Why this guide?
This guide is not aimed towards communists specifically -- the principles apply to everyone similarly. However, arguments can be made as to why a guide on a communist encyclopedia is important and interesting:
- Many comrades want this information, but do not know where to get it. In this way we are bringing it to them if they happen to read ProleWiki.
- The fitness industry is dominated by reactionary content and personalities. With this guide, you are sure it was written by a communist and will not contain unwelcome anecdotes.
- And of course, fitness is important to all communists for a variety of reasons.
Do you have questions about this guide, or do you have a question it doesn't answer? Feel free to make a topic in the talk page or DM me on discord if you want to stay private.
What is this guide based on?
This guide is based on my own reading and experience based on several years. I take a scientific approach to fitness and nutrition (the latter especially), and I read the scientific studies. With that said, scientific studies in these two fields are very specific in scope and I myself do not know each and every single one of them that exists.
Without further ado, let's delve into the guide.
Nutrition portion
Why learn about nutrition
Nutrition, or dieting, is important for anyone wanting to improve their fitness condition. We will come back to a definition of fitness, but I generally define it as any physical state one wants to achieve. Some people need/want to gain weight, and some people want to lose weight. They are at completely opposite ends, yet their state of being converges because the principles of weight gain and weight loss remain the same.
It is also important to learn about proper nutrition, in my opinion, because there is so much bullshit being sold by an industry that has been making a lot of money on telling outright false advice to people. We aim to set the record straight.
Whatever your fitness goals, they happen mostly through your diet.
Nutrients
Types of nutrients
Macronutrients
The first thing you have to learn is what nutrients are and how they work.
We talk often about macronutrients, from the Greek large or big. Macronutrients are found in large amounts in food, and as such form the bulk of what we eat. Chemically, they belong to one of three broad categories because their molecules share similarities in their structure and atoms. These are:
Fats
Fats, contrary to popular belief, are needed by the human body. This makes sense as they are a macronutrient. If they were unequivocally bad for you, how could they be available in such large quantities?
The idea that fats were a cause of weight gain came about in the 90s from the sugar lobby, who successfully campaigned to reduce fats in food and replace it with their sugar.
Fats are broadly broken down into three categories:
- Unsaturated fats: these are generally considered healthy. One example are omega 3 fats (also called fatty acids), which are unsaturated and essential to your body (we define essential in the next section).
- Saturated fats: these are not necessarily unhealthy per se, but you should limit your consumption.
- Trans fats: these raise your bad cholesterol level and lower your good cholesterol level, and so should be generally avoided entirely if possible.
(you will find examples of healthy food that is high in unsaturated fat and has little to no other types at the end of the Nutrition section)
Carbohydrates
Carbohydrates are essentially sugars. When you consume carbohydrates, your body breaks down the glucose part of the molecule and assimilates it. Therefore all carbohydrates you consume will eventually be broken down into glucose by your body, which is a form of sugar. All nutrients ending in -ose (glucose, fructose, lactose...) are sugars and are very close chemically (glucose and fructose "only" differ by one atom) -- but your body will still break them down into glucose to use them.
We can denote three types of carbs:
- Sugars, which are "simple" carbohydrates, already close to their pure glucose form. Cane sugar or beet sugar (white sugar) are simple carbs. They are also found as fructose in fruit.
- Starches, which are more "complex" carbohydrates. Their molecule is essentially a chain of glucose strung together, and your body will have to do more work to extract the glucose.
- Fibers. Fibers are technically a type of sugar, but your body is unable to process it and therefore will extract almost no nutrients from it. Fibers are important, as your doctor has surely told you, and are also an easy way to feel full without actually consuming calories.
Proteins
We will look at proteins a bit differently. Protein is a molecule made of amino acids. There are 13 amino acids in existence, and 9 of them (75%!) are essential -- meaning your body cannot produce them and so they must be consumed from outside sources. These 9 are:
- histidine,
- isoleucine,
- leucine,
- lysine,
- methionine,
- phenylalanine,
- threonine,
- tryptophan,
- valine.
I obviously don't expect you to remember these names (I certainly don't). Rather, it is important when consuming protein to consume essential proteins and understand what that means.
Ultimately, protein is simply a combination of amino acids that chain together and form protein. With this, we can create a protein profile, which essentially tells us just how many milligrams of each amino acid is in a certain food item.
You might also come across the term complete (or whole) protein, which means that a protein contains all 9 essential amino acids. On such protein is whey (non-vegan), which is the most famous protein supplement -- but we will talk about dieting options later on.
Non-essential proteins are synthesised by the bodies and so there might not be any reason to consume them from outside sources. An example is collagen, which you can get as a supplement, but is also naturally found everywhere in your body.
Protein is generally healthy. There is one (to my knowledge) known problem protein can lead to, which is that it is absorbed in the kidneys. If you have a kidney condition, high protein intake in such a case can be dangerous to them. Otherwise, people with healthy kidneys will have no problem eating as much protein as they want to (although we will look into proper amounts in the fitness portion of this guide).
Micronutrients
We will quickly cover micronutrients. Whereas macronutrients are found in large quantities in foods, micronutrients are found in (very) small quantities. These are vitamins and minerals. While all micronutrients have a different healthy quantity threshold in the human body, for most of them you only need milligrams.
You will find a table detailing the recommended daily amounts of micronutrients on the right and as you can see, these are outright impossible to calculate in a day-to-day setting. Who can count how many milligrams of vitamin A they ate on a day-to-day basis?
Therefore, for proper micronutrient consumption, I would suggest firstly diversifying your diet very widely, and then try supplements and see if you notice any difference after a few weeks.
Micronutrients should not be ignored on the basis that they are counted in mere milligrams. These are essential to your life -- you would die without proper vitamin or mineral intake.
An easy way to diversify your eating habits if you struggle with that is to snack on a different thing every day. One day it can be a banana, then an avocado, then a fried egg, etc.
Supplement types
Supplements are a gigantic industry and not all are equally good. Omega 3 supplements (an unsaturated fat and essential nutrient to the human body), when tested in labs, read out a "TOTOX" (total oxidation) index. This index indicates how oxidized the oil is, which makes it pretty much dead as far as nutrient absorption is concerned and outright unhealthy. There is also the concept of bio absorption, which essentially measures how much nutrients your body is able to get from a pill (or anything you consume). Magnesium oxide supplements for example have terrible absorption, whereas magnesium bisglycinate have much better rates. Essentially, your body gets more magnesium out of it per gram of magnesium.
Therefore, you should do your research before trying out supplements. While I have tried different supplements myself, I can't really write about specifics as virtually all micronutrients (and macro!) are found as supplements these days. Don't hesitate, however, to ask a company to provide you with their lab tests results if you're interested in a supplement.
One supplement that is often marketed but that I do not recommend are BCAAs. BCAA stands for branch-chained amino acids, a collection of 4 amino acids that are supposedly very good for muscle building. Yet if you've been particularly attentive while reading this guide, you might have noticed already that amino acids form protein. As such, there is no reason to be consuming BCAA, which are just 3-4 of the 9 essential amino acids, when you could be consuming complete proteins instead.
Let's talk steroids
I also need to make an aside to talk about steroids, and specifically anabolic steroids. The reason for this is because they have jumped in popularity in recent years and are often promoted for people who want to achieve bodybuilding goals fast.
Steroids are a class of molecule following a certain pattern (like everything else we've seen so far), and some of them are anabolic, meaning essentially that they promote muscle growth. Steroids get turned into testosterone in your body, which allows you to put on more muscle mass (and faster) than is otherwise naturally possible.
It is important to talk about such substances openly, as people deserve to be educated on this so they can make their own choice. Steroids will be available on the market whether I talk about them or not, and so I prefer to talk about them correctly. This is not what I see from most proponents of steroids, who irresponsibly tell teenagers (who are in their prime years to be building muscle) to get on steroids or SARMS (a non-steroid substance that also turns into testosterone in the body, but has barely been studied in humans).
Steroids essentially unlock your muscle-building potential, there's no question about that. You will also need shorter rest time and could essentially work out your entire body every single day of the week. You will not only put on muscle mass very rapidly (very), you will also be able to put on more mass than anyone in the world who doesn't use such substances.
Steroids also help you put on muscle even if you don't work out (this has been studied), but it would be a missed opportunity to get on a damaging substance and not use it to its full potential.
But they are also very dangerous, even when taken responsibly. The most responsible one can be with steroids, according to medical regimens being given out by doctors nowadays, is to get on a cycle of maybe 5 months, stopping for 6 months to a year, and doing that for no more than 5 years in your life. Once you are on the off cycle (the period without steroids), you will lose some of the mass you put on and once you stop steroids for good (if you stop, they can be addictive psychologically), you will never have this mass again. This is why many athletes are now on steroids 24/7 -- Instagram models for example -- and never stop taking them in their life so they can maintain their physique throughout their entire life.
Anabolic steroids increase the risk of heart disease (heart diseases are always major and dangerous -- the biggest side effect), increase the risk of infection by interfering with your immune system, increase the risk of liver disease and can interfere with your physiological system. Read more here.
Essentially, there is a question I ask people when they ask me about steroids: what is your goal? Are you going to compete, or do you just want to reach your goals faster? If the former, this is unfortunately the reality of the fitness competition field under capitalism nowadays and any serious competitor will start taking substances if they want to win. If the latter, why? You will have to work out for the rest of your life anyway and you will eventually reach your maximum potential even under steroids, so what would be the point of taking a shortcut? If you have reached your natural potential and now feel like you want to reach the next step, then I doubt I can tell you something you don't know already.
If you are looking at steroids as an option, I can only suggest you educate yourself properly on them and don't shy away from looking at the side effects and risks associated. They have destroyed lives before, especially when used improperly.
Which nutrients are bad?
It must be understood that no one nutrient is unequivocally bad and must be avoided at all costs. It would be actually very difficult to avoid them entirely as for example, saturated fats are found alongside unsaturated fats in most foods, and trans fats are ubiquitous in almost everything we eat these days. The key word is quantity. Minute quantities of trans fats will not damage you. However, to eat healthy, you should aim to reduce trans and saturated fats and look towards consuming mostly unsaturated fats.
Understanding essential and non-essential nutrients (this is primordial)
The second important thing, which we mentioned when talking about protein, is the concept of essential vs non-essential nutrients.
Essentially, the human body is capable of producing some nutrients itself, known as synthesis (meaning to transform two or more components into another one).
However, there are some nutrients we are not capable of producing. Other animals, as well as plants, can synthesize them, but the human body cannot. These are the healthy omega 3 fats, most vitamins, and most amino acids. This means if something is essential in nutrition, you must consume it from an outside source to bring it to your body so it can use it.
Collagen for example, which I mentioned earlier, is considered non-essential not because you can live without it (you can't) but because your body will make it by itself as long as you eat food.
This means you must maximise your intake of essential nutrients (to recommended dosage levels), this is the basis of eating healthy.
Where to go from here
There is a lot I cannot cover in this guide regarding nutrients, as I want it to be as easy to follow as possible for day-to-day life. I am also not a biologist and could not go into the atomic details of nutrients and oils. We could go deep into maths and bio absorption (and how a gram of protein has the same amount of calories as a gram of rice when tested in a lab setting, but not in your actual body) but I think there is no point to that for such a guide.
The bottom line is that all macronutrients that we denoted as healthy can be consumed in any amount, with the only limiting factor being calories, which we will look into right now.
Calories
The second thing we have to understand about nutrition is calories.
Scientifically, calories are a unit of energy. 1 calorie is the amount of energy needed to raise the temperature of 1 gram of water (equal to 1 millilitre of water) by 1 degree Celsius. This is an older unit, and the scientific community now uses Joules, which you might see sometime when looking up calories.
Regardless, calories are still in use for food specifically and will generally be more representative for people than Joules.
There is a very simple principle in regards to calories and the human body. Your body consumes a certain amount of calories every day by just existing, which is essentially energy your body needs to live -- this can be your heart pumping blood, your stomach producing acid, your kidneys filtering blood... literally everything your body does requires energy of some sort to do it.
If you give your body more energy than it needs to function, it will have to find a use for it. It can't just make it disappear by magic. In the human body, this translates into the creation of fat storage. Fat has a very high energy potential, and so this is what evolution has decided would be best for us to store energy.
Therefore we can deduce a simple mathematical rule. If you eat more calories than your body needs, you will gain fat weight (the distinction with fat-free weight will be important in the fitness portion). If you eat fewer calories than your body needs, you will lose fat weight (although you will also lose some fat-free weight unless proper precautions are taken). Unless otherwise specified, from now on when I mention weight, I will always be talking about fatty weight.
Regulating your body weight -- at least the fatty cells -- is as easy as that, technically speaking. In reality, it can be a difficult road that we will detail in a dieting portion later on.
Empty and "full" calories
There is somewhat of a "pop science" concept known as empty calories, which are very interesting when one starts looking at their nutrition from up close.
So-called empty calories are called that way because they don't make you feel like you've eaten anything. These are generally liquids (supposedly an evolutionary holdover so that we can drink as much water as we need) and a deadly combo known very well to fast food and snack companies of fats, salt and sugar (which I will call FSS).
This combo essentially does two things: it is on the one hand very tasty and addictive and, on the other hand, it is packed with calories but will not satiate you in any way.
The FSS combo is theorised to be an evolutionary holdover, as these foods would have been difficult to come by in older times, but are packed with calories -- as such your brain would tell you to eat all of it because you wouldn't know when you'd find such a source of calories again. Thus there is a mechanism in the body that makes them feel "empty" so that you can eat all your supply.
Empty calories however still pack on calories, and as such will become very important when talking about dieting later.
On the contrary, "full" calories like fibers make you feel full and as such less likely to snack on something later. They are also very important in a dieting plan.
Calculate your calories
The first step if you are interesting in taking control of your nutrition is to start counting your calories. This will help you understand how much you might be eating in a usual day (most people are very bad at counting their calories in their head, and so am I!), and also how many calories your body actually needs.
There are a few different algorithms to calculate your TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure), but most calculators are based on the Miflin-St. Jeor formula, so any calculator (such as this one) will do.
Personally however, I find that these calculators tend to overestimate one's TDEE. I would suggest leaving your activity at the "sedentary" level, even if your job has you on your feet all day or you go to the gym three times a week. We will go into more details on this in the dieting section.
You should get a number around 2000-2500 calories (or kcal in metric; 1 imperial calorie = 1 kcal metric calorie. I will only be using calorie to mean kcal in this guide).
There is also a basal metabolic rate, which does not take into account your life (such as walking 10k steps a day), but only what your body consumes for its processes, as if you were laying motionless in bed for 24 entire hours.
I would also suggest downloading a calorie counting app such as MyFitnessPal or LoseIt (although be wary of their privacy policies). With these apps, you can input every single thing you eat and it will count calories as well as macronutrients for you. This is my preferred weight watching method, and some people might feel differently about it, but I always recommend people start counting calories for a few days in the early stages of their diet to understand just how much they actually consume in a day.
Fun fact: when sleeping, your body burns calories at a third of the rate as when you are awake.
Fat cells
I find fat cells very interesting in their functioning, and I want to detail them a bit so that you can better understand how putting on or losing weight works.
As you can see from the diagram, a fat cell is essentially a balloon that fills a reservoir with fat.
Some have theorised that this is the reason it is more difficult to lose weight than to gain it, as these cells are not destroyed when you lose weight -- they just empty the reservoir. Thus, once created (when there is a need to stock fat in your body), these are essentially never destroyed (they will stay in your body for years) and are simply waiting to be filled up again. However, I am unsure about the validity of this theory.
Dieting
Aggregating all that we have learned so far, we can already answer the first question people have when they start dieting: "Will this thing make me fat?"
And the answer is no, nothing inherently transforms into fatty mass in your body. You can eat whatever you like provided you take its calories into account.
Weight gain and weight loss
The second concept we have to see then, which I suspect is what most people read this guide for, is how to lose weight or, conversely, how to gain it.
It is important to understand, before we being, that dieting -- no matter which of of these two ways you follow -- is a long process and is never truly over. If you do not adopt your dieting habits into your daily life, you will eventually have to run your diet again in the future; it could be 3 months, or it could be 2 years, but you have to be on the path to durable change.
Fundamentally, the concept is as simple as exceeding your TDEE to gain weight, and staying under your TDEE for weight loss. While anecdotal, a professor showed his students every year that he could lose weight by just eating twinkies (a highly-caloric processed snack food). Your body, as far as fat mass is concerned, only cares about calories.
That is not to say you should not eat a balanced diet however, which will help you manage your diet when it gets tough mentally as well as build muscle (and avoid losing it) if you are interested in that.
The more you "overeat" (over your TDEE), the faster you will gain fatty mass, right? And conversely, the fewer calories you eat under your budget, the faster you will lose mass, right? Well, not entirely. Your body is a complex collection of processes, which form what we call the metabolism. Tiny changes in the availability of one vitamin can have noticeable effects on your psyche and organs. What I'm saying is that for all intents and purposes, the human body cannot be reduced to just mathematical formulas and theory. In other words, you cannot just eat as many calories as you want to pack on a lot of weight or not eat anything to lose weight rapidly. We will detail this a bit more in the next subsections.
There is a tendency by fitness writers, in my opinion, to set aside the psychological aspect of dieting in favour of the pure mathematical formulas. "Just eat within your budget day after day and stop bothering me" types. This is not helpful, as much of dieting is attributed to your mental state and your capacity of being able to not cheat on your diet or eat that one extra bite when you're already full instead of throwing the towel.
Read the packaging labels
Before we get into weight gain and weight loss in details, one thing that is absolutely crucial is that you start to read the packagings. These days in every country there is a nutritional content table on every packaging (and for fruit and vegetables, you can find it online). Read that label, especially the calories per 100 grams. This is more difficult in the USA because the food lobby doesn't want people to make informed choices on what they eat so that they will keep buying trash food and as such they are only required to show a "per serving" label. Servings do not amount to anything and it is crucial to have an objective baseline to compare foods between, such as 100g.
You can see such a label on the right, although it gives energy in kilojoules (1000 Joules) instead of calories.
In this one, fats and sugars are detailed so that you can follow your consumption of saturated and trans fats (now shown here) as well as simple, processed sugars.
This label will become your best friend whether you are trying to gain or lose weight, and especially if you are on a workout routine. Again, this is all to help you understand just how much (or how few!) calories you eat each day.
Weight gain
Weight gain is advised in some cases and those that struggle with it have often have issues with feeling full.
In bodybuilding, there is the concept of bulking, which we'll look at in more details later, but it is basically a phase in a bodybuilding programme where the recipient eats more calories than their TDEE (in a controlled manner) so as to create mostly fat-free mass (muscle) while reducing the gain of fatty mass. This is done through the copious consumption of protein -- again, we'll look at this in more detail later.
To gain weight, you should set a calorie budget between 250 and 500 calories above your TDEE. Having a fitness routine while on this diet will be beneficial to you, as it will allow you to pack on some muscle while gaining weight, and as such both are not mutually contradictory.
There is no need to go overboard when gaining weight, 500 calories above your TDEE is amply sufficient and should let you gain around 1 kilogram of mass per week. And if it's not, it's better to try a lower quota first and move it up as time goes (to potentially 750, or 1000 calories) than the other way around. This means if you need to gain 10 kilos, you'll be done with it in just 2 months and a half at a 500 calorie surplus. This is sort of a pet peeve of mine actually, as, like I said, people are terrible at estimating how many calories they eat in a day. As such I see loaded (= on steroids) bodybuilders, who have an entirely different metabolism, tell beginner athletes to just eat eat eat without worrying. This is unhealthy and counter-productive, as they will pack on very little fat-free mass as compared to the fatty mass they will gain.
In terms of bulking, there is also the concept of "dirty" bulking. This is when one eats empty calories so as to pack them on easily. This is generally avoided by bodybuilders as you will mostly put on fatty mass and will not get proper nutrients (e.g. simple sugars, non-essential or very little protein, trans fats). However, if you are only looking at gaining fatty mass and struggle with eating more than you are used to, then this can be an easy way to add more calories to your diet: drink soda, and eat fast food (which relies on the salt+sugar+fats combo I mentioned earlier).
I have another healthy option for bulking: virgin oil, especially olive oil. This oil is high in unsaturated fats (provided it is uncooked), and is 100% fats, which are the most calorie-dense nutrients. Adding just a few tablespoons of oil to your meals will quickly add 100-200 calories to your meal.
Weight loss
Weight loss works on reducing your calorie quota under your TDEE. Generally, it is recommended that you don't go below 1500 calories per day (for men) or 1200 calories (for women). With that said, I am not one for policing and if you feel like going down to 1000 calories a day, it is up to you. I have done it at several times as I enjoy some of the benefits (knowing you can conquer your hunger, feeling more energised in the early days as overeating can make you lethargic) without noticeable side effects.
Barring medical conditions (I am not a doctor), you will know soon enough if you are putting yourself in danger and the fix is easy in a weight loss setting: eat more again. However, I would not recommend a 1000 calorie diet to be sustainable as your body will quickly get used to it and slow down its metabolism to work with its intake. This is essentially the phenomenon known as "starvation mode", which is often exaggerated in popular media. Your body wants the amount of calories it's used to having, and if you don't give it, it will give you cravings so you go back to eating. That is why 1500 calories is more realistic, so you don't slow down your metabolism too much, which will stop your weight loss.
At best, you can hope to lose 1 kilogram of weight per week (2.2 pounds) if you follow your programme correctly and don't cheat: reduce your TDEE by 500, and that's your budget for a 1 kilogram loss. Weight loss is terrible for the first two weeks, as you will not be losing any fatty weight (mostly water weight which you will gain back) and you will feel hungry as you adjust to your new life for the foreseeable future. But after those two weeks, you will certainly find that you suddenly adjusted to your new diet and it will become almost second nature for you.
A good diet is one that doesn't leave you hungry all the time. You will likely have to power through the first couple of weeks, but after that it becomes much, much easier.
My advice is to eat bananas. Bananas are great for cutting hunger, and I always jump on them when I start a diet (known as "cutting" in the fitness world). My second advice is to not be tempted, and as such do not buy snacks at the store, do not even go into the aisle.
Speaking of cutting, if you are on a muscle-building plan while losing weight, you need between 1 and 1.6 gram of protein per kilogram of body mass to maintain most of your muscle. Otherwise, you will lose more fat-free mass than you intended to while losing weight, whereas what you want is to maximise fatty mass loss instead. If you weigh 80 kilos (times 2.2 for pounds), that means you should try to eat between 80 and 128 grams of protein every day. I am aware that for some people, this is simply impossible because if you weigh let's say 120 kilos (264 lbs), it is borderline impossible to eat a whopping 200 grams of protein per day while staying under 1500 calories. 120 grams of protein in this scenario is much more realistic .
We will go over these numbers more in the fitness section of this guide. We will also be looking at how to effectively lose weight while on a physical exercise regimen.
Looking at some diets
It is no surprise that at a time where food production is industrial, there is also an associated industry full of diets with catchy names and dubious effectiveness. Here below I list some diets that I have heard worked for some people -- I have not tried all of them myself.
Ultimately, any diet is good if a) you make progress on it and b) it is sustainable. Everything else is just details. That's why I'm a big proponent of trying out different things until you find something that works well for you. This can be a long process, and you should stay at least a couple weeks on a diet before moving on for physiological reasons we outlined above in the weight loss section.
Some diets that I know people have reported success on for weight loss (assume I have not tried them until otherwise specified):
- Volume eating: this is my own diet which relies on eating low-calorie foods so that you can eat more overall volume. I generally look at foods that have fewer or around 100 calories per 100 gram: vegetables, lean meat, non-fried foods, etc. Anything above 350-400 calories per 100g is cut out entirely.
- Keto: revolves around cutting out carbs to around 10% of your macronutrient intake and replacing them with fats and protein. This forces your body into a ketosis state which makes it use fat for fuel instead of carbs, and should therefore help you lose weight faster. I am unsure of the validity of this theory as ketosis is a natural process, but there's no denying it will help you lose weight due to calorie intake. Still, some people might prefer it for various reasons.
- Intermittent fasting: aims at helping you manage your caloric intake easily through fasting. You decide on times you are allowed to eat (between 8 am and 4pm for example), and you can eat anything you want during that time, and you are not allowed to eat anything outside of that time. Many people have reported huge success on this diet, I think it is helpful for people that tend to overeat without realising it.
- High-protein diet: If you remember the 1g-1.6g of protein I recommended earlier, this is essentially its diet: eat a lot of protein. Protein helps make you feel full and is essential to muscle synthesis. Unless you have kidney problems, there is no such thing as too much protein.
For weight gain, I am only aware of the GOMAD diet: a gallon of milk a day. Since liquid calories do not register as fulfilling hunger in our body, you can easily get calories from drinking caloric liquids such as milk. However, it is a gruelling diet (or so I've heard from people who went on it). In my opinion, although your mileage may vary, you are better off applying the tips I detailed in the weight gain subsection.
I would avoid all brand diets such as Weight Watchers or Atkins. They are a business first and foremost and their plans do not provide any benefits you couldn't get by following this guide (however, the social aspect as well as other benefits such programmes let you access is something else).
What should you eat?
Such lists of foods high in certain nutrients can be easily found on the Internet, but I will list some vegetarian and vegan foods that are often left out of these lists. These foods will also be useful for the fitness portion of this guide, especially around protein.
- Fats: Unsaturated fats, although watch your amounts as fat is the most calorie-dense nutrient. Foods include nuts (although very calorie dense), virgin olive oil (uncooked), avocado, fish...
- Carbs: Complex carbs (starches) and fibers. As you don't digest fibers, they essentially have 0 calorie content when it comes to consuming them. Foods include rice, whole-grain pasta, beans...
- Protein: all protein is good (your body will use it one way or another), but you should aim for essential protein to maximise your potential. Foods include all animal and animal-derived product (meat, fish, eggs, cheese -- but not butter), soy beans (unprocessed they are as heavy in protein as beef), chickpeas, lentils, nuts (though still calorie-packed)...
I personally don't recommend nuts as a dieting option because they are very heavy in calories (more than 500 cals per 100g of nuts), which means a serving is around 5-6 nuts. This doesn't seem sustainable to me but nonetheless, they are a very healthy option to consider.
A more general approach is calorie-counting, but not everyone has the patience or propensity to do that, which is one reason intermittent fasting sees so many proponents. With a calorie-counting app installed, input everything you eat in a day and plan out your meals beforehand. I use LoseIt, as it allows me to follow my calories as well as my macronutrients day by day, with a quota that tells me if I'm getting close
Avoid the salt+sugar+fats combo, but you can eat calorie-dense food on any diet of your choice because at the end of the day, physiologically, your body only cares about calories when it comes to losing weight.
Fitness portion
What is fitness?
Earlier on, I defined fitness as any goal you have for your physical body. I stand by that definition, as I don't believe in policing people's choices and that they know what is good (or not good) for them -- provided they are properly educated, which is not the goal of the food and fitness industry.
To some people, this means reaching a healthy weight. To others, this means getting absolutely shredded. It means being more active during the day, doing cardio, sleeping better, having more energy, healing an injury... there is no one goal under the umbrella term of fitness.
To me, fitness can be achieved in any number of ways. While gyms have exploded in popularity in the past few years, any sort of physical activity helps achieve that "fitness" goal. This can be achieved through walking, running, or playing any other sports.
This guide, while applicable to any fitness goal and method, will focus on muscle building as it is what I am most familiar with. That is not to say, however, that you should absolutely go to the gym to get bulky (or strong, as we will see the two are slightly different in methods). By all means, go for walks (10k steps a day), go for runs, join a basketball club!
The benefits of exercise
People who do not exercise generally believe that the benefits one draws from exercising stop at physical changes. You put on muscle, you get leaner, and that's about it.
But there is more to it than that. When you exercise regularly, a lot of processes happen inside your body and your brain. It is not uncommon -- and indeed that is my case as well -- that exercise helps you sleep better, makes you happier, makes you more confident, and generally improves your life for the better. Perhaps that is why, in our late stage capitalist societies, gyms have seen a sharp spike in popularity.
As such, if you are dieting, I cannot recommend enough that you also exercise on the side, 3-4 times a week. It can only be beneficial.
The basics of working out
There are three components that go into your performance at the gym and in muscle building. In order of importance, they are:
- Sleep
- Diet
- Exercise
As you can see, exercise comes last. That is because without a proper basis with the first two components, you will not achieve anything worthwhile at the gym. Getting 8 hours of sleep at night is the most important criterion, and then comes your diet -- we've touched on bulking and cutting earlier, but will talk about it again in this section.
Exercise is of course an integral part of any workout plan -- that's the whole "working out" part. To that end, I have two different programmes that I have used myself and highly recommend.
But before getting into them, it is important to understand what exercise does. Essentially, doing something physical repeatedly will make you better at doing that specific thing. Some of that training is transferable to other disciplines -- like how boxers, who punch all day long, will necessarily develop the upper body muscles needed for pull-ups and therefore will likely be passable (if not good) at rock climbing, for example. This is the concept of transferability, and something that is good to keep in mind for beginners (and can be used effectively by more advanced athletes): doing one thing will not shoehorn you into just that one thing, but will help you do other things as well.
Regardless, a boxer will mainly be good at punching things and a rock climber will mainly be good at climbing rocks. A bodybuilder will have a high muscle mass (fat-free mass), and a strength athlete will find it easy to carry heavy loads.
The two programmes I have tried take place in a gym setting. One will focus on making your muscle fibers strong, and the other will focus on making your muscles larger (hypertrophy).
If you have no idea where to even begin, I would actually suggest joining a Crossfit gym -- and a good one. That is actually how I got my start in fitness some years ago, and I was lucky to have good coaches who knew their job and could teach me good exercises as well as proper form. I did Crossfit for one year before deciding that I would like to focus on hypertrophy and joined a gym instead.
Resting and splitting
Resting is also essential to proper muscle growth, and so I will talk about it now. Muscle building happens not when you are training, but when you are not training -- that is, during your sleep.
For this reason, it is well-known that if you train a muscle group (let's say your pectoral muscles), you should give them at least a full day of rest before training them again. If you train them on Monday, do not train them on Tuesday and only go at them again on Wednesday.
People that want to train 4 or even 6 days a week split their workouts differently. On day 1 they might train the upper body, and on day 2 they will train the lower body, which allows them to go to the gym potentially every day of the week.
For the purposes of this guide, we will not be going too far into splits (though you might want to look up PPL [push pull legs] and upper/lower splits). Remember to give your muscles a full day to recover and grow before training them again.
Should men and women train differently?
The fitness industry, having found an easy target in the uninformed (because nobody is getting fitness and health lessons in school), also found many grifts to detach people from their money selling them things they don't need that will only marginally help them and for the wrong reasons.
One of these was to differentiate workout plans between men and women, so that they can sell a differently-priced programme and supplements to both segments.
Truthfully, there is no difference between men's and women's muscles. They are the same fibres. What differs is mostly the inherent muscle mass between both sexes as well as societal expectations of what a man and a woman should look like.
As such, the programmes I list below will apply to both men and women equally.
As a man, I've talked to women who were worried about hitting the gym and becoming bulky and huge (something men conversely usually desire). I have always told them there is no risk to that: nobody looks like Mister Olympia after grabbing a barbell once. It takes years of work before big changes can be seen, especially if one doesn't use steroids.
There is also a tendency in both men and women (non-binary people seem immune to it thankfully) to downplay the amount of effort one puts into their workout. I guarantee you that both the guy with big arms and a 6-pack and the woman with a bubble butt put in the work to get those results, it didn't come naturally to them.
What about trans people who want to hit the gym?
I have had difficulty finding information in regards to strength or hypertrophy training for trans people and as I am not trans, cannot speak of my own experience.
However, from what I could find (which I urge you to double check), it goes as follow:
if you are trans, you can of course train. If you want to avoid bulking up (for trans women for example), you should remain at low weights and not progress on them (i.e. adding more weight than the last time each time you go to the gym). This will help "tone" your muscle, which is essentially the first stage of muscle building when you start to get some definition but not much mass. As hormones change your body's response to training, you will normally be able to start training like any cis person of your gender.
If you are looking to bulk up your muscle mass (for trans men for example), then you should go all out on a training programme: hit the gym 4 times a week, eat your protein,
Everything else still applies. You still need proper sleep, you still need enough protein, and you still need to actually go to the gym.
Strength training
My strength programme is the Phraks Greyskull LP. It is named like that because it is based on the Greyskull LP programme, but customised by a user named Phraks. LP refers to Linear Progression, which we'll get into shortly.
Phraks is very easy to understand: as you can see, it fits into this little picture on the right. Essentially, phraks is predicated around three "major" exercises, also called compound exercises because they will train several different muscle groups. These exercises form the basis of any workout programme and for Phraks, they are:
- the bench press
- the deadlift
- the squat
- the overhead press
- chinups (like pull-ups but your hands are facing towards you)
- rows (any type you like, I like 45° barbell rows)
In phraks, you have a workout session every two days, 3 to 4 times a week. For example, you could decide to go Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Sunday. Then next week: Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday.
It would be detrimental to go more than once every 2 days for phraks as it is a full body workout. As explained above, your muscles need at least 24h to grow.
You have 3 sets of 5 reps for each exercise (except for the deadlift, as it is a very , with around 3-5 minutes of rest time between each set. On the third and last set, you will try to get as many reps as you can above 5.
So for example, on Monday (and referring to the table on the right as day 1) you would do overhead presses, chinups, and squats. On Wednesday you would alternate the first two exercises and bench press and row, then do one set of deadlifts. Then on Friday you would go back to Overhead presses, chinups and squats. And next Monday, because you are alternating the first two exercises, you would do bench presses, rows and squats.
The term linear progression means that every time you do an exercise, you add as little weight as possible to it (usually 2.5 kilos in commercial gyms): you progress linearly by simply adding weight.
I successfully ran this programme myself for almost 1 year before hitting a plateau and switching to a hypertrophy programme, and that's why I can recommend this one. With Phraks, you will mostly be creating strength fibres in your muscles as you are stopping after 5 reps, right before the other type of fibre (the one that grows big) gets recruited. This allows you to put on more weight on the barbell, so go for it.
Phraks usually takes around 1 hour to complete.
Muscle building
For muscle building (hypertrophy), I have a solid programme without a name that you can find here. However, I changed some things because I didn't like a couple exercises and I wanted to run it 3 days a week. My variant looks like this:
| Monday | Wednesday (leg day) | Friday |
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(if you can't do chin ups, look up negative chinups) |
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(there is a machine your gym might have and you can use a dumbbell or kettlebell to progressively add weight) |
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(I recommend an EZ bar if there is one) | |
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(I also recommend the EZ bar here) |
(I will soon add video links so you can see how to do each exercise. In the meantime, please Google everything you don't know!)
As you can see compared to Phraks, you have not only more exercises but many more reps as well. The additional repetitions allow the recruitment of the other type of muscle fibres, the one that grows large under stress.
Like with Phraks, it is supposed to be run as a linear progression programme. This means every time you do an exercise, you add as little weight as your gym has available to the weight. Either that, or do one more rep on the exercise (then 2, then 3, then up the weight).
It has a good mix of compound exercises, which you do first, then more targetted work, which you do second, and finally finishes with isolation work (biceps, triceps). It also has a good mix between barbell and dummbell work -- one of your limbs is always stronger than the other, and this will help close the gap. Finally, this programme has a good mix also between vertical and horizontal work. It's not groundbreaking, but it works.
This recruitment of different fibres does not mean Phraks will not make you gain muscle mass or that this routine will not make you stronger. They will do both, albeit not as well.
This programme usually takes around 2 hours to complete.
Hitting the plateau
You will notice with both these workout routines that you are supposed to add weight to your exercises every time you do an exercise again. Mathematically, this means after a few years you would be achieving world records, which is simply not possible materially speaking. (Adding 2.5 kilos on the bench press every week means that starting with an empty 20 kilo bar, you would add 10 kilos on it every month, which translates to 120 kilos after a year, 240 after 2 years and 360 kilos after 3 years, which is a world record held by someone who has been training for about a decade).
You will eventually plateau, after around 6 months to a year. This means that no matter how hard you try, you will not be able to perform your sets at higher weights and will have to stay on one weight. Your bench press will stay stuck at 60 kilos and while you might eventually bench 62.5 kilos, you will find it difficult and will not be able to achieve 65 no matter how much you try to.
There are various ways to break through a plateau and with perseverance, you will break it.
to be added
How to diet while exercising
This is the big question that we were waiting for, and personally it took me around a year and a half of experimenting to find the proper answer.
You see, when you are dieting (either gaining or losing weight) without exercising, everything is easy: the number on the scale represents your fatty mass and you know exactly what you have put on or not. You can even use a BMI chart to see where you stand.
Once you start putting on muscle mass, this becomes more complicated. Muscle is a bit more dense than fat, and it's what we want to be building. This means that once you start working out, you will, after a couple months, essentially have no idea how much fatty mass you have compared to muscle mass.
You can still try and figure your fatty mass quantity by trying to figure out your bodyfat percentage, although it is not an exact science by any means. The easiest way is to look up "body fat percentage comparisons", as there are various visual charts to help you figure out where you stand. Otherwise, you can use calipers on your body -- although they take some skill to use to be somewhat accurate.
Regardless, once you start putting on fat-free mass, you will have to rely on tools other than your bathroom scale to figure out how much progress you're making. To put it simply, there is no way to know how much muscle mass you are putting on.
How much muscle mass can you expect to put on?
Realistically, you can put on around 2.5 kilograms of muscle mass every 6 months.
There is such a thing as "newbie gains" however, a term that designates the rapid hypertrophy and performance gains that new gym-goers experience in their first months at the gym. As your body is not used to this sort of physical stimulation, you will put on muscle more easily than more seasoned athletes. This lasts for a few months, between 3 and 6.
If you remain natural and don't take steroids or other PEDs (performance-enhancing drugs), expect to train for 4 years or more to see very good progress. You will of course see progress all the time -- made even more evident if you take pictures every few months. But it is important to manage expectations and realise that nobody gets absolutely ripped after going to the gym for 1 year, not without PED help.
Principles to follow
We will shortly delve into bulking and cutting, which we mentioned earlier during the nutrition portion of this guide. However before we delve into the details, I have to list some general principles.
Bulking
Cutting
Addressing myths and corporate bullshit
Finally, in this last section I will address some common myths around exercising as well as corporate inventions made to sell us crap we don't need.
Can you tone muscle?
Toning is sort of a misnomer; it actually refers to the first stage of muscle growth, when they start to get some definition but have yet to grow fully into their shape. Toning can be achieved with bodyweight exercise or during any resistance training regimen (gym workouts) and staying at a fixed weight once you get the body composition you wanted.
Can you target fat loss?
You can't. Doing ab exercises will not make you lose your belly fat, it will tone your abs.