A Little History

You can't make this shit up:

On your own site, you chronicle your transformation from 189 lbs. and 19% body fat to 167 lbs. and 10% body fat in eight months. During that time you supposedly embarked on a program of weight training for the purpose of building or maintaining muscle mass, yet by your own admission you still lost three pounds of muscle. Eight months, man. That seems ineffective at best and a big waste of time at worst. Any effective weight-training program will always at the very least preserve muscle mass – provided your diet is working on your behalf. You should have been building muscle while you were shedding the fat, Barry, but your devotion to carbs partly sabotaged your hard work You even had to starve yourself some days!

That's Mark Sisson responding to me on this post after I criticized him for essentially lumping beans, an excellent source of carbohydrate and protein, not to mention other vitamins and minerals, in with other carbs like donuts.

So, in case there is any confusion let me give anyone interested a bit of history.

In June of 2007, I was hydrostatically weighed at the local university by a professor of Human Physiology. That morning, after breakfast, I weighed in at 191 pounds. The results of the under-water weigh in showed that I was carrying 18.2% of my body weight as fat.

In November of 2007, I was hydrostatically weighed again in the same location by the same man. That morning, after breakfast, I weighed 175. The results of that under-water weigh in showed that I was now carrying 11% of my body weight as fat.

I continued to lose weight, eventually getting down to 163 lbs. in February before ending my cutting phase. Therefore, I do not know what my body fat was at that time. I would guess that it was below 10%. It's highly unlikely that I suddenly began burning up muscle when nothing in my program changed. Yes, the leaner you get the more likely you are to burn muscle but I didn't get *that* lean.

Mark Sisson asserts that he "knows what 10% body fat looks like". Well, obviously he doesn't. Visually, most people at 10% body fat don't look that impressive. You don't have much vascularity, if any, and you don't have much if any muscle separation. Also, and obviously, the more muscular you are, the leaner you will appear at 10% body fat.

I've gone ahead and removed the body fat estimate that was at the bottom of January photo on the left, since honestly I don't know for a fact what my body fat % was at that point, only that it was below 11%.

All of that aside, Mark's other assertions are just simply not true. When you are in a caloric deficit, you can consider yourself extremely lucky if you preserve 100% of your lean muscle. Every single body builder who has ever gone on a diet will tell you that you always lose at least a little bit of muscle. Further, the only way I know of to build muscle and lose fat "at the same time" is to cycle calories. The body does not build muscle and burn fat "at the same time" anyway so giving it a surplus one day and a deficit the next is the only way to do a body recomposition. Talk to Martin Berkhan or the other intermittent fasting advocates and you'll be told the same thing. Their programs where body recomposition (building muscle and losing fat) is the goal are all based on calorie cycling.

Mark asserts that I had to "starve myself some days". I simply have no idea what he's talking about there. To burn fat you need to be in a caloric deficit. If that constitutes "starving" then I'm guilty as charged. However, eating 1900 calories a day for three days followed by a 2700 calorie refeed hardly qualifies.

Mark also claims that my "devotion to carbs" sabotaged my efforts. What?? If Mark had taken five minutes to read this blog he would have known that I cycled carbohydrates. Many of the leanest, most muscular body builders and figure competitors in the world cycle carbohydrates to lose fat. It's probably the single most effective method of stripping unwanted fat. How that constitutes a "devotion to carbs" is beyond me. Let's say for the sake of argument that I did eat tons of carbs. Is Mark's assertion that my supposed muscle loss is the result of carbohydrate consumption? Carbohydrate is protein (muscle) sparing! That's why you cycle and do not eliminate carbs! Again I ask, what planet does this guy live on?

Mark's blog is interesting but his health and fitness advice is questionable at best.