When we talk about altering body composition, as I’ve explained several times in the past, we mean the changes in muscle and fat tissue within the body. So I am here today to give you my most comprehensive guide to deteriorate your muscles and increase body fat tissue, ready? Here we go.
Diet
We need to start at the foundation of nutrition, the first thing you need to do is create a big calorie deficit, we all know how to do this, but I want to recommend some approaches to increase the efficiency of the damaging effect we want to create in the body with the diet.
Start with a crash diet, something like the ones you find in certain websites, or magazines, don’t worry about food selection yet, we’ll cover that in a little while. Instead, you need to focus on eating as little as possible, starve yourself as much as you can. Fasting is not an option, so don’t fall into that trap because in a way, fasting has a protective effect in preserving muscle mass.
No, what you want to do is feed as little as possible to the body while increasing your metabolism through synthetic ways, the supplement industry has a lot that can help you here!
Thermogenics and fat burners to say the least, you may end up in the Emergency Room, and that’s fine (provided you survive) because those moments are full of stress, misery and pain, all of which are crucial to keep your body unhealthy as you’ll discover later.
Protein!
Protein is the most important macronutrient to pay attention when your goal is unfavorable and unhealthy body composition. On average American adults eat more than 100gr a day, this is way too much and will preserve muscle mass, we don’t want that, we need to get rid of as much muscle as we can.
Protein has this desirable effect of providing amino acids to the body to produce a lot of hormones too, so by targeting this system we are also disrupting the natural environment of the body to increase muscle protein breakdown.
Protein has a number of beneficial effects in a diet that we want to avoid as well, so now you see how important it is to reduce it as much as we can.
Zero weight training
This one is a no brainer, weight training protects and builds muscle, not our goal here. When you do as little exercise as possible, your body will understand that the muscles are not being used, so it will use them as an energy substrate and spare you some precious body fat.
Weight training also has some positive reactions within the body, like improving blood circulation, glucose uptake, left ventricle improvements, increase in lung capacity, and a bunch of other things that improve your health.
Junk food
I don’t need to make a list of these foods, you know which one they are. However, I need to warn you about protein content. You’d be surprised but some of these foods have a good amount of protein, remember our 2nd item on the list, we want protein to be as low as possible.
Get creative! Sugar and fats are the best options here, this combination creates an environment in the brain that lights up the reward system in a way that you will create addictions, dependency, increased tolerance, and so many other problems, all of which are a fast way to depression, sickness, and psychological issues to make you the unhealthiest person on Earth, or at least competitive in this niche.
Trans fats are the most unhealthy and damaging of all the rest, they are so unnatural that they are always associated in research with high cholesterol, heart disease, diabetes, obesity. Monounsaturated are too beneficial, so if your goal is to damage your body as much as possible, avoid these.
One important note I’ll leave here, remember you should be in a calorie deficit, so this means you will eat few junk foods, this will contribute enormously to your hunger and dissatisfaction, but they are needed so you are the most miserable dieter possible.
Avoid fruits and veggies
Simple enough, these foods are full of nutrients and provide natural fiber that can keep you satiated and reduce the unhappiness of your diet. Also, fruits give you natural occurring sugars, completely different than sucrose or table sugar, and will improve your blood glucose since it doesn’t get to your blood stream like sucrose does.
They also carry a lot of water, this will contribute to you staying hydrated and full in your meals, when the idea is to stay as hungry, dehydrated and devoid of nutrients, you can see why they need to be taken out completely from your food supply.
Cardio
Some cardio can be beneficial, but within a crash diet like this one, it can greatly increase muscle protein breakdown. Yes, you may have a positive effect on your body by performing it, but the negative impacts of it outweigh these benefits, so totally worth it to do it so you can accelerate the muscle wasting effect of a calorie deficit.
If you do this while fasting at a moderate to high intensity, for as long as you can endure it, you will make sure to waste a good amount of muscle. If you don’t eat after your cardio session you will feel more those terrible sensations and everything else that comes with having an exhausted body devoid of nutrients.
The rest of the cardio you can do whenever, basically when you are in a calorie deficit and at a low protein consumption you create the best environment to speed up muscle protein breakdown for energy production.
You will lose some fat, and this is inevitable, but remember that a pound of fat provides around 3500Kcal, whereas a pound of muscle only 650 or so. This means that you will lose more muscle than fat in this process you are undergoing.
Bulk up the real way
After you have lost a lot of weight, hopefully most of it muscle, you need to set yourself for success, fat gain success that is. At this point your body is starving for energy, so the first thing you should do is to avoid any kind of exercise, no more cardio if you were doing any!
Instead, become the most sedentary person in the world, take your hard-earned vacation time (if you had any) or simply don’t go to work or school, you’ll deal with the consequences later, and stay home all day watching stressful things (see next item below).
Junk food now becomes even more imperative, sugar/fat combination is the best way to transport fatty acids to your adipose tissue, eat as much as you humanly can, being deprived from food in your diet will help a lot to binge eat and stuff your face.
Very important here, protein needs to stay as low as possible, any protein you eat at this stage of your transformation program will inevitably go towards regaining the muscle mass you lost. That’s why foods that are highly processed are so helpful here.
Stress the shit out of everything
Stress by now should be well established in the body, a great way to disrupt your hormonal balance and tip it towards the destruction of your physical health. But, while we are at it, we might want to add mental stress!
You see, everything that we add to the pile of worries and problems in our life will contribute to a disorder in our well-being. So I will give you a list of some of the things that can aid in increasing it, but feel free to be creative here, as long as it’s stressing you out.
Drive with hate: If you noticed, people either drive too fast or too slow, what the hell is wrong with them right? Yell at every car that threatens the smooth ride that the road should be (especially when you are late) because you are special.
Think of threats often: Everything in your life is a threat, literally everyone is trying to take advantage of you, and the majority of things around you are an imminent danger. Do not relax and stay alert at all times.
Check debts frequently: You have always had money issues, right? Now is the time to stress over it. Forget that you have a place to sleep, food to eat, and even entertain yourself cheaply, there is simply never enough money! Analyze with anxiety every day your economy situation, pull your hair over the reality that nothing gets better and it will only get worse.
Social media: Connect constantly to social media so you can admire the successful and perfect life that other people portray. Realize that you will never have that photoshopped image they somehow naturally got, the luxuries and beauty in their environment, the places they live, and all the things that make you feel lesser than them.
Argue and fight: Your family and friends are the most important people in your life, try to deliberately find any reason that can bother you and tell them without touch or care, the idea is to piss them off with your attitude and they make you feel worse.
Stay in a bubble: Now is the best moment to stay isolated from everybody, avoid social interaction as you go through all this, particularly if it’s someone who wants to genuinely help you, but if someone wants to help you with pills, chemicals and other questionable approaches consider giving them a chance, especially if it comes from a sales representative.
Watch news: There’s no better time to watch a channel dedicated exclusively to broadcast the most sensationalist tragedies locally and globally. Use this to lower your frequency with these specialists in keeping you expecting the next bomb that will never drop or the terrorist that doesn’t exist around you.
Avoid laughing: Laughing reduces stress, lowers blood pressure, improves cardiac health, produces endorphins, lowers anxiety and other negative emotions. Instead of laughing, stay in a dark mood and defensive.
Blame others: Never be grateful to others, if someone does anything for you it’s because it was their duty, not because they did it with good intentions. Anything that happens to you is someone else’s fault, including this diet and the decisions you make.
Stay away from nature: Avoid the forest, beach, mountains, or any other place in nature, they will relax you and contribute to your joy in life. Happiness is not an option.
I can really go on for pages on how to maximize this stress, but the world is out there and it caters to your depression and anxiety so long as you are creative, you will have no lack of supply of things that can take you as low as possible.
Sleep
Last but not least, comes sleeping. I should have mention this first, but sometimes leaving something for last makes you ponder on it longer.
Time is of the essence, if you sleep like most normal people do, you are wasting a third of your life in a deep slumber. If you are already sleeping 5 hours or less, great! But you can maximize the misery of your life by playing with many variables.
Do you have that mentality of “I’ll sleep when I’m dead” and think you can get by with sleeping terribly? Awesome! You are in a good starting position and it will only get worse if you follow my advice.
Sleep is very important, so we want to disrupt it and create chaos in your cycle. Don’t know how to do it? Well you are in luck! I have a plan for this.
Start by making your bed the most uncomfortable place to lay on, this will guarantee that you have a restless sleep whenever you do fall into Morpheus hands.
Keep your phone on and loud so the notifications interrupt your sleep.
Make sure you have a digital clock with bright numbers aimed at your pillow so you can constantly look at the time through the night and count the minutes you have left before getting up.
Don’t have a pattern for sleeping, go to bed 4 hours before your usual bedtime one night, then stay up late, if you wake up 3 hours before your wake-up time and are still sleepy force yourself to stay up! There are so many ways you can disrupt your circadian rhythm.
Either have no curtains or get those that allow the light to filter in to your bedroom, complete darkness will help to sleep sound and rest well.
One last thing, avoid the sun when you are awake at all cost, and at night increase your electronic screen time as much as you can, this will wreak havoc in melatonin production and contribute to the wretchedness of your sleep deprived state.
Happy April’s Fool day
I have to admit that I’ve never been a fan of this cultural joke, its humor didn’t cater to my personality and I found it dull most of the time. However, I came across a book that gave me the idea for this post: Randy J. Paterson’s – How to be miserable, 40 strategies you already use. The book is a twist on the self-help department, and instead of giving you things to do to improve your life, it does the opposite.
As I read it, I cannot help but think about this post and the timing for today was perfect as many of you are aware. By giving you a list of things that will deteriorate your body composition, you can see from the other angle how important doing the contrary is.
I truly enjoyed writing this, thank you for getting this far.