[Hannibal]

Hey guys, I often see a lot of questions on this forum about getting leaner. No one enjoys a cutting phase, so the way I see it, it should be done as fast as possible. This minimizes strength loss and maximizes the amount of productive time you can spend in the gym while in an anabolic state (aka on a bulk).

The standard advice to get leaner seems to be to cut out carbs, sweets, alcohol, and sugary soft drinks and then stack on a shitload of cardio. Or, if you go on bb.com a lot, you'll see the general approach is to keep training and eat at a daily 500 calorie deficit. Fuck all that, it's too much work and it's boring as hell. I like having a social life and I'm too lazy for cardio. With that, I bring you The Rapid Fat Loss Diet Handbook by Lyle McDonald.



What is the Rapid Fat Loss Diet?
It is what it sounds like. A diet designed to have you lose fat as fast as possible.

Sounds like bullshit. How does it work?
The rapid fat loss diet employs dietary ketosis. Ketosis is not for everyone, but for reasonably healthy adults (not diabetic or anything), it should be safe. In ketosis, the body learns how to utilize ketones for fuel. You basically burn fat for energy instead of carbs.
Instead of eating fat for fuel, however, you'll be burning up your body's existing fat stores. This is known as a protein sparing modified fast. You are literally in starvation mode, except that you eat enough protein (and essential vitamins/fats) to stave off your body's tendency to cannibalize it's own muscle tissue.

What exactly do you eat on this diet?
Lyle recommends a whole foods approach. It's going to look like a lot of leaner cuts of meat, unlimited non-starchy vegetables, diet soda, coffee, and vitamin supplements.
I was lazy so I simply drank protein shakes and ate vitamins like this guy.

All I had in a day was
8 scoops of Syntrax Matrix 5.0 whey protein
6 psyllium husk fiber tablets (for obvious reasons)
10 fish oil capsules (about 10g of fish oil fat)
One multivitamin (I like Animal Pak, beware though, it's 11 pills)

Everything you see here, you can get off Amazon.

Unfortunately I can't post exactly how much you should be eating, you'll have to buy the book. On the upside, once you buy the book, Lyle McDonald created an online calculator that will tell you exactly how much you should eat and what to do based on your activity levels. You get the password for the calculator when you buy the book. I can't in good conscience tell you what the password is, but I'm sure someone posted it somewhere on the Internet.

What sort of results can you expect with it?
The results for most guys, depending on how big they are, is a half a pound to a pound of fat lost a day. A handful of big fat dudes have lost 100 lbs in three months. After a few weeks on the diet, your rate of fat loss will slow down. I lost 10 pounds of fat in three weeks and I'm currently in my second run at it. That's about three times faster than a regular cut for anyone keeping count. I've projected an 18 lb loss of blubber in six to seven weeks. The generally accepted approach is a 500 calorie deficit for a regular cut. Right now I'm sitting at a 2000 calorie a day deficit.

I don't feel like posting my own before/after pictures so I'll post a few from online reviews.


This guy lost 50 lbs over the course of a year with RFL and Flexible Dieting.


Here's a guy who actually lifts that did it. His review is great, as well.



Apparently it also works for chicks.

Can you lift weights during this diet?
Short answer, yes. It's highly recommended to take a couple grams of BCAA's, about 5 g of fast acting carbs before the workout and 20-30g of carbs during the workout. I simply measured out 30g of Gatorade powder and sipped it during my workout.
Lyle recommends two workouts a week during the cut, heavy compound lifts for 2-3 sets per body part. I just did this
Backsquat 2 sets of 6 reps
Bench 3 sets of 6
Deadlift 1 set of 6

I might have lost 5% of my strength in the last month. I'm sure it will come right back.

Do you have to lift weights?
It's recommended, but you sure don't have to.

What about cardio?
The only cardio I recommend is walking or banging.

I like to get drunk. Can you drink on this diet?
Yes, you can. I highly recommend diet sodas as mixers with hard liquors or really, really dry wine. You can have about 30g of carbs a day on this diet while remaining in ketosis, so a couple of light beers won't kill you either. To put that in perspective, a 12 oz Coors Light has 5 grams of carbs in it.

I usually drank after my cheat meals and refeeds, but a couple drinks here and there isn't the end of the world.

All that happens is your body will work to burn the alcohol, then once it's done you will go back to ketosis. It will slow down your fat loss, but it will only be a problem if you regularly drink 10+ drinks in a sitting.

Beware, in a caloric deficit, one drink will feel like three. I got fucking hammered off six drinks, much of that was a lack of water retention.

What is a cheat meal/refeed?
Depending on how fat you are (the book will tell you), you'll get some combination of a cheat meal and/or a refeed during the week. The cheat meal is for compliance to the diet, but it's not a good idea to skip them.

A cheat meal is what you would consider a regular meal. It's not a binge. A cheat meal could be
1) A normal sized plate of spaghetti
2) About half a medium pizza
3) A dozen BBQ wings and a few light beers
4) Not a trip to the local Chinese buffet

A refeed is literally a 5 hour stretch where you binge carbs so your body's metabolism lives to fight another week. The book is not terribly clear on what it is. After much googling, I found a post on Lyle McDonald's forum about refeed rules.
1) You take your bodyweight x 3 to figure out how many carbs to eat in 5 hours (or a bit more). If you weigh 180 lbs, you should try to eat about 540 grams of carbs.
2) You shouldn't eat more than 100 g of sugar. Don't expect to binge donuts for your health.
3) You shouldn't eat more than 50g of fructose for the same reason. If you don't know what that looks like, it's like 7 medium sized bananas.
4) Your refeed should be above your maintenance caloric intake. If you don't know what that is, a good guess is to take your bodyweight (in lbs) and multiply it by 15. An 180lb dude should eat over 2700 calories in that day. The refeed is essential (for certain dieters) to regulate your body's hormones, without it your metabolism will be fucked in short order. Your weight loss will stall and you will feel like shit without it.

What do you do after the diet?
Eat maintenance calories for a week. Again, that's bodyweight (in lbs) x 15 for your calories, so a 180 lb dude eats 2700 calories every day. If you don't lift, it's probably less than that. After that week, your hormones will have re-regulated themselves and you can continue bulking. If you decide to bulk straight away, you run of the risk of storing all those extra calories as fat. The body is a mystery sometimes.

If you're fat, give the diet a shot. If you want to see some abs for the summer, run it for a month or two in the spring. If you like the traditional bulking/cutting approach, this book is for you. Once you have everything figured out (the book answers the majority of your questions), this diet is easy as fuck. It takes me 10 minutes a day to mix up shakes and throw chicken in the oven. You don't even have to exercise if you don't want to.

Let me know if you guys have any questions. I'm not an expert, obviously, but I read the book in great detail and did some research.