BPC-157 & TB500 Peptides for Injury Recovery and The Shotgun Approach to Building Muscle Mass

I told you in my last podcast that I was going to give you an update on my current protocol using BPC-157 and TB500 peptides for injury recovery and I'm a man of my word. I realized that it was also time to rehash one of the basics on building muscle mass and explain the “shotgun approach” method of dieting for people that are new or the ones spinning their wheels overcomplicating the process of growth!

Click the play button below to listen to BPC-157 & TB500 Peptides for Injury Recovery and the Shotgun Approach to Building Muscle Mass

Thanks to all of my listeners and followers!

TRAIN HARD!

-JD

Prefer to read? You'll find a transcript of the podcast below!

What's up everybody? I hope you have all been well. Thanks for tuning in to another episode of the JDB podcast. Now I think it was my last podcast that I talked about how I was using two peptides to heal a tricep injury, TB500 and BPC-157. And I told you you that I was going to talk about them more once I've been on them a little bit longer and give you an update and let you know if they were working or not, how much I was using and what I was experiencing with them.

I'm going to talk about that and then I'm going to get into something that, I've kind of been guilty of not talking about enough. Because you have to understand something as bodybuilders, especially guys have been in the gym, like veteran bodybuilders, we've been in the gym several years, two plus decades, almost three decades in my case now. I'm kind of guilty of talking about where I'm at in real time and where somebody that had been at this a very long time would be at or possibly look towards turning in this direction. And I'm going to go back and talk about just putting on size today and I'm going to give you some basics and maybe correct some things that some people have been doing wrong and just kind of give you a flashlight to see down the dark path and start making size gains a little bit easier.

But first let me just talk about the peptides. So again, it's TB500 and BPC-157. These are two peptides that are geared towards healing injuries, connective tissues, tendons. And let me just start off by saying I know some of you that followed the podcast have heard this before briefly in the past, but I had a torn tricep tendon. I dealt with this motherfucker for over a year and a half, maybe almost two years, being partially torn and being in pain all the time.

At this point there were certain exercises I had to avoid. It started becoming very inflamed. It would hurt. Like I could tap it on the panel of my door in my car and it would fucking kill me man. I felt like a knife going in my elbow. And so I was in this no man's land where I'd been to the Orthopedic doctor several times. I was trying to heal it on my own. They couldn't really tell me what degree the partial tear was. They can't always give you an exact amount of the percentages left of it or what's gone or degraded or whatnot.

But at this point it was like a rubber band. It was like dry rotted and like frayed. I was in this no man's land where it's like, okay, it doesn't seem like it's going to get any better, but it's not detached. Like, what the fuck do I do? So I trained around it, I did what I could. I lightened loads on certain things a little bit. I still trained very hard. I went to a chiropractor. I had ultrasound done to the area several times. Massage work. I tried PRP. Where that's Platelet Rich Plasma therapy. It sounds more advanced than it really is. They take your blood out of your body, they spin it through a centrifuge to get the platelets in a super concentrated little bit of blood, and they inject that directly into the injured area and they use a camera to see that they're going right in the exact area.

And of course, insurance didn't cover that. It was $500 a pop. I did it three times to no success. They just approved stem cell therapy or stem cell injections at this one hospital near me. They talked to me about that. It was thousands of dollars. And I'm like, Jesus, man, what do I do? It's not fucking getting any better.

Well, fast forward, this one day I'm at the roller skating rink with my son and my nephew, and I know how to roller skate, man. I rollerbladed back when the rollerblading was cool and you weren't a dork for doing it. Now, like, you see someone on rollerblades, you're like, yo, what the fuck, man? Go back to the nineties. And for some damn reason, this night at the skating rink, my skate stopped. I fell, and I fell right on that elbow and fucking popped it. That tendon just went snap. And I knew I did it as soon as I did it, I knew it detached.

So I went back to the Orthopedic doctor. Well I first went to the emergency orthopedic clinic, they did an X-ray, went to the Orthopedic doctor, who fortunately for me is awesome. This guy is likes world renowned, great dude. He performs Tommy John surgery for baseball players. He's one of the only guys in the area that will do it. And him and the intern student doctor or whatever you want to call it, are looking at the MRI and they're like, “Mmm-hmm. Yep. Mmm-hmm…” and that basically means Yay. fuckin’ tore the shit out of it. He detached it.

So eleven days later, I was in surgery. All right? And I'm going to try to get through this backstory, like as quick as possible here and then get into what actually is working for me right now. I went through the surgery, I had this cast on my arm for eleven days, which wasn't too bad. It's the first time and only time I ever had a cast on in my life. And when they took the cast off, I had like 23 staples in my arm going across my elbow, and I'm like, Motherfucker, this incision is bigger than I thought it was going to be.

So I thought the scar was going to be a lot worse than it ended up being. I went back to the orthopedic doctor, more ultrasound on the area, which did break up that scar tissue. That scar is like nothing. You wouldn't even know I had this scar unless you got really close to my elbow. And I'd like to tell you, I took it easy but I probably did too much. I just can't not work out.

If there's any positive to this story, though, it gave me a chance to really focus on my legs. My legs were something that I would train regularly because I knew I needed to train legs to match the rest of my body. But I never truly got into leg training until this happened. And when I say I got into it, I really got into it because I needed something else to focus on. You find ways to keep pushing forward. So my quads took off. I mean, they're one of my better body parts now. It's one of my favorite things to train. So I look forward to leg day now. And you just do what you got to do to get through it.

But I was still doing, like, heavy chest flies. I was doing flies with a fucking cast on my arm. I was like, huh, arm stuck at a 45. What can I do? I'll do flies and it didn't bother it. I started doing calisthenics. I started doing push ups. I was able to do them. But the arm, I dealt with some inflammation, like when I would work it out.

So over time, it got a little bit better. But the press down motion, it was not getting any better. Like, if you were holding a hammer and swinging a hammer, that motion there, the same motion you do when you do a tricep press down, it was just… it was hell, man. I mean, I was starting off with two and a half pounds, and I would do that. And then in my mind, I'm thinking, all right, every week, let's try to work up a little bit. Not the right way to think about a tendon injury and healing.

I went to a guy who was a specialist, I went to a physical therapy place. They didn't know their ass from a hole in the ground. Elbow injuries, tricep injuries is not something that's common. They deal with mostly lower body extremity injuries, hip injuries. They just don't deal with it much. Everything they wanted me to do was shit that I kind of knew. And they even told me, they're like, you're wasting your time here.

I went to this guy who is like, this massage therapist/anatomy healing guru. Guy was fucking amazing. He started doing the Graston technique on my arm with, like, those metal blades. It's like a large butter knife type thing, and it scrapes up scar tissue. We did cupping on the arm to pull the skin away from the tendon and allow more blood flow. He'd take me out on the gym floor. We would do exercises with the cups on. We did a lot of different things. And he told me, Just get that tendon to fire. Don't worry about going up in weight. It's not like the movies where every week you're getting stronger and you're using a little bit more until you're 100%. He goes, Fuck all that shit. He goes, get used to flexing that tendon. Get used to firing that… I say flexing that tendon… Flex the tricep, work the tendon. Fire. Fire. High rep, low weight. Just get the tendon working.

That helped a lot. A lot. I thought I knew how to train, but I never dealt with this before, and that guy really helped me learn how to train through this and to try to heal it. The problem with it was, is once I would hit a certain weight, on like a press, that was it. It was quitting time. It just felt like a fucking knife in my arm, and the pain would just prevent me from doing any more. And it became this, like, double edged sword, where if I did do a little bit more weight, I dealt with some hell for the aftermath, and I would take Ibuprofen, some days, 800 or 1,000 milligrams at a time. Ibuprofen, that would make it go down, but I knew it wasn't good. Like, Dude, you can't live on Ibuprofen, right?

Now, let me just back up here and tell you that when the tricep tendon was partially torn, I did try TB 500. I don't know back then if it did any justice, and I don't think I was using enough or using it long enough. But maybe it was just too far gone, and it wasn't in the right environment to heal anyway. I don't know. But the second time around, which is recently, I made sure I got enough. I said, I'm going to do an eight week protocol of this shit, or bust. It's going to heal, or it's not. Like, I'm tired of this shit.

Anyway. I've been through this shit. This has been going on… the surgery was, I think, three fucking years ago. I've been dealing with this shit now for a total of about five years, okay? And it fucking sucks, man. You know, when you love to train and you love to body build, and there's just some nagging bullshit that doesn't seem to heal, it just sucks.

There was one day about a year ago, I'm not going to lie to you, man. I got so aggravated at the gym that in my mind, I was like, I'm fucking done. It's not doing anything. It's not getting better. It's fucking over. I walked out of the gym pissed off. I swung the gym door open, I got in my fucking truck, and I just broke the fuck down. I lost it, man. You know? It's something I love that was getting fucking taken from me, and I was pissed, and I couldn't figure out how to overcome it.

I got home, my wife is like, what's wrong? What's wrong? I was like, I'm fucking done. I'm fucking done. I was throwing shit around. I had a fucking breakdown. Because like I said, I love this. This is my life. This is what helped build me and form me, not just my body, but my character, my formidable years. This was this, was everything to me and my God damn elbow won't fucking work. A distal tricep tendon, it comes into your elbow and it's not fucking healing.

I tried everything. I tried PRP to no success. I tried HGH. I dosed the hell out of HGH right after surgery. Coming out of surgery, man, it was eight or ten units a day of HGH for I can't remember how long, a few months, because I was reading about these protocols and what is the amount for healing? And that didn't seem to do it. I mean, maybe it made a little bit better, but it was just like come and go bullshit with this tricep. And so I was like, I've been going through this for a long time.

So finally, I keep reading about BPC-157. I keep reading about TB500. I'm reading all these different protocols because there's more information on this now than when I first decided to try the TB500. So I ordered ten of each. The TB500 was ten milligram vials. I ordered ten of them. The BPC-157 was five milligram vials. I ordered fucking ten of them. I was like, I'm going to teal this fucking thing. I'm tired of shit.

So I dosed the TB500 at five milligrams twice a week, basically a vial a week. the BPC, at first, I was only doing it once a day at 1,000 micrograms a day, right? So I get five days out of a vial of BPC. I've been doing it every day. I recently went to twice a day. Let me tell you, I think twice a day is better. It's more effective. Once in the morning, once at night, before bed or whatever. I definitely think that twice a day there's something to that.

It's either that or I'm just at the phase into my protocol that it's really starting to take off. I mean, motherfucker, nothing compares to this shit, all right? Honest to God, if I'm lying, I'm flying, This shit, I wished that I was doing this protocol a couple of years ago.

This has been my experience so far. The first week, the inflammation started to go down. The second week, the post workout inflammation pretty much was going away. I didn't do any pressing. I told myself I wasn't going to do any pressing for the whole eight weeks I was doing this. So for chest, I would do heavy pec deck. I stayed away from dumbbells just because sometimes when they come in at the top of the movement, it does kind of put a little bit of stress on that tendon. So it's pretty much heavy pec deck. And I did cables. I did the oh, I can't remember who makes the machine, the free motion machine. Like, you sit there, your back's on the pad, and you do the cable flies. I really like the way that feels. And you can work all different angles. You can bring them up high, from down low, you bring them straight out in front of your face, however you want.

So I would do kind of a combination of heavy, heavy pec deck flies. Then like the free motion cables, and for a couple of times a week, I would do light one arm cable press downs. Okay, high rep. High rep. Just back to what the guru guy was showing me. Fire the tendon. Fire the tendon. But don't overdo it. I didn't want to inflame it. I didn't want to overdo it while these things, these pepides, are in my system. So it was like three sets of 50 reps.

In the beginning, I'd say the first week, maybe a week and a half… Yeah, I could feel a little bit of pain when I was doing them, maybe a little bit of post workout inflammation, but not nearly like it was before. And I started light. I think I did like five pounds on a double pulley, which is easier. And I think I went to seven and a half. I really just wanted to get the blood flow to the area. It wasn't about weight. So now it started to get better the longer you're on it. Not overnight, but I will tell you, once you get into that third week, it's like, holy fucking shit.

So despite what I told myself I wasn't going to do, I did some light presses to just evaluate it, just to see, Okay, is it going to hurt a little bit or am I able to do this? So a few days ago I did some light pressing and I'm probably not going to go back. I'm going to give it another couple of weeks. I'm going to refrain. But let me tell you, I did the Hammer Strength Incline press machine because for the better part of the past few years, barbells and dumbbells have been very limited because it's a stability issue. So I opened up with a single 45 in each side of the Hammer Strength Incline, 100 reps. Boom. Because I've been training a lot like that.

And one thing I found out from that is people say you can't grow on high reps. That is utter bullshit. Because I got really, really developed changing my training approach, dealing with this injury, tiptoeing around this shit for the past few years. And I was getting more compliments, like, how much do you bench? I was like, I wish I could tell you, I'm falling apart. You know? I'm training totally different now than I was before the injury.

The second set, it was a single 45 and a 25 on each side and I think I busted out like 20 reps super easy. They were flying off. It was not a challenge at all. Again, it was just about working the chest, getting the blood flow, evaluating that area. No pain. None. Which I started to, I used to start getting into the area of pain when I got to two plates on each side. Now before the peptides, I would go to three plates on each side and maybe a 25 here and there. I could do that about ten or twelve reps, which really still isn't heavy for me. I was working with four plates and some change per side before my tricep decided to go fuck off. So I got the two a side, did it, 20 reps. And like I said, before the two a side that would get into my tendon, it was like, okay, now I'm feeling it. Nothing. Felt nothing. It's like the injury wasn't even fucking there.

And here's the hard part, okay? This is what I was going through the first few weeks is your brain has been telling you for the past few years, “Ow, this hurts, Ow, this is going to hurt. Ow, it hurts.” My brain is still telling me like, “Okay, it's going to hurt. It's going to hurt.” But it doesn't hurt. The arm's not slowing down because I'm like clinching up from the pain. It's going up, it doesn't hurt. And guess what? There's no post workout inflammation. Okay, that's when I said, these fucking things are working. They're working, and once I got into the third week, I'm about three and a half weeks in now, once that beginning of that third week hit, it was like, this shit is working. Nothing has compared to it that I tried doing. Not GH, not Deca, not Test, not ultrasound, nothing. This shit is in a league of its own. And I got it from a place I knew it was legit, it was tested. There was lab tests done. I did not want to waste my money on something and my time on some shit from some bullshit research site that who knows what it was. It is definitely working.

Actually what I did is last week… because see, I'm going to run out of the BPC before the TB500. If I'm doing an eight week protocol and I got ten vials of TB, I have a little bit extra and I want to use them in conjunction with each other. And I'm only going to do it eight weeks because a lot of the studies are showing this stuff can cause cancerous cells to take off over a prolonged period of time. I know GH is proclaimed to do that too, right? Which it can. So I was like, look, I'm going to hit it hard for eight weeks. I'm going to get the fuck off it. So last week there was like three or four days in a row, I'm going to kick you another vial. So I did five milligrams a day, like maybe it's three days in a row. I did five milligrams a day, a few days in a row of TB and then back on it. I took an injection today. I'll do it for a second time this week and then back to twice a week with the TB500, 5 milligrams, twice a week, right? Basically one vial a week.

So anyway, I realize I'm 20 minutes into this podcast right here at this point, but I'm going to tell you guys that this shit works. Take it from somebody that has tried damn near fucking everything, who has had to stay away from certain exercises for a long time. I mean, like I wouldn't dare try a body weight dip. I went to the dip machine and again, repping out. The reps were 20 rep range, 30 rep range. I mean high, high reps. But anyway, yeah, so far so good. And I'm going to bring a final update in about another five weeks, or four or five weeks and let you guys know basically what the end result was. But I can say I am more than pleased with what's going on with these peptides. And if you have anything that just won't heal, I have been dealing with this for three years, post surgery. Three fucking years. I think a lot of people just give it up. They just go, “Fuck it. It is what it is. I can't do it anymore. I lack stability. I hurt myself. Yes, I used to be in the gym.” Well, I'm never going to quit, man. You're going to have to kill me to take me out of this shit.

So anyway, that's the update with the peptides. So far they are awesome. And another thing they did is other joints in my body that had little arthritic pains… my right elbow was starting to get shitty. It was like cracking all the time. And I started getting arthritis in my Achilles tendons. Probably from heavy leg press, heavy calf raises, or just usage, you know?

People wonder like, why do you tear stuff? Why do your joints get bad? Well, they're like door hinges, man. When you've been doing this shit for like 27 years and that door has been getting… think about your door in your living room. If that door was getting opened and closed a bunch of times a day for 27 years, right, it would probably be falling off the fucking doorframe. That's your joints, man. Those are your connective tissues and tendons, right? So sometimes it's nothing you've done wrong. It's just sometimes we can be our own worst enemies.

So I am happy that the arthritic pain everywhere in my body, that's gone. That's gone. My Achilles tendons, I used to wake up in the morning and I'd limp around for 20 minutes. I'd limp around so the blood flow got in my Achilles tendons and I could start walking like a normal fucking person. I mean, granted, I have some pretty monster ass calves, and I work them hard as hell, and that probably contributed to it. But that is gone. Like, every joint in my body feels brand new, which is great. The tendon, I mean, I'm sure if I went heavy enough, there would be some pain there still. I don't think it's 100%, but I will tell you, so far, it feels like 100% with what I've used, the weights I've used to assess the injury and the success of the healing, and it's a lot better than it was, okay? This isn't no fucking placebo effect. These things work.

All right, now let me get into what I should have talked about a long time ago. I want to talk about growing, and I want to talk about some sacrifices that I've made myself over the years and that you might have to make too. And I think one of the problems now with a lot of the information that's out there in the fitness industry online is like, yes, people are telling you basically what they're doing in real time at the point they're at, it's leading people to believe that there's this perfect little formula to growing muscle without putting on a lot of fat. So a lot of these guys are spinning their wheels because it's all, “Wow many calories over maintenance should I eat? Well, maybe let me just start with 500 calories over maintenance and do this for a while.”

So everybody is trying to come up with this perfect formula, right? And I think a lot of guys don't realize that some of these sacrifices that it takes to grow don't put the whole package together in one year or maybe even five or ten years. It doesn't work like that. And me and… you've probably heard of in the past in the podcast, I call him Fired Up Frank, me and Frank, we're having this conversation just last night, and Frank was like, “do you think that there’s a genetic element to how much muscle people put on with regards to fat gain based on a certain amount of calories they're eating?” And I really can't answer that. I was like, I think that you have your basic body types. You have your Ectomorph, mesomorph, endomorph.

For those who don't know, ectomorph naturally skinny, you need to use a ton, usually tall, lanky, long limbs. Okay? Like, one of the hardest body types to actually gain muscle. But I'm going to tell you, it is possible to get big as an ectomorph because one of my friends, one of my really good childhood friends that I started working out with, this guy was skinny as a rail. We were both mountain bikers. We raced mountain bikes. We rode our bikes all the time and he was just like you would have never thought this guy had any kind of genetic ability to put on any kind of size. I mean, the guy was like six foot one, six two, maybe 130-135 pounds soaking wet. He started getting into the gym around about the same time I got in the gym, and he was eating his ass off. And he kind of pissed me off because, like, the first 20 or 30 pounds of muscle mass he gained, his ABS were always great. I'm like, shit, man. He still has the ABS, but okay, of course. Yeah, that was probably due to genetics as well. So his 1st 20-30 pounds, right? You saw every bit of muscle that guy put on, and it didn't look fat. That guy eventually got up to 215 pounds. Natural. Natural. 215, when he started off he was a beanpole. So cut up, I think he got back in the 170’s or 180’s when he was cut up, and that was years ago. I don't know. He'd probably be bigger than that cut up now. That's natural.

That's a rare bird right there, but let me tell you, this guy didn't eat squeaky clean. This guy would eat boxes of macaroni and cheese, Hamburger Helper, ground beef. He didn't have a lot of money, neither one of us did, and so at the time, he just ate high, dense calories or high caloric amounts. And it worked. I went through that phase several times where, yeah, it's like I've talked about before, 80/20 rule – 80% clean, 20% bonus calories. Calories are fucking energy.

And I said this before several times. I'm sorry, man, protein is not number one when it comes to building muscle. It's just not. And I'm speaking on experience and what I've seen from other people. You could load a guy up on 500 grams of carbs a day, keep his protein at, say, 150 grams a day. Let's give him 150 a day max. The guy is going to get stronger. I don't give a shit if the guy's 250 fucking pounds. That guy is going to perform better in the gym, and he's going to gain size.

I've seen it time and time again. These guys, they go overkill on their protein and oh, “carbs are the enemy. Carbs are the enemy, cut out all of your carbs.” They don't grow for shit, okay? You have to eat. And as Frank said it best on the phone last night, the scale has to move. When you're trying to gain size enough of all this shit about gain two pounds here, lose two pounds there, gain four pounds here, lose pounds there. Go get my body calculations done again, you know, see what's what. And you're overcomplicating it. And part of the reason you're overcomplicating it is because all you're hearing about in mainstream fitness is the hype, the chicken and the rice, the protein shakes, the supplements, right? And then everybody says, “oh, I need gear. I'm topped out. I need gear.”

Well, I’ve got news for you. Even with gear, if you're not eating enough, it's not going to do shit. And you're throwing the stuff in your body and not getting anything out of it, okay? At least if you're going to put this stuff in your body and fuck your own test levels up and possibly need TRT, at least get something out of it. Don't do it and not get any results, right?

You have to eat. I used to get on the scale, me and my own training partner, we get on the scale every fucking day. Now, that was probably too much because the scale can mess with your head. And I say, now, don't always go by the scale, but there was a time where I went by the scale. We went to the gym, before every workout we would get on the scale to see if it moved. We were competitive. We were competitive with each other, okay? If that scale moved up three pounds for me and went down a pound for him, he was fucking pissed. That guy was eating his ass off the next week because he wanted to catch me. And I think eventually he did catch me. He was a big dude, man.

This guy was five six, okay? Not the biggest bone structure, short guy, and he always said, “I want to break 250.” That was his goal. That was his goal for years, a lot of years. That wasn't a one year goal or a two year goal. It was, “I'm going to break 250. I'm going to break 250.” And you know what? Eventually, that hardcore son of a bitch broke 250. I mean, he doesn't weigh that now. He's come down since. Looks great. Very lean, very healthy. I think Chris is 47 years old now, but he had a goal, and he set out to attain that goal. And the way he worked to get there was he ate and ate and ate like it was going out of style.

We were so dead set on eating to grow that we used to go to this buffet and that they would have, like, steak night and the steak night or steak rolled out at, like, 4:00pm. We would go there after the gym. Okay? No, my post workout meal wasn't a perfect shake with 80 grams of dextrose. It was mashed potatoes, a shit ton of steak, rice, green beans, macaroni, you fucking name it. We'd sit there for two damn hours. I think it was a couple of times we were so OCD with this stuff, we would eat, sit there and shoot the shit, and then wait it out, and like, a couple of hours later, go back and eat again, right? We'd get two meals out of it.

And you know what? I miss that. I miss those times. I miss those times just chilling, laughing my ass off, talking about life and eating to grow. We were two guys on a fucking mission, man. And we were eating machines. And we went through this for a while, but when it was time to cut, it was time to cut. No bullshit. And what you have to understand is, it's never comfortable. You're doing something your body doesn't want to do. It wants to maintain that homeostasis. So whether you're eating to grow or whether you're not eating to cut, you're always in these periods where you're not comfortable. But eventually, that's how you become stronger as a person, stronger bodybuilder, and those periods of being uncomfortable eventually become normal, and you get more comfortable with them, and you become a bad motherfucker. That's what it takes.

I've said this before in the past. I'm going to reiterate. If you want to gain 20 pounds of mass, you have to already be eating like someone that's 20 pounds heavier. That's very hard and very uncomfortable, especially when it's new. I can remember a time when four eggs made me want to puke. Four fucking scrambled eggs. I eat four scrambled eggs now, and I'd be like, Did I eat? But you know, when I first started off at 143 pounds, I mean, okay, I gotta eat more eggs. If I went out to a restaurant and one of the choices was, like, four eggs, I was like, no, I can't eat that much. But I would make four scrambled eggs and usually a bunch of oatmeal. I don't think I was measuring it out back then, but a bowl of oatmeal, I was eating that shit. Maypo. Maple flavored oatmeal, Marky Maypo. That's what I was eating. I was eating a lot of Maypo. For some reason, that was the first time I ever ate oatmeal, was this Maypo stuff, and I was eating the hell out of Maypo like it was going out of style.

And then when I realized that that wasn't enough and I wanted to get even bigger, I would make mass gain shakes. I would make mass gain shakes with whole milk, a banana, a couple of scoops of peanut butter, some Hershey's chocolate syrup for flavor, two or three raw eggs mixed in, a cup of oats blended in so I could get more oats in my system, more calories in me. And basically, the whole nitty gritty, fine calculation thing was completely out of the window. You had to simplify it. At least I did.

It was keep eating to grow. If the scale is not moving, you're not eating enough and if your waist is… if you're wearing the same size pants, fine. You're not getting too fat. Maybe even the waist grows a couple of inches. When I weighed 263 pounds at my height, which is 5’9”, I believe I was wearing a 38 pant size, which is the biggest my waist has ever been. It was probably more in the realm of 36 or 37, but the 38 pants, I needed something to fit around my legs and my ass, and they just felt more comfortable. I think my waist now is back down at 32 inches, right? But 32 inches at 320 pounds. Would my waist be 32 inches at 230 pounds had I just been “Hmm, a little more calories here. Fine calculation there. Don't go overboard.” Fuck no, man, I shotgun approach that shit.

Shotgun approaching means that you're fucking blasting. You're blasting buckshot with your diet. You’ve got to simplify it. One of the worst things, and I'm not saying this is everybody, I realize some people are like app people you know, with the phone, they're graph people. They chart. They plot. It's part of them. I get that. But I want to tell you something, 90% of the time I get somebody, that's like, I just fine calculate this out in my chart. I use my, you know, whatever you want to call it, my food app or whatever. Most of them don't do shit man, because they're so nit-picky and they're like their own worst enemy. I just want to tell them so bad, look, lose that stupid fucking app and start eating. Start eating. If you're eating four whole eggs in the morning with a cup of oats and you're not growing, go to six whole eggs and a cup and a half of oats and increase the calories.

How many calories over your maintenance? 500 might not be enough. Fuck. What you think is 500 over maintenance might be maintenance. You know? That's just kind of a roundabout estimate. All right? When I was doing labor intense jobs like when I was a fabricator, I was on my feet. I was walking around a lot during the day. I was burning energy. I don't think my maintenance calories were the same as they are now. I was eating like my life depended on it. I was getting on that scale. If that scale didn't move, I was fucking pissed, and I went back to eating more.

Here's another thing, okay? This is something else. I'm going off kind of on a little tangent sidetrack here, but while it's on my mind, let me just throw it out there. Sometimes you have to make sure your body is in the right hormonal environment to be able to utilize those calories. So if you're somebody who's natural and you're eating 6,000 calories a day I'm not saying you can't grow but I'm saying the amount of overall muscle mass compared to the amount of body fat you pick up might be different than the guy who's running 500 milligrams a week of test with like three or 400 milligrams a week of Deca. You understand what I'm saying?

So there is that point where it's like, okay, you are too overboard with eating for the ability that your body is going to have to put on size and muscle mass. And you do have to be realistic to a point about that. But if you're running gear, then you have to give your body the fuel or you're wasting it. Why the fuck would you want to run an eight or twelve week cycle and take advantage of being in that anabolic hormonal environment to gain muscle mass, but you're not doing all the steps to do it. Like the food is just not there. You're one of these willy nilly guys. “I don't want to gain… I can't see my ABS anymore. I feel like I'm getting blurry.” Let me tell you something. Again, simplify it. When you put your fucking clothes on, you put your shorts or your gym pants on or a pair of jeans. Usually a pair of jeans with a waist size is the best measure, are you like busting out of them like a busted up can of biscuits or can you still get them on? Because chances are, if you're still wearing that stuff and you're going to go out in public and people will be like, dude, you're getting big as fuck. You're getting big as fuck. But no, you're looking at yourself with your shirt off in the mirror and it's like you want to see the same exact thing, like what you see when you're cut, but 20 or 30 pounds more. It doesn't work like that. It's a constant process of build, cut, build, cut, build, cut. That's how it works. Okay?

Guys that normally compete is middleweight bodybuilding competitors. I think the cut off for middle weight is that they top out at like 176, 176 and a half pounds in the NPC. Some of these guys are coming down from the low two hundreds. Okay? You might be walking around right now. 175 pounds. “Do you think I'm a middleweight?” No, I don't fucking think you are. I think you're like a lightweight. Because by the time you cut up, the mass isn't there.

You hear all these guys? I just want to get toned. All these beginner guys, “I don't want to look like you or anything.” Don't worry, you fucking won't. I'm trying to say that as humbly as possible, but it doesn't happen by accident. “I just want to get toned.” They have this idea in their head like that they can start off as a beginner and in six months… “I want to be like Hugh Jackman from Wolverine. I want to look like Brad Pitt from Fight Club.” Well, just like if you want to look like Brad Pitt from Fight Club, just go do a bunch of fucking blow and starve the shit out of yourself and do a bunch of cardio. But I mean, hey, if that's what you're going for, I hate to break it to you, but if you're like 150 pounds now, you're not even going to do that unless you gain 25, 35 pounds of muscle and then cut back.

Now, Hugh Jackman, and I'm not going to talk shit about Hugh Jackman. The guy is in phenomenal shape. But is he big? No, I think to the average person, he's in great shape. I think he's very, very lean and in phenomenal shape for his age. But is he body builder bog? Fuck no. But, everybody has different standards. Even to look like him, you're probably going to have to go through this phase where you eat your ass off and then cut it back. He didn't look like that in one or two years of training. I hate to break it to you. If you are a guy who's walking around at 220, by the time you're cut up and you can see your ABS and obliques and separated quads and whatnot, you might be fucking 190 or 195.

People have a serious misconception of how much size they need to gain to look a certain way when they're cut. And it doesn't always come from skinless chicken and rice. It doesn't. You have to eat calories. There was a time where I was eating probably 7,000 – 8000 calories a day, and people say, “oh, I can do that.” Well, anybody can do that for a day or two. Now do it for months, years. You might be feeling pretty full. It might kind of be a miserable process, all right? And it is more grueling and miserable when you're… the more of a beginner you are, the harder this process is going to be, right? You go from 140 pounds to 170, more miserable than going from 170 to 180. When you go from 180 to 200, pretty miserable. But by that point, you're used to eating more. You know the name of the game, going from 200, 250 fuck. You're eating like it's your job, man. I mean, is it just by chance that guys that are running anabolics are always hitting their meals? Those meals are number one.

One guy said it best. I heard it best. He said, a good diet is like a cycle within itself. I've never heard more truer words. A good diet is a cycle within itself. You could take somebody and put them on a good diet. And a good diet doesn't necessarily always mean squeaky clean. We're going to get cut down to fucking 5 or 6% body fat. A good diet might be a couple Whoppers a day from Burger King on top of skinless chicken and rice and tuna and oats and eggs. That might be a good diet for what it is you're trying to do.

When it comes to and I hate to always throw age out there. I'm not trying to be this guy that's for my niche, is the middle-aged trainer guy. But there is a point where there's more backlash as it relates to age and trying to do this stuff. Frank, and I'm going to get him on the podcast again, we need to do one. It's been a while. Frank was 190 pounds when we started working together, and I think he was 52 or 53. Frank is now 54. He's currently 222 pounds, and he's done an amazing job. And I mean, those are like beginner gains. Like, in one year, the dude's up, like 32 pounds. And it wasn't all like, you know, eating to grow, eating to grow, eating to grow. He was eating more. But he was a case where, and this is several people, where they were definitely not eating enough, the metabolism kind of became a slug. They start eating more, they're still eating 90, 95% clean. Maybe they have a cheat meal once a week. Now they're gaining size and they're getting more condition.

That was him, because he just went for a long time. I told him, I was like, dude, you're not eating enough. You're living off fucking coffee. You're not eating enough. He was doing the same intermittent fasting, not eating till 2:00 or 03:00pm bullshit that a lot of people think is the best route to go. And then it was like, he just took off. He just took off. And that was like putting somebody on a diet as if they were cutting, but it was just more calories. It was an ideal amount of calories. And his body was so deprived for so long, it was like, holy shit. Now he's eating to grow.

Now he's going back to where somebody… he kind of did it backwards, like where somebody in the beginning would take that shotgun approach. He's now taking that approach. But I think the reason that it works so well for Frank is because the age was taken into consideration when it came to, how much backlash is there going to be? And when I say backlash, I mean, what's manageable?

Maybe 6,000 calories a day every day for someone that's 54 years old is not manageable. But maybe with his metabolism now, because everybody's metabolism is a little bit slower or a lot slower as they go on through the years, maybe 4,000 calories a day is enough to put this guy up like another 10 or 15 pounds. And I told him, I just sent him a message today saying, dude, you're a rare duck, man. Like, you are in, like the top tier of people at your age that can gain that kind of muscle mass and really not put on a lot of fat. I mean, he put on some at 222 compared to 190. Yeah, but not like you think. Not like you think.

That's another thing too. What you think getting fat from eating too much is, might not be the case if you've never done it. Now you start doing it and you realize, hey, wait a minute, I'm not putting on as much fat as I thought. I'm just growing. So to what degree or percentage of fat to muscle there's going to be based on this person to that person or this body type to that body type?

Aside from, hey, usually endomorphs need to watch their diet more. They might be more carb sensitive. Usually mesomorphs gain a great combination of lean muscle to keeping the body fat down. And maybe ectomorphs need to eat like their life depends on it. Do more compound movements. Train heavier with maybe a lower rep range at first. Aside from those generalizations, with the body types in the way that genetics can play a role with calorie consumption, and the rate of muscle gain. Aside from that, I think that's it. I don't really think you can fine tune it any more than that. And I think for a lot of people they just need to go back to that approach like, “fuck it all, I'm getting big, I'm eating to grow.”

It doesn't mean you need to eat out all the time, but is having one cheat meal a day going to be detrimental? Hell no, man. Like I said, if you get on that scale and it's not moving, eat more. “Well, what do I eat?” Carbs. Fats. Don't always go to protein as number one. That's the biggest mistake. Guys always want to go to protein. “Well if I'm eating 400 grams a day of protein and I'm not fucking put any weight on the scale, maybe I just need to eat 500. I don't know, maybe 1,000.” No, don't do that.

There is a certain role carbohydrates play in regard to muscle growth that a lot of people don't understand. When you eat carbohydrates, you generate an insulin response. What is insulin? Well, insulin is the most anabolic hormone in the human body. When you generate more insulin responses, you build more muscle. Can you store more fat? Yes, sometimes you can. But you grow. Okay? You grow from that.

You don't want to get yourself to this point where you're just taking in an abundance of protein to keep catabolism away. When you're growing and you're trying to be anabolic, it doesn't really work like that. Here's another thing carbohydrates do. Carbohydrates work hand in hand with the water, with the fluid to get it to the muscle cells. What is muscle? Muscle is like about 75, 80% fluid. It really is. When you take something away that works hand in hand with the fluid to supply the muscle, you're taking away the goddamn muscle. It makes no sense to me. You know? I can talk about this till I'm blue in the face when the role of carbohydrates and protein to building muscle. Most guys are going to tell you protein is number one. Protein's number one. I’m that guy that is going to tell you it's fucking not number one. Carbohydrates are number one when it comes to building muscle.

Furthermore, there's some guys, usually guys that are enhanced, that they're not cutting on 100 grams a day of carbs or 150 grams a day of carbs. There's guys still doing 400 or 500 grams a day and getting leaner. And guess what? The finished product is pretty impressive and far fucking better than taking all their carbohydrates out of the equation.

Now, is this you? Maybe not. I'd say that what I'm talking about is usually the top tier of guys that are highly enhanced. Their bodies are just using nutrients a little bit more efficiently in a different manner. I think, for the bulk of people, yeah, you start tapering on the carbs. If you want to get more cut, you taper on the carbs more and even in that case, even with the guys like I'm throwing out the 400 grams of carbs a day example, they might have been coming down from 600 or 700 grams a day or whatever, or maybe 400 is not every day, but maybe they're still having days where they're hitting 400 grams of carbs a day while they're cutting. Okay? The difference is, their finished product is 250 fucking ripped to shit and maybe your finished product is 160, 180, whatever. You play to your own ballpark and your own limitations and where you're at, I don't know. I'm sure I could have said that better, but you get where I'm coming from.

But, yeah, to sum this up, sometimes you just have to shotgun blast the shit. You just have to eat, okay? And I'm telling you, go to carbs first. Look at the carb intake. You do have to have some fats. You definitely have to have some fats if you're not running gear, because the fats and the cholesterols are needed for the testosterone production. So I always ask somebody that when I'm doing a diet, are you enhanced or you're not enhanced? If you're not on test, then yes, we're going to keep some fats in the diet. Oh, you are on test? Okay. We can go lower with the fats, but yes, sometimes you just got to keep it basic, man. Like, is my waist getting bigger? Can I still wear the size 34 pants? Yes, I still can wear the size 34 pants and I'm eating my ass off. Keep fucking eating. It's working.

So many people, as soon as something's working, they just throw a fucking monkey wrench in the equation. They fuck it all up. Five years later, the guy's still a beanpole. “Nothing works for me. Nothing works for me. I think I'm going to run Tren. Nothing works.” Well, guess what? It's not going to work either, man. You don't have the diet right. Is it comfortable? No. Is more protein shakes the answer? No. You have to make time to get the nutrition in. You might have to get up 30 minutes earlier and cook your damn breakfast. You might have to stay up to prep your meals for the following few days or a week. I can get a few days out of meal prep. A week, that's a little far fetched. I don't have that much room in the damn oven, but I can usually get a few days out of it.

So anyway, that's it. Eat your ass off. You may be too nit-picky about it. Stop being Mr. Fucking Doogie Howser brainiac plotting and charting everything.. “this amount of protein, this…” just fucking eat and eat and train like your life depends on it. If you don't grow, Bubba is going to fuck you in the ass. Okay? Someone is going to put a pistol to your head, blow your fucking brains out all over the wall. That's how you got to treat it. That's how you got to treat it. If you want to be a big motherfucker that turns heads. You want to be that guy that walks into a crowd or a restaurant, people are like, “Son of a bitch! What are you, like lifting tanks and shit?” That's how you got to treat it.