Milk Slavery

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dee pee e-mails:

Hey Justin I saw the video you put up with Mike and his shakes. My training has taken a dip the past 5 months and most of the inconsitency of not training was due to failure to eat right. I made my best gains last year when I did SS + drank a lot of milk. The only problem is that milk gets me very sleepy and groggy. My brain gets all cloudy, I can barely function on anything requiring any sort of mental or physical effort, it’s almost like I feel drugged. Also, I get VERY bloated. I go from size 34 to size 38. And I also stay bloated, it doesn’t really go away unless I don’t consume anything for at least 5 hours or so. I was drinking Homo Milk by the way, and I was also taking lactaid before drinking the milk but it didn’t do anything.

Is there anything I can do to prevent tiredness from milk? If there’s nothing you can think of, do you have any suggestions as to what I can put in the shakes that Mike makes to make up for the macros lost by using water instead of milk?

Thanks.

This e-mail touches on an interesting subject while highlighting a misunderstood concept regarding training and diet. Milk is a delightful beverage with impressive nutrition. A cup of whole milk will be about 150 calories and 8 grams of protein — this makes for easy additional calories when needed. Milk inherently provides proper nutrition for growing mammals before they are able to digest regular food. Aside from the macronutrients, milk contains the sugar lactose which is broken down by the enzyme called lactase. Many people complain about being lactose intolerant (the inability to digest and metabolize lactose), yet they are merely not allowing their bodies to adapt to abrupt changes in milk and lactose ingestion.

Certain ethnic groups have more of an intolerance than others, but it may still be possible to use a patient method of increasing intake over time — AKA not being a dumb ass. Most white people of European descent will handle milk fine while ethnic groups like Latin Americans, Africans, and Asians can experience some trouble. In any case, lactose intolerance doesn’t exist just because smelly farts occur after drinking milk. If you enjoy milk or want to use it to help your training, then simply have small amounts (as little as two ounces) and see how your body reacts. If it fucks your world, then you may have a problem. Start once a day if you’re terrified, and then increase the frequency (perhaps two times a day, then three, four, etc.) and then slowly increase the amount. It shouldn’t be a shock that there isn’t lactase readily available if there chronically hasn’t been any lactose to break down; allow time for this to occur if you haven’t had milk in awhile. The same thing occurs with Paleo folk; they eat a cupcake and complain about congestion like it’s the black death. As IronGarm says: you aren’t very elite if you’re taken out by a happy meal.

But wait — do you even need milk? Are you skinny and think you’re a hard gainer? Are you a pain in the ass about gaining weight? Then yes, you’ll benefit from including milk in your diet when on a good strength program since it will add necessary calories that you are (for some ungodly reason) not able to eat. But are you a big guy? Fat? Really fat? If so, obviously you shouldn’t drink milk since it’s designed to put on weight. It’s the same with puppy food; it has more calories to help them grow. If you or the dog is fat, they don’t need food sources that are biologically designed to induce growth. Duh.

What if you have gained some size, have some decent structure, but aren’t really defined? The same concept applies to someone who wants to lose body fat; a high caloric growth substance is not going to help decrease body fat. Unless you look Herculean, milk really isn’t an ideal choice and you can get leaner with better calorie choices.

Large quantities of milk act as a filler for people who don’t eat properly, and it particularly helps skinny kids get more calories when they’re incapable of scheduling food intake throughout the day. The concept of drinking a gallon of milk a day, or GOMAD, is familiar to people who don’t even train. Ultimately, telling someone to do this is just putting a band-aid on the “eating like a dipshit” problem that will still need to be addressed. Yet many people will follow GOMAD like a religion, including my new pen pal “dee pee” above.

Jacob texted this to me earlier this year

The first question I have for dee pee is what his ethnicity is. If he’s one of the intolerant ethnic groups, his milk relationship may not work out. He may even have some sort of allergy to milk. Without knowing any of this, I’d have to assume that by “drinking a lot of milk” he didn’t set his body up to handle this amount (see progression example above). I’d also assume that he is relying on milk for a major source of calories. In Mike’s shake video, he has five shakes a day with milk, yet that amounts to merely 40 ounces of milk total added to his regular food intake (that includes two pounds of pork and beef). A gallon is 128 ounces — over three times the amount Mike is actually drinking. If you’re not absurdly skinny and not complaining about not being able to get bigger, then you need to learn how to eat properly instead of using milk as the solution.

In dee pee’s case, he could try “lactose-free milk” (which is a fucking mummer’s farce since lactase is added — you can’t remove lactose from milk. That’s like removing fructose from fruit. Or teeth from your mouth by my fist when you drink soy or almond milk), but it sounds like he should just reduce the milk and tighten up his diet instead of continuing to do something that makes him feel like shit. As a general rule, if you ingest something and it makes you feel like shit, you shouldn’t continue ingesting that thing (my dog learns this pretty well and there’s no reason you can’t either).

It’s possible to improve the body’s ability to handle milk, yet you should reconsider whether milk should be what your diet revolves around. If you don’t need it, then save it for special occasions (like what comes up when you Google “sexy milk” with safe search off).

48 thoughts on “Milk Slavery”

  1. You mention the guy who has gained some size but is a little soft, what about the guys who find it hard to gain size but are still soft/fat (~15% BF)?

    Surely one glass of milk per day wouldnt have that much of a negative effect on body composition, if youre not eating like a fat fuck (burgers, chips, more burgers) the rest of the time?

    It depends, but it’s not something that will be conducive to losing body fat unless you’re doing something weird like the Zone diet with a shit load of conditioning…which you shouldn’t be anyway. If you’re skinny, then it should answer your question.

    Again, milk shouldn’t be the primary source of calories but instead an addition to a good, consistent diet.

    –Justin

  3. @jake01:

    No, it will not. Someone feel free to jump in and correct me if they disagree, but Justin is saying not to rely on milk if you are “softer” because it is high in calories (and carbs), and if you are trying to lose BF, then something that adds additional calories is not what you are looking for.

    At the end of the day, milk really isn’t much different from any other source of food with the same caloric value.

    Make sense?

    Well, milk is different from other foods because of the hormones it contains as well as the hormonal response it induces. This will be augmented with larger quantities in a day where someone is pounding a gallon, for example. And the carbs aren’t terrible if the quantity is low (the macros are nicely balanced with 8/13/8 of F/C/P in whole milk), but a whole gallon has 208g of carbs added onto whatever the rest of the diet is — that’s superfluous for most strength trainees.

    I’d look at milk being something you add in to the snacks or meals since having 2 to 4 cups a day can add 300 to 600 (150/cup).

    –Justin

  5. Raw milk is easier to digest as some helpful enzymes are also killed during pasteurisation. Homogenised milk is passed through a ‘filter’ like proces which makes the fat globules really small. Some say the natural larger fat globules are easier for the body to handle.
    If you want to get big try mixing your gallon of milk with a can of coconut milk, bunch of whey powder and about a pint of probiotic yogurt. I have gained 7 pounds a week on that. You may feel full all the time and not need a sweater in cold weather though.

  6. Not to be semantical, but lactose-free milk is far from farcical and it alone allows me to consume milk free from pain.

    Lactase is not lactose, rather it is the enzyme responsible for the hydrolysis of lactose into glucose and galactose; so technically lactose free milk is indeed void of lactose. If there were such an enzyme as “fructase” then fructose could in fact be removed from fruit – but there isn’t because fructose is a monosaccharide and lactose is a disaccharide.

    In regards to milk, diet and body composition: I believe any negative is a result of its caloric density which is entirely on account of its fat content. This can be eliminated by simply consuming skim milk. Skim milk should not be viewed as a dietary filler or less than optimal food choice, but rather as an awesome ingredient for getting big and/or getting lean.

    One cup of skim milk has only 86 calories, 8 grams of protein and 12 grams of low GI carbohydrates. In other words, its fucking awesome.

    I didn’t say lactose-free milk was “farcical” (a term I had to look up — are you a lawyer?). You’re just repeating what I simplified in the post. “Lactose-free milk” is not lactose free, but instead contains lactase (read the label) which prevents your body from needing to make it.

    And drinking milk isn’t reduced to simple thermodynamics (of calories in, calories out) since it contains various hormones that help growth. Skim milk probably is associated with higher insulin spikes (when it’s consumed in higher qualities) because of the lack of fat, and it tastes like shit so I won’t even bother with it (yet this is a personal preference — if you’re strong and lean and use it, then that’s your prerogative). I would never associate the words “fucking awesome” with skim milk.

    –Justin

  9. Pretty sure when Justin says big guys or softer guys shouldn’t drink milk he means like a half gallon to full GOMAD…one cup a milk a day isn’t going to make or break the bank

    and men drinking any kind of milk besides whole milk should be shot for cleansing of the gene pool

  13. Justin,

    I have found the most destructive/counter-productive events in TM is a stall.

    Resetting the weight by 10%/3 weeks of progress is a massive blow.

    I seem to be hitting a stall after 3-4 weeks of progress using the incorrect ‘volume warrior’ method you condemn.

    In your TM eBook, you advocate a wider spread between volume and intensity days, along with some other stuff.

    Does this prevent stalls from happening? How often should stalls be happening using your methods highlighted in your TM book?

    many thanks,
    R P McMurphy

    When I’ve done or conducted a TM style program for anyone, they hardly stall so I’d have to assume you’re jacking up the volume day. I believe you already know the answer to this, yet you just want it to be confirmed. You tell me what is going wrong in the following scenario:

    Volume Day: 385x5x5
    Intensity Day: 405×5

    Assuming aspects of recovery are fine, this dude is clearly doing too much volume early in the week. If he imparts too much of a stress and is unable to recover, then he will a) not be able to hit the desired weight on Intensity Day, b) not fully recover for the next week, and c) grind his body down from chronically doing this over several consecutive weeks. The way I would set up the template (and the changes that the e-book make) are designed to lower the relative volume.

    –Justin

  15. I get heartburn if I don’t have at least one glass of milk a day. However, I have tapered a bit as I’m nearing the end of my SS LP.

    Also, are Mike’s shakes 8 or 16 oz? I couldn’t tell in the video, and now you’re saying he’s only getting 40 oz of milk a day, which would imply that they’re 8 oz shakes, but then how can he be getting over 200g of protein a day from just shakes? Is he using two scoops of whey per shake? That’s double what my whey container suggests. I feel like I’m missing something here.

    @jake01: 15% body fat is not “soft/fat” unless you’re actually just weak and “skinny fat.” From what I understand, for many athletes (where strength is the primary component), 15% BF is about as low as one can easily go without negatively affecting performance.

    1. Correct, he uses 8 oz of milk in each shake. That’s 40 g of protein right there. Then he’s having 8 scoops of whey a day, which is roughly 200g of protein right there. Then he’s eating about 2 pounds of meat a day, which is about 220g of protein. Not counting anything else, that’s about 460g of protein.

    Again, I’m not saying this is what you should do or that it’s ideal (since it would depend on various things, like body weight, body fat, and strength goals), but that’s what Mike was doing (I think he changed it a bit to drop some body fat — I’ll ask him).

    2. Good call on the 15% body fat — if he is actually 15% (he isn’t; people assume wrong all the time and predicted estimates are extremely shitty), then that’s plenty low. He just lacks good musculature.

    –Justin

  16. What vintage of milk is in the glass pictured, does it have a full and rich flavour?

    @ dairyfarmer. Any body who says this… “natural larger fat globules are easier for the body to handle.” should never again be consulted on anything that requires a scientific grounding. A larger molecule has a smaller surface area to volume ratio. This will ALWAYS be more more difficult to digest. By the time you get to your third year of a biology degree you learn that all answers related to anything to do with Biosciences are based on surface area. Bigger is better and a bigger surface area to volume ratio is like the holy grail.

    @NolanPower. Agreed.

  18. FWIW my parents were big on “drink milk because you’re a kid” when I was a kid, but I always had trouble digesting the stuff…as in it would sometimes make me puke. So they started buying goat’s milk for me. That’s still what I drink today. It’s got the same nutrition as cow’s but is for some reason much easier to digest. The downside is it costs a lot more and the only place I know that sells it is Whole Foods. In my opinion tastes better than cow’s but that may be because I’m used to it. When I decided to do GOMAD I did it with goat’s milk and Ovaltine. That really made me feel like a champion. Anyway, something to think about for the guy who really wants to drink milk but has trouble with it.

    http://nutritiondata.self.com/facts/dairy-and-egg-products/94/2

  19. Pingback: Here are some things everyone needs to know… | MOVE MASS, RUN FAST

  20. I’m glad this came up. I stopped drinking milk for a while but just recently started getting in around a half gallon a day or even more on strength training days.

  22. I usually have a cup or so of milk before and after my workout in oats with whey…it’s fast and easy.

    and Justin, I was wondering if you’d mind answering a question I had after reading FIT (read it quite a bit when I was without power for 8 days, thanks Irene); I’m going to incorporate a bit of smart-er endurance training in my LP, but would you suggest doing endurance work after or around the same time as lifting? My thought was it could vary; for example, doing tabata sprints for 4 minutes after deadlifting would probably be difficult but perhaps wouldn’t affect performance too much. On the other hand, squatting and then trying to complete max effort intervals with fatigued legs would be even more difficult, and splitting the two sessions up might be more productive. I may have just answered my own question but I wondered what your thoughts were on this.

  24. When Mike was cutting weight for his test, was he using milk in his shakes?

    Right now I’m looking to lose some weight and trying to focus my diet on chicken breasts along with shakes of 1% milk, unsweetened protein powder and frozen fruit. I’ve done Lyle McDonald’s RFLD and lost 20 pounds in a month but it was a hard fucking month.

  25. What hormones does milk contain that help growth?

    This is thrown out all the time, but when I bothered to look into it, it appears to be just conjecture. I’d love to know what the real reason is.

    IGF-1 doesn’t appear to have much effect orally, and it’s only apparent in large amounts from BGH-treated cows. What’s interesting is that America is the only developed nation to have not banned rBGH, yet milk has similar effects in non-Americans, so the ‘cows treated with hormones’ theory can’t hold.

    Milk also contains oestrogen and progesterone, but in small amounts, and which are not going to help strength gain any way.

    Milk seems to be more than the sum of it’s parts, but I don’t think “hormones” are the answer, unless the answer is insulin, produced by the human that ingests a sweet, fatty food in an easily-digestible liquid form. Mmmmm, milk…

    http://www.sciencemag.org/content/198/4314/300.short

    This is just one little reference to gonadotropin-releasing hormone found in milk, which stimulates the anterior pituitary gland to release follicle-stimulating hormone and luteinizing hormone (which regulate growth, development, and puberty and testosterone production respectively). I guess by “bothering to look at it” you Googled it briefly. This doesn’t even address proposals that serum IGF-1 is increased or the insulin response from milk in general. The question of whether or not any hormonal change is significant is more or less irrelevant to the discussion since the topic is whether or not hormones are present.

    Also, you focused on hormones present in milk as a result of the cows being treated, and I’m just talking about what’s already there from mother nature.

    This fact remains: milk is produced by mother to give to child in order to grow and develop. It’s biologically designed to induce growth regardless if it’s just the perfect balance of macronutrients and/or additional hormonal hits. As a result, it won’t be efficient for dropping body fat (if that’s the goal). If you’ve consumed large quantities of milk chronically or have seen people who have done so, you’ll see that it has an effect that is unique to drinking milk, and not just because it’s an excess of calories.

    –Justin

  26. re: “skim milk is fucking awesome”

    how about no.

    dried milk powder is added to skim milk to improve its protein content.

    interestingly enough, the process that produces the dried milk also oxidizes the cholesterol. So, the process that strips away the supposedly “unhealthy” fats is adding a more likely promoter of heart disease (oxidized cholesterol). Also, Vitamin A is reduced since its a fat soluble vitamin, so you’re losing that as well.

  27. “Milk seems to be more than the sum of it’s parts”

    This is very important, and I strongly urge everyone to read In Defense of Food by Michael Pollan.

    It’s not a perfect book or OMG THE ONE TRUE WAY, but it’s thought-provoking and a very easy read.

  29. Lactaid whole milk is delicious. It tastes better than regular whole milk, sweeter. According to my wife’s dad who grew up on a farm in the mountains, skim milk is for the pigs.

    Chocolate milk is the best after lifting. Again, everything in moderation, unless you’re trying to do some serious gaining.

  31. Great advice – eat more to get big and don’t be dumb about it, but it would be fun if there were some citations either in the comments or in the text. This all looks like cargo cult science, honestly:
    Babies grow a lot, babies drink milk, therefore, it must also be true for adults! QED.

    I did a quick search for hormones in pasteurised milk, but it wasn’t that helpful. I guess the dairy industry isn’t bothering to research and market these “make you big and strong” hormones because broscience community is doing such a great job already.

    disclosure: I’m lactose intolerant, but drink (usually)full fat fermented milk products and whey/casein shakes like they’re going out of style. I also don’t like the taste of milk, probably because it tastes like yogurt that failed.

    http://xkcd.com/285/

    Ha, well, regardless of the mechanism, milk is something that will help people grow and therefore isn’t something to be consumed when trying to do the opposite of growing (losing body fat). This is fact, and makes the bickering a semantic thing. I’m not a hardcore researcher and I don’t see it as my job to go and prove everything with showing the research, especially when in a field where the research is so damn shitty (strength and conditioning, fitness, and even nutrition).

    –Justin

  32. Do you guys even click the links that I put in the post? I say and add various things to either get a rise out of you, spark discussion, or entertain and they are hardly ever referenced in the comments.

    I figure that if you aren’t interested in the content, at least you’ll be amused by the tangents.

  33. Cool cool. There was a discussion about it on a forum a while back. That’s when I first looked into it.

    I wasn’t focussing on hormone-treated cattle, I was just pointing out that IGF-1 is normally claimed as the hormone responsible, yet the effect is debatable in either hormone-treated or non-treated cattle.

    Anyway, I wasn’t being confrontational, I’m just genuinely curious what the hormones are, because it’s stated as fact all the time, with few citations. Cheers for the link, I’ll try and remember that next time it comes up.

    Regardless of the mechanism, your general point about milk not being ideal for cutting is still pretty legit.

  34. “Do you guys even click the links that I put in the post? I say and add various things to either get a rise out of you, spark discussion, or entertain and they are hardly ever referenced in the comments.”

    A starter:

    The puppies picture was somewhat disappointing as it failed to show me puppies and instead informed that it was “protected by copyscape.”

    Also, is the film Black Death any good?

  35. Yeah, I know research is shitty and you do a good job of making the best of it. it’s weird since there’s so much money in it and bodybuilders obsessively track everything – all a lazy grad student has to do is ask to see their diet and workout logs and bam, publication.

  40. I watched Black Death and found it to be a wonderful and entertaining period piece i.e. if I was a European history teacher I would make my students watch it. I am also a big Sean Bean fan from his time as Sharpe in the Sharpe’s Rifles series so I might be biased.

    I liked Black Death’s plot and how different characters in the film reacted to the Black Death from either extreme of being religious or rejecting God, but disliked the ending.

    The medieval torture equipment looked painful and brutal. There were no big grand battles or sieges since this was a small band of fighters and some villagers, but there was still some good action scenes.

    The way the film portrayed the Catholic Church was in mainly a negative light but the Church was pretty corrupt back then. I was surprised at the group’s strong resolve since they are mainly a bunch of mercenaries except for the knight and monk. Whether it was due to their belief in God or their professionalism, we will never know.

  41. When I’ve done or conducted a TM style program for anyone, they hardly stall so I’d have to assume you’re jacking up the volume day. I believe you already know the answer to this, yet you just want it to be confirmed. You tell me what is going wrong in the following scenario:

    Volume Day: 385x5x5
    Intensity Day: 405×5

    Assuming aspects of recovery are fine, this dude is clearly doing too much volume early in the week. If he imparts too much of a stress and is unable to recover, then he will a) not be able to hit the desired weight on Intensity Day, b) not fully recover for the next week, and c) grind his body down from chronically doing this over several consecutive weeks. The way I would set up the template (and the changes that the e-book make) are designed to lower the relative volume.

    –Justin

    Yes you are right, I did just want it confirmed.
    The reason why I wanted it confirmed is that when I purchased your book, I was 40 weeks into a TM programme, and by coincidence my figures when I read your book were:

    Volume: 374lb X 5 X 5
    Intensity 407lb X 5

    =text book ‘Volume Warrior’
    So I guess that is why I was stalling monthly.

    I’ll increase the spread, and hopefully that’ll prevent stalls, and get me to my goal of squatting 440lbs for 5.

    thank you for your time.

  43. “mummer’s farce” I lol’d. Sometimes I think you include shit like that just to entertain me.

    I have never had much of a problem digesting milk. I also thought it was funny that you described the farts resulting from lots of milk as “smelly”, because mine never are. In fact, they are very loud and voluminous (windy) but completely odorless.

  44. @Justin –

    Lactose free milk is lactose free. There is zero lactose contained it. I drink it every day and the nutritional information clearly states, Lactose: Nil. You are right in saying that lactose hasn’t been removed, rather it has been broken down by lactase, rendering the milk lactose free. Instead, lactose free milk consists of galactose. I apologise if this seems like petty hair splitting, but it’s simple: lactose free milk does not contain lactose.

    It appears that you are attributing magical properties to milk that it simply doesn’t have. Yes milk is given to growing baby mammals, but it is no more growth inducing that meat and potatoes or any other combination of complete protein, carbohydrate and fat. If you can provide actual scientific evidence that confutes this, then I am all ears.

    In regards to the insulin index of milk and skim milk in particular, yes the insulin index is high for skim milk, but so too are potatoes and beans. Are these nutrient dense and unprocessed foods to be avoided too when losing fat, simply on account of their insulin index? In fact the existing research shows that insulin does not inhibit fat loss and much of the concern over insulin is grounded in spurious bro-science.

    The bottom line is no single ingredient, minimally processed, nutrient dense food is inherently bad. And milk in particular is perfectly suitable for both bulking and leaning, if it fits within an individual’s macros. I also find it ironic that milk consumption is being bashed, yet copious ingestion of highly processed dairy derived whey powder is not even questioned.

  45. Justin this is your new pen pal Dee Pee. First, thanks for taking the time to shed light on the subject.
    To clarify some things..

    “Yet many people will follow GOMAD like a religion, including my new pen pal “dee pee” above.”

    I haven’t drank milk all year. I stopped drinking milk period, because of the effects it has on me. The ONLY reason I am considering again is because of convenience/time. I simply cannot follow proper nutrition for gaining strength eating “real food” all day. Hell maybe I’m lazy, but I swear to god, it just doesn’t work for me. When I was off school, off work, and sat around all days for weeks at a time I still found it difficult to eat 3-4 medium – big meals (and my big is less than your big, no homo). Milk worked well for me cause of the convenience, but the drawback was that I suffered being any kind of use in day to day real life.

    And I also need to point out – and maybe this is also the reason I failed eating properly with no milk- FOOD, real food, makes me tired. Most of the time, but usually not to the extent of drinking a shitload of milk a day. And I don’t get nearly as badly bloated. Then again when I was drinking the milk I’d still eat 2 sometimes 3 big meals a day plus some other stuff.

    But we’ve all had food comas right? I get a food coma on probably 75% of non pussy sized meals give or take. A few days ago I was eating a platter of Waffle Fries, sour cream, cheese, bacon bits, etc. with my 120lb girlfriend. I was dying eating the meal and started getting brain cloudiness and disoriented a quarter of the way through the meal and she was completely fine after we finished all the food. 2 weeks ago I was eating dim sum and felt so fucked up that I couldn’t even walk straight when I got out of the restaurant. All I had was 12 pieces of harrow + siumai.

    Today I ate Fries with gravy and a reuben at apple bees and bam, feeling fucked up and can’t think straight. Groggy as hell cuz. 100% of the time I eat fast food I get lethargic to some extent, enough where it affects me if I have to do anything requiring effort. Home cooked Pancakes, bacon and hash browns for breakfast? Gotta lay back on my couch for the next 2 hours to gather myself until I felt half decent again. Hey why I don’t I drink black coffee to jump start my day? Nope, even THAT makes me yawn. It will give me a boost maybe 1 in 4 times I drink it. I feel more energized eating 1 pussy ass meal + a snack a day then if I eat like a respectable man (or even boy) should.

    I know sound like a little bitch, but I swear to frickin Rip I couldn’t make this shit up. My girlfriend just bert stares me, like..what heck is wrong with you? Are you okay? Oh and when I first started drinking milk on SS last year I started at half a litre a day and eventually ramped up to around 2-2.5 Litres a day, on rare occassion drinking 3 and maybe twice ever completing a full GOMAD.

    I have found out though that if I JUST eat meat..Bulgogi, Short Ribs, thin sliced angus beef, a steak, etc… I don’t really feel any ill effects. I may feel a slight hint of grogginess coming on immediately after the meal but it goes away pretty quickly. And I haven’t eaten fruit in age, but fruits do not make me tired.

    So as of now all I’m eating is 2-3 lbs (going to gradually increase the intake of these, but the expensive maaan) of short ribs and kimchi from the korean store because I can actually function like a normal human being when I eat that. I’m drinking 1-2 quickmass shakes (4 scoops) along with that. I mean that gives me the effects too, but it’s bearable and I think feeling dizzy and slightly disoriented after the shake is probably cause I just chugged 1000 cals.

    Quick Mass is expensive though and in b4 everyone here tells me it’s stupid and I’m wasting my money. I know, that’s why I’m considering doing what Mike does and make shakes with milk. I mean, if I feel shitty regardless of whether I eat or drink I may as well do it in the way it’s most convenient for me, right?

    And I’m half Brent Kim half AC, no korean tho
    -_______________- but half asian nonetheless.

    I should have just let you write a post; this was entertaining. By the way, I forgot to e-mail you back when I used your post as the e-mail — I could have cleared up a few of the assumptions I made on your part by talking to you, but I didn’t have an idea of a post until I read your e-mail and ran with it immediately. Thanks for being a good sport.

    As for your grogginess, it seems like everything you listed (when you feel groggy) is some kind of big carb meal. In this case, I’d assume that you might have a sensitivity to a type of grain or even gluten. To continue this assumption, if you got your carbs through good sources like sweet potatoes, ate meat, and got your fats in via nuts/seeds and olive oil that you’ll probably be pretty good. Have you tried whey in just water or juice? Does it have the same effect? As for coffee/caffeine, it might depend on the quality or if you normally consume caffeine. If you have it all the time it down regulates and requires more caffeine to have a similar effect, yet can cause the crash you feel when getting too much.

    In all, it sounds like your big calorie meals are full of stuff that you aren’t used to or that you have a sensitivity or allergy to. Clean up the quality (by shifting into more of a paleo type approach). Take notes on how you feel after various foods. If oatmeal and rice make you feel like shit, stop eating those too. Don’t worry about milk, but see if you can retain whey protein. Keep me posted on the site or e-mail on what you find, because I’m interested.

    –Justin

  46. Hah yeah I checked my email again tonight and thought aww man this is just gonna get ignored then I went on the site and it was all right there. The sensitivity thing sounds right.

    Sweet Potatoes and yams are fine for me. White bread seems to be death for me. And eating a burger fucks me up every time, eating pasta KNOCKS me the fuck out huffing and puffing and shit seriously. Pizza makes me feel like crap as well. I’m sure there are other carbs and starchy foods that are making me feel bad that I can’t think of at the moment. Haven’t had oatmeal in forever but I’ll test it out. And yeah those big carb meals are always all bad for me. I make sure I have one of those asshole meals you described on days I train before the gym. But they get me really groggy and I have to wait real long before I can drag myself to the gym. What should I do before training to get my body in an optimal state?

    In Coffee’s defence (Hawaiian Kona Coffee straight from the island FWIW), stims are really hit or miss with me. 3 scoops of Jack3d brb nap time. The first 2 times I took it, it was wonderful, set PR’s and all, barely had to rest between sets, but then it never, ever worked again even with the doses upped.

    I haven’t drank whey in a couple years but I was already planning on picking some up tomorrow cause I was just gonna say fuck it and pull a Mike but now I realize that would be stupid, so I’m not going to do that. I will do what we are discussing, I’ll try it tomorrow in water and let you guys know how I feel.

    Oh yeah and I don’t know if this is bro science but upon doing some research about my food tiredness problem, a good portion of people that were complaining about the same issues as me to a similar degree and found out what the problem was, claimed they had “adrenal exhaustion” or “adrenal fatigue”. I’m almost certain now that I do have a sensitivity to some food(s). But do you know anything about this? It has something to do with cortisol levels. It could just be a coincidence that I’m a check for almost all the symptoms, but what struck me was 1. not feeling refreshed after a full nights sleep and 2. getting a spike of energy late in the day/night after feeling tired most of the day. This doesn’t seem normal, and these seem like rare problems to have especially the 2nd. But I almost never feel fully refreshed after a full nights sleep. And when I have a full nights sleep, I always get the most energy within the 2-3 hour window of when I *should* be sleeping, after feeling meh throughout the day.

  47. @harveymushman and Justin, youre both right I would consider myself lacking muscle mass and “skinny fat” I wouldnt say Im particularly weak though, compared to Justin and the guys on here yes but compared to other guys probably not. Not following zone, it sounds retarded, Im pretty much following JPs SWOLE but yes some how I still look like a 12yo boy.

  48. @Justin, you might be right, I may not be 15%, I have tested it using a few different methods including calipers and I range between 14-16%, although there is a chance I may be higher.

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