go catabolic. In other words I'd guess you'd need to be eating a protein deficient diet for several days or so while maintaining your current training regimen. You just need to maintain an energy balance where your input meets or exceeds your output. As long as you do that there's no reason for your body to go catabolic.

You could go to extremes and say well then I'll go 36 hours without eating protein and then just take the amount I would normally eat inside that 36 hour window and slam it all at once. I don't think that would work and then I think you'd start running into issues. I think there's a line somewhere, but I don't think that line exists inside one days time.

My rule of thumb is meet or exceed your body's needs before your next training session if you wanna make growth.

[mrusa85]

Whats funny is that the IIFYM crowd like Ian Mccarthy preach so much about their lifestyle and science and make vids about it, that they don't see they are spending and dedicating all their time to a pointless cause. Which is basically making Ian and the IIFYM crowd the biggest hypocrites there are with respects to dedicating time to something.

Tell people not to dedicate time to bodybuilding cus its a waste.....but dedicates wasteful time to making vids to tell people not to bodybuild.....logic....not even once....

Logged in just to rep you for this.

[Jfern689]

Whats funny is that the IIFYM crowd like Ian Mccarthy preach so much about their lifestyle and science and make vids about it, that they don't see they are spending and dedicating all their time to a pointless cause. Which is basically making Ian and the IIFYM crowd the biggest hypocrites there are with respects to dedicating time to something.

Tell people not to dedicate time to bodybuilding cus its a waste.....but dedicates wasteful time to making vids to tell people not to bodybuild.....logic....not even once....

Good points bro

[RustedIron]

Christ! The amount of willful ignorance in this video and thread has provoked me to make an account just to respond to this.

They are both wrong but also both right. The problem is that they are debating what conditions evoke a symptom and not describing the root cause. In effect, they are arguing about conditions and whether they cause smoke while ignoring the elephant in the room....Fire.

Metabolic rate is directly affected by lean muscle mass. Metabolic rate increases in direct relation to lean muscle mass. If you are seeing an increase in your resting metabolic rate, chances are that you have increased your lean muscle mass.

Food does not work in the body like gasoline does in your car. In the case of your car, you fill it once and as long as fuel remains in your tank the car still runs as normal. Unfortunately, the human body is far more complex than that. You could fill your stomach with as much food as you could possibly handle once per day and last until the next day without needing to eat again, but for many reasons this is not the most efficient way of doing things.

Reason #1: Depending on the size of your stomach and your ability to hold back gag reflexes, you are only going to be able to fit so many calories into one large meal. For someone REQUIRING more than 3K per day this would become a greater and greater challenge.

Reason #2: Large feasts followed by periods of fasting hormonally trigger the body to store a larger percentage of what you just ate as fat so that the body can last until the next big feeding.

Reason #3: The human digestive track can only absorb a certain amount of nourishment from food digested at any one given time. The more you eat at once the more food is passed through the system without being absorbed. Like throwing money in the toilet? Eat all your meals at once.

Reason #4: Well chewed and small bites are absorbed more readily by the body than large chunks which mostly pass clear through.

Reason #5: To build muscle mass, we want as much nourishment reaching the muscles as frequently as possible to enable them to recover properly.

If we take all these points and assemble them into a larger picture of what is really going on when we eat every 2 hours out of the day, you can see clearly that the body is not only going to absorb more nutrients from what you eat, but is also not going to be hormonally triggered to store fat. When you put both of those facts together you have an environment where the body will build the maximum muscle while storing the least fat possible.

Eating every 2 hours does not increase metabolic rate on its own. It creates an environment where more lean muscle mass is produced, if you are keeping the muscle tissue broken down. It is the increase in lean muscle mass that is producing the metabolic rate increase.

So lets stop arguing about smoke and address the fire, please!

Also, I can only assume that this kids reason for doing this is that he is trying horribly hard to justify and promote weakness as strength while hiding behind pseudo intelligence to appear less weak in comparison. Sad really....

[Loctus]

^Everything that you just wrote is absolute nonsense and none of your points (except maybe #1) actually hold any truth to them.

[SSJ5JAY91]

Ian should fall back and relax, if he's so worried about the sciences and state of academics in our country stop arguing about bodybuilding,
and trying to, what seems to me , is discourage guys that are passionate about something and maybe don't know how far they can or want to go with their chosen "path".
But still they get up and do the damn thing to the best of his/her ability. I think this attitude reaches beyond bodybuilding!

PLEASE SKIP to 22:40 , this clip of Kai's day in the life was the first fkn thing! that popped into my head after i watched that whole damn "Debate" lol

[RustedIron]

^Everything that you just wrote is absolute nonsense and none of your points (except maybe #1) actually hold any truth to them.

need some proof? alright..

Reason #1: this is self evident I agree

Reason #2: Hunter/Gatherers, guess what humans are? That's right our ancestors survived by eating large meals, storing the energy as fat and then living off of said fat until the next meal could be acquired. The bodies energy mechanics do change in the presence of abundance.

Reason #3: Look at skinny competitive eaters. If the body is capable of absorbing absolutely everything eaten at one time competitive eaters should gain huge amounts of fat after a contest. The opposite is true actually. Better yet, go eat 4 cups of rice and get back to me in 12hours. Was it perfect logs that came out or just mostly whole rice?

Reason #4: It is well documented that the more predigested your food is the more readily available the nutrients are. Google is your friend here.

Reason #5: Who doesn't want more nourishment going to their damaged muscles to aid recovery? Obviously the more the better here.

If you are arguing that lean muscle mass does not in fact increase metabolic rate, than there is nothing I can do for your woeful ignorance.

[TripleTrouble]

Why count meals? Eat when hungry.

[RustedIron]

Why count meals? Eat when hungry.

Sound advice and in all honesty, within reason, meal timing doesn't make a huge difference to the amateur. Your macros are far more important. Meal timing only really becomes important when your lean muscle mass is a vast majority of your body weight and you weigh over 200Lb.

For someone just starting there are far more important things to worry about, such as optimal training. If you aren't documenting everything you do in the gym forget about meal timing lol.

[Unbiasedfan]

Why count meals? Eat when hungry.

Because sometimes people get hungry in a situation where they can't eat. Counting and timing meals avoids that.

[TTimmerman]

seriously don't understand how this thread got 8 pages

[Loctus]

*Meal timing only matters when you are injecting a bunch of insulin together with your meals.

As far as the expansion of your claims:
#1: obv not gonna touch
#2: irrelevant. if your body stores more of one meal as fat, it will burn more fat for fuel during the day to make up for it. end result is the same for energy balance.
#3: You are taking it to a ridiculous extreme. Competitive eaters don't eat 3000 calories in a sitting and then get horrible diarrhea and poop it all out. This would more likely occur when they eat like 10000 calories in one sitting. If the former was true, every single person would **** out whole turkeys after thanksgiving. That the human body can't absorb 3000 calories from one giant feast is nonsense. The rice example is moot, no one is saying to eat one single food in huge amounts and expect it to be absorbed.
#4: That just means that it will take longer for the body to digest the larger meal than the smaller meal. Which indicentally also means that since it takes longer to break down, it will be releasing the nutrients from the meal over a longer amount of time, and in the end equaling out what the release of nutrients would be from multiple meals.
#5: Can't argue against the one really. The arguing point here would be if multiple smaller meals actually does release a longer, steadier, and more well-absorbed stream of nutrients. Something that I have a feeling you won't be able to back up with good sources.

It's also funny to note that when someone like Ian McCarthy says "well, meal frequency doesn't really matter. Eat 3-4 meals or 8-10, it will have the same effect", what all the bros hear is "OMG HE JUST SAID THAT ONE BIG MEAL WILL EQUAL TEN SMALL ONES". I have yet to see a valid argument for why 8 meals would be superior to 4.

[RustedIron]

*Meal timing only matters when you are injecting a bunch of insulin together with your meals.

As far as the expansion of your claims:
#1: obv not gonna touch
#2: irrelevant. if your body stores more of one meal as fat, it will burn more fat for fuel during the day to make up for it. end result is the same for energy balance.
#3: You are taking it to a ridiculous extreme. Competitive eaters don't eat 3000 calories in a sitting and then get horrible diarrhea and poop it all out. This would more likely occur when they eat like 10000 calories in one sitting. If the former was true, every single person would **** out whole turkeys after thanksgiving. That the human body can't absorb 3000 calories from one giant feast is nonsense. The rice example is moot, no one is saying to eat one single food in huge amounts and expect it to be absorbed.
#4: That just means that it will take longer for the body to digest the larger meal than the smaller meal. Which indicentally also means that since it takes longer to break down, it will be releasing the nutrients from the meal over a longer amount of time, and in the end equaling out what the release of nutrients would be from multiple meals.
#5: Can't argue against the one really. The arguing point here would be if multiple smaller meals actually does release a longer, steadier, and more well-absorbed stream of nutrients. Something that I have a feeling you won't be able to back up with good sources.

It's also funny to note that when someone like Ian McCarthy says "well, meal frequency doesn't really matter. Eat 3-4 meals or 8-10, it will have the same effect", what all the bros hear is "OMG HE JUST SAID THAT ONE BIG MEAL WILL EQUAL TEN SMALL ONES". I have yet to see a valid argument for why 8 meals would be superior to 4.

#2 yes, you are correct the stored fat is irrelevant if you have a low lean body mass that does not require as many calories over time. However, this becomes problematic if you have to supply double the amount of lean body mass on the same meal frequency used to support the lower lean mass body. It is about the ratios being consumed at one time. A smaller guy isn't consuming any more than a larger guy in one sitting. The larger guy just eats that same amount more times per day. The larger guy could double or triple the amount he eats in one sitting but it is largely counter productive to keeping a lean body mass index because of the ratios of used energy to stored energy affected by the larger meals of the larger guy.

#3 your body does not care if you had a big meal or a small meal it is all digested at the same rate. Therefor, digestive efficiency naturally would go up with smaller meals. Also this is affected by the size of meals we are talking about as well. This really doesn't take effect until you would have to consume more calories in one sitting than is reasonable.

#4 see point #3, body doesn't adjust digestive track speed based on meal size. It can only adjust how the calories it consumes are used.

This is all relative to the size of the person we are talking about, to say that meal timing is irrelevant for everyone is just wrong. To say it is irrelevant to someone who has a body that only requires 3K calories a day would be totally correct. If you require 6-7K calories a day JUST to maintain your muscle mass, you had better spread that out a lot or suffer a soft looking physique.

[Groggery]

If you require 6-7K calories a day JUST to maintain your muscle mass, you had better spread that out a lot or suffer a soft looking physique.

Considering not even IFBB PROS consume that much to maintain, i'd say we're all safe.

Also my god i read your #2 point again and again and couldn't for the life of me comprehend that ****. Please do try and rephrase the significance of ratios to actual fat storage.