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Hi I am thinking about trying the MANS again full time. I tried it for a few weeks about 2 months ago, but didn't see any significant results right away. I am wondering is my BF% too high to start this diet. I have gone from 275 to 225 and 48% to 37% Body fat over the last year. I am female 5'4" 28yrs old, and looking for big muscle gains and way more fat loss, 12% at least. I have been lifting 3x per week for over a year now, and this is my 3rd week on the P90X plan. So 3 days lifting actually 4 session, because I throw in an extra leg session at the gym on Friday nights. and 3 days HIIT training. my Macros have been around 45/24/30 -
averaging 1662 calories per day
Fat 46 g
Saturated Fat 13 g
Carbohydrate 126 g
Sugar 39 g
Protein 189 g
Fiber 18 g
Sodium 3,131 mg
Potassium 1,064 mg
Calcium 562 mg
Iron 10.5 mg
Zinc 1.5 mg
Cholesterol 161.5 mg
Effective carbohydrate 108 g
My question is would the low carb/high protein/high fat diet and low cardio with MANS help me or hurt me?

lizzieliz29 wrote:Hi I am thinking about trying the MANS again full time. I tried it for a few weeks about 2 months ago, but didn't see any significant results right away. I am wondering is my BF% too high to start this diet. I have gone from 275 to 225 and 48% to 37% Body fat over the last year. I am female 5'4" 28yrs old, and looking for big muscle gains and way more fat loss, 12% at least. I have been lifting 3x per week for over a year now, and this is my 3rd week on the P90X plan. So 3 days lifting actually 4 session, because I throw in an extra leg session at the gym on Friday nights. and 3 days HIIT training. my Macros have been around 45/24/30 -
averaging 1662 calories per day
Fat 46 g
Saturated Fat 13 g
Carbohydrate 126 g
Sugar 39 g
Protein 189 g
Fiber 18 g
Sodium 3,131 mg
Potassium 1,064 mg
Calcium 562 mg
Iron 10.5 mg
Zinc 1.5 mg
Cholesterol 161.5 mg
Effective carbohydrate 108 g
My question is would the low carb/high protein/high fat diet and low cardio with MANS help me or hurt me?

Let's start with terminology. Your goal is to "cut". By "cutting", we mean the primary goal is to cut body fat. Muscle gains and strength gains at the same time would be a happy side effect, but realistically, because of the metabolic processes at play, they're going to be a happy side effect and not a primary goal.

With MANS, the goal is to "bulk". By "bulking", we mean the primary goal is to add muscle. Body fat percentages may come down, especially if you're adding muscle faster than fat, but this is not the primary goal - and a lot of folks find themselves having to take great pains to combat fat gain while bulking (mini-cut cycles, fasting days, calorie cycling, etc).

Regardless your goal, the diet needs to revolve around a handful of factors - total caloric need, total caloric intake, macronutrients, and glycemic index.

All diets must start by taking your total caloric need into consideration. Using MANS, GLAD or TSPA, you use the Katch-McArdle formula to determine this - which there's a handy calculator for, or you be a great big nerd like me and commit it to memory and do your own damn macros every week. The formula is...

BMR = 370 + (21.6 x Lean weight in Kgs)

Based on the numbers you gave (225 at 37%), your BMR is 1761 calories a day to do absolutely nothing. And I don't mean no exercise, or no running around, I mean this is what your body would burn if you went all Sleeping Beauty and didn't get out of bed, ever. You adjust the BMR to allow for overall activity levels with a simple multiplier - for sedentary folks it's 1.2, for those of us exercising 3-5 times a week it's 1.55. This second figure is your total daily caloric need - for you, since you're doing P90X and count as "active", we're talking 2730 calories a day. Less than that will result in weight loss - which you've very obviously already figured out.

Your total caloric intake is very simply the amount your diet allows you to eat - in your case 1662 a day, which represents a calorie deficit of 1068 calories a day. This should allow for approximately 2lbs a week of weight loss, assuming no overtraining or metabolic crash.

Macronutrients are the components of your diet - where the calories come from. Specifically, net carbs, fats, and protein (and not sugar, or fiber, or sodium, or anything else). Your diet follows old notions of what an ideal diet "should" look like. While I understand that this has worked for you thus far, and I don't want to take away from your hard-won success, but you will get better results by discarding this diet set up. At your weight, you are very obviously not a hard-gainer, you should not have your macros set like one - which you kind of do. More on this later, but file it away.

Glycemic Index, or GI, is a measure of how much of an impact - or "load" - the carbs you're eating will have on your insulin and blood glucose levels. There's a formula for this, too, since a GI isn't meaningful without an amount of carbs with said index. In this case, you calculate load as...

Glycemic Load = (Net Carbs in grams / 100) x GI

Now, some diets anchor entirely around the load. GLAD does this - you count GL's with each meal, you keep them to within a set limit, and your other macros basically balance themselves. Some diets focus strictly on net carbs - on MANS, the total carbs are so damn low that the GIs don't matter. Even eating all your allowed carbs as straight up table sugar would only equate to a total load of about 30, which isn't high enough to cause an insulin spike. Some diets take both into consideration, allowing a marginally higher amount of carbs, but putting high-GI foods off limits, like TSPA. All three approaches are valid, all three approaches can (and will and do) deliver results. What does not work is treating all carbs the same and ignoring this altogether - like old school diets like yours do, or like virtually all low-fat diets do. Too much glycemic load means too much insulin. To much load in one shot, either from very high GI foods, very high carbs in one sitting, or (gulp) both, means an insulin spike. Insulin doesn't have a counter-hormone, just an enzyme that slowly degrades it. Now, insulin isn't pure unadulterated evil, we do need it, but part of its job is to tell the body to store nutrients for later (i.e. make more fat) and to stop your body from destroying fat cells for energy. High insulin makes this very, very difficult. Spiked insulin makes it straight-up impossible, and means you may have one or two feedings after that huge spike that all get stored as fat regardless of the meal content because the insulin hasn't degraded yet. This bit of science is what makes successful diet programs (from NutriSystem to GLAD to MANS to TSPA to Atkins to South Beach and to a degree even Weight Watchers).

SO!! All that said, a low-carb diet will definitely help you, thanks to the glycemic index piece of the puzzle. The high-protein piece of the puzzle is kind of a no-brainer. You need protein. Your body cannot make protein, it has to have protein, break it down into aminos, and then put it back together as whatever tissues it needs. Your body will get its protein - if not from diet, then from catabolysing muscle tissue, which is a disaster for you, because that lean mass going away is your base metabolic rate dwindling away. Generally, 2.75 g/kg LBM (lean body mass) is sufficient for both overall needs and muscle growth - 178 g/day for you, and your 189 is almost spot on the money, so whether by accident or design you've got this part, too.

Now, have you heard the saying "eat fat to burn fat"? It's true. The whole eating low fat and high carb for weight management is a big fat lie. It's not even based in science. It stems from the assumption that you can lose weight by attacking the most calorie-dense part of the diet, and that no fat coming in will mean no fat in the blood (i.e. cholesterol & triglycerides). It's garbage, and the science doesn't back it. Your body can't make it's own protein, but it sure as hell can make fat! What's worse, your body needs dietary fat to operate correctly. Specifically, your body needs cholesterol (and this gets weird, but bear with me). Excess fat production will create too much LDL and Triglcyerides, leading to plaque buildup, atherosclerosis and coronary artery disease. We know this, it's why your doc will tell you to exercise and eat lots of fiber, it's how the body eliminates these things.

However, too little dietary fat intake, especially cholesterol, means hormone production shuts down. It's like if you tried to drove your car from California to Maine and back and only put in gas, and never the oil. You'd be fine for that first three thousand miles, but towards the end of the three thousand miles back, your car would start running pretty crappy, and if you continued to not give it the oil, it would eventually seize up altogether. Same concept. No cholesterol means no hormones - like thyroxine, that regulates your body's metabolism; or estrogen and its myriad effects on both your girlie parts (and on your lungs, and your body's ability to form clots, among other things). Ketogenic diets (like MANS, Atkins, and TSPA, basically your low-carb-high-fat plans) ensure you get all the building blocks of these critical hormones you need, and emerging research shows that they likely balance your blood lipid levels as well. You get both health benefits all in one shot - plus you make it WAY easier to lose weight.

PHEW that was a lot!

NOW, let's talk about you specifically, and what will "help" or "hurt" you and your long-range goals!

First, MANS would not be appropriate for you at this time, because MANS is for bulking, and not cutting. You can make it work by knocking down the total fat intake to create a calorie deficit, but it's not the optimal plan for you at this time. Neither is the plan you're on. Your dietary fat and cholesterol intake are way too low, and your carb intake is way too high. Again, you've done a frigging awesome job on your own this far, and you should be very proud of your progress - almost 50 pounds of pure fat, that's about a pound a week, and that's progress that most folks will never ever make on their own, no matter what program they buy or try. However, at 5'4", based on the admittedly flawed calculation that is BMI, about 145 should be the top end of an acceptable weight for you. You've got 80 pounds to go. At the rate you're going, assuming you don't stall out, you'd be looking at another year and a half. What would cause you to stall out would be things along the lines of a hormone imbalance induced by improper or unbalanced nutrition, eating at an extreme calorie deficit for an extended period of time, or over-training. If you're sticking to P90X as designed (which is really a great exercise program, good choice), then we don't have to sweat over-training. You are, however, eating at an extreme caloric deficit. You are also potentially eating an unbalanced diet based on the macros provided. My biggest fear for you is that you will eventually go through what we call a "crash" - your metabolism basically comes to a screeching halt, and instead of continuing to lose weight, you very slowly add more on. We don't want that - at all, even a little bit. We want you in a bikini next summer is what we want.

So if MANS is not our best idea, and the current approach probably ought to see a change, what's a fat person to do? You get advice from a former fat person, of course!

You got options. Option A is go read this big long thing, do that for ONE 10-12 week cycle, and then take a week off and plop the little bit of change on TSPA. Option B is go straight to TSPA cycles until you reach your goal. Whereas you are already active, in your case I'd probably go with B. Yes, it'll take a bit longer, but based on the levels you're currently eating and and your current level of activity, it's probably the healthier overall option. Ultimately, this is your call to make, so by all means read through both sets of material and make up your own mind - no one knows your body like you do (i.e. your hunch from the get go that MANS might not be wise right now). Realistically, if you go straight up TSPA, you're looking at on the scale of 34 - 58 weeks, grand total, for you to drop from where you are now to a healthier 145, including the obligatory week off between cycles.

TL;DR - MANS is in appropriate for world's biggest list of reasons ever. Current diet also pretty damn crappy for its own huge litany of reasons, is probably at the end of its lifecycle, and ought to be retired. Instead, do TSPA or do what I did once upon a time and then do TSPA. Now make up your mind which way you wanna go, and apply the proven will power and discipline that got rid of the first 50 to the last 80. I'd wish you luck but you don't need it - you got this.

Thank JoH! This was super infromative. I can't believe you have the time to write such detailed replies for us diet information junkies! I am definitely going to heed your advice. Before even reading this I decided I was going to try Option A http://www.bodybuildingforum.ie/diet/depressed-t5079.html , for the rest of P90X which is about 10 weeks and then switch to the TSPA diet then MANS, then TSPA , then hopefully I'll been ready for just maintenance by then. That gives me at least a year of diet and training all mapped out Whew! My goal is to step on stage in 2012 in great shape, and I really believe this will help me get there. Thanks for the advice, I will definitely post my stats at the end of this first cycle. oh And I'm done with the bodybugg, following this plan it really isnt necessary.

TSPA is a great program that works. I am a recent follower and am just starting my 8th week. I dropped 18 pounds so far and about 8% bodyfat. I expect to drop another 1.5-2 lbs this week and then I am moving to MANS.

I did some P90X. It's a tough program that works your body well. I prefer Mark's THT and TSPA workouts because I see better results with less workout time and I hate cardio....

Good luck and stick with it! Persevere and you will get there....

I have 16 years experience with the Anabolic Diet ( what this site calls MANS ) . No your bodyfat is not too high to go on this diet. Once you go through the shift to a fat burning metabolism and set up the weekly carb loads it's just a matter of calories. TSPA is for cutting from normal BF to " ripped " if you will. To say MANS is for bulking is not true, at least in the case of the AD. You can add muscle and fat, add muscle with little fat gain, drop fat wile maintaining muscle, etc. TSPA is an extension of this cycle. using the AD/MANS diet to take yourself to extreme levels of leanness you end up at TSPA. I'll give an example of myself. I was at 30% + bodyfat ( took a break from training/dieting) . Started the AD while eating as much as I wanted with one carb load day per week. I lost 60lbs in 6 months. Gained strength and my measurements increased ( BF down/ muscle up). At that point I could have furthered my fat loss implementing techniques like those in TSPA

carob999 wrote:I have 16 years experience with the Anabolic Diet ( what this site calls MANS ) . No your bodyfat is not too high to go on this diet. Once you go through the shift to a fat burning metabolism and set up the weekly carb loads it's just a matter of calories. TSPA is for cutting from normal BF to " ripped " if you will. To say MANS is for bulking is not true, at least in the case of the AD. You can add muscle and fat, add muscle with little fat gain, drop fat wile maintaining muscle, etc. TSPA is an extension of this cycle. using the AD/MANS diet to take yourself to extreme levels of leanness you end up at TSPA. I'll give an example of myself. I was at 30% + bodyfat ( took a break from training/dieting) . Started the AD while eating as much as I wanted with one carb load day per week. I lost 60lbs in 6 months. Gained strength and my measurements increased ( BF down/ muscle up). At that point I could have furthered my fat loss implementing techniques like those in TSPA

MANS as described in Mark's articles is not for cutting. Mark himself is on record for that. MANS is also not the same exact thing as AD. It does owe a lot of its principles to Di Pasquale's work, just not absolutely every stitch of it. If you want to talk about Anabolic Diet, and purely Di Pasquale's work, sure, that's a great conversation to have, it just wasn't the original question. And as for TSPA... I can't fathom that Di Pasquale wouldn't have some unpleasant things to say about pushing triple-digits on carbs per day, or requiring you to cut your fat intake to the 10% ballpark at any point for any reason...

JoH,

Where does Sat Fat fit in on MANS without carb-up days? I see these recipes with Heavy whipping cream and butter which are high in sat fat. Would fat gram intake be different for me? What is the ideal Sat.fat and regular fat gram suggestion for this inbetween stage? Thanks again. Liz

Mark says that MANS IS based on Dr. D's work. My point is not to discredit Mark or to say he stole the idea but 16 years ago the MANS diet wasn't around so I can't say that I started doing MANS that long ago, that was just a way to associate my dietary experiences with this diet. Mark also says the diet is a muscle building diet, he also says it's a bulking diet . There's even posts by him that say you CAN loose fat on the MANS diet. I can't remember were but there is an article or post that answers this very question. I seem to recall him writing that TPSA is for when your going from lean to ripped not from fat to flat ( my wording not his). He even recommended to someone to start on MANS first until bf was lower. TSPA is more of a "contest diet " if you will. By the way some people have as much as 150 g of carbs on LC days on AD and when you are entering contest phase your fat intake levels can go very low. Read Mark's blog titled " What's The Difference Between MANS and TSPA? He says men shouldn't start TSPA until under 15% BF (what ever the exact % was). Again my post was NOT to debate or discuss the AD but to make my personal connection to the MANS diet.

lizzieliz29 wrote:JoH,

Where does Sat Fat fit in on MANS without carb-up days? I see these recipes with Heavy whipping cream and butter which are high in sat fat. Would fat gram intake be different for me? What is the ideal Sat.fat and regular fat gram suggestion for this inbetween stage? Thanks again. Liz

On MANS, you end up eating lots of sat fat foods just to get the calories where they need to be, and that's primarily where it fits in. There is absolutely zero reason to give sat fat any special consideration on MANS. None. In fact, there's emerging research that sat fat isn't bad for you at all. No one ever proved the theory that sat fat was bad for you in the first place - but mutliple studies have started pulling it apart, some show it backfires for weight loss, some show that we actually need these for their acids, and it's getting easier by the week to find cardiologists finally swearing off that bad science. It's a little different if you're on a diet akin to GLAD, but then it's more a question of overall intake, not that sat fats are magically "bad" under those circumstances.

The fats you do want to pay attention to are trans fats. Trans fat is THE DEVIL. These little minions of Satan are man-made fats that your body cannot process correctly. They are horribly bad for you, and you should avoid trans fats as much as you possibly possibly can. Like if you can hit zero grams a day of trans fat, that would be perfect. It's not the easiest thing to do, food manufacturers sneak this crap into stuff where you'd least expect it - like out here in Phoenix, I can get Foster's Farms chicken strips or Oscar Meyer ones for my salads, and the Foster's ones are usually a little cheaper, so I used to buy them, until I discovered they had 3g of trans fat per container that the Oscar Meyer ones didn't. What the hell is there trans fat being added to my chicken for?!

But anyway... yeah, enough of that rant... basically, sat fat isn't bad and isn't treated "special" on MANS, but trans-fat is evil in general and should be exorcised from your kitchen like the demon it is regardless what diet you're doing.

carob999 wrote:Mark says that MANS IS based on Dr. D's work. My point is not to discredit Mark or to say he stole the idea but 16 years ago the MANS diet wasn't around so I can't say that I started doing MANS that long ago, that was just a way to associate my dietary experiences with this diet. Mark also says the diet is a muscle building diet, he also says it's a bulking diet . There's even posts by him that say you CAN loose fat on the MANS diet. I can't remember were but there is an article or post that answers this very question. I seem to recall him writing that TPSA is for when your going from lean to ripped not from fat to flat ( my wording not his). He even recommended to someone to start on MANS first until bf was lower. TSPA is more of a "contest diet " if you will. By the way some people have as much as 150 g of carbs on LC days on AD and when you are entering contest phase your fat intake levels can go very low. Read Mark's blog titled " What's The Difference Between MANS and TSPA? He says men shouldn't start TSPA until under 15% BF (what ever the exact % was). Again my post was NOT to debate or discuss the AD but to make my personal connection to the MANS diet.

Oh I remember the post you're talking about where he says you can in fact lose fat on MANS - hell I've done it myself. It's just not the best way to go - and the fat came off MUCH more easily on TSPA than it did trying to torque MANS to suit my needs. Ultimately I think we both think the same thing, here (though I took a less than positive tone with you, and I may have read in a degree of negativity you didn't intend, and I apologize for that). But yeah, it's not really a question of body fat (except for TSPA, perhaps), it's a question of the goal and how you wanna get there.