Two Meal Muscle
Two Meal Muscle is descriptive, not prescriptive. It works for me. I don't know if it will work for you. In the event you're stupid you want to become a Two Meal Muscler, here's some parting advice.
Let's get weird.
1, Copy cat.
You can copy my meals almost verbatim, making oh-so-small adjustments to better suit your stature. The first half of the day won't change much.
Breakfast: black coffee.
Lunch: sliver of liver with honey, sardines, sauerkraut, (plain) Greek yogurt, and banana (or fruit of choice).
Translation: eat a decent number of proteins with a smear of energy.
The second half of the day should be tweaked a tad depending on how much you weigh, as this determines how many proteins you need to eat. Here's a decent starter template.
Dinner: big bowl of plant carbs, one pound of chicken breast or grass-fed beef, accent energy according to your tastes, remainder energy allotment according to objective (high-tide, low-tide).
Translation: eat a lot of plant carbs, eat a lot of proteins, and then eat as much energy as you can get away with given your objective.
2, Fungible fun.
You aren't me. You probably shouldn't try to fit your feet in my shoes. In order to become your own Two Meal Muscler, you need to know what's fungible.
1
Calories, macronutrients, and food quality are nonfungible. Everything you eat and drink across the day matters more than diet design (meal frequency, meal timing, meal density). This isn't to say diet design doesn't matter, but short-term optimization won't save long-term laxity.
The amount of food and the specific foods you should be the same even if you weren't trying to become a Two Meal Muscler.
2
Backloading is fungible. I backload my energy intake because it suits my current lifestyle. This wasn't always the case. When I started eating two meals a day, I frontloaded my energy intake. Dinner was my small meal. Lunch was my big meal. (On lifting days, I'd eat a massive lunch consisting of multiple chicken breasts and a bowl of oatmeal the size of my head. Long-time followers of my work know this as my oatmeal-volcano era.)
It worked.
You might be a frontloader. You might be a backloader. You might be neither. You might be better off with an even distribution. I don't know. Your job is to figure out the meal density that works for you.
3
Intermittent fasting (not eating breakfast) is fungible. The reason I don't eat breakfast is simple (and somewhat sad): superstition. In 2010, I stumbled upon intermittent fasting for the first time, thanks to a well-known website named Leangains. The owner of Leangains (Martin Berkhan) was jacked and ripped, so I was interested in what he had to say until he said this: “I don't eat breakfast.”
At the time, I loved breakfast. I needed breakfast. (When I was a strength-and-conditioning intern in college, I woke up at 4 a.m. every day so I would have enough time to cook and eat breakfast.) I couldn't imagine life without breakfast, so I left Berkhan's website without looking back.
A few months later, I broke my foot (in five places) and was on crutches. Have you ever tried to cook on crutches? I'd rather crochet an afghan with my toes. To make matters worse, I was a phys ed teacher. I was on my feet (foot) all day. My injured foot, the one inside the cast, became painfully swollen thanks to gravity. My good foot, the one outside the cast, started breaking down because it was doing the work of two feet.
Being hungry was nothing compared to the pain I was in. I couldn’t motivate myself to hobble around my kitchen in extreme discomfort to cook breakfast prior to an eight-hour teaching shift. This prompted a return to Leangains and a desire to experiment with Berkhan's intermittent-fasting protocol.
Intermittent fasting involves deliberately NOT eating certain foods or all foods for an extended period of time. (Technically, you are doing a form of “intermittent fasting” when you sleep.) This is a vague definition, but it’s vague by necessity because intermittent fasting is more genus than species.
The type of intermittent fasting Berkhan was most vocal about is known as 16/8 intermittent fasting. Over a day's 24-hour cycle, there's a 16-hour fasting window and an 8-hour feeding window.
- Feeding window: you eat.
- Fasting window: you don’t eat.
Although there weren't set-in-stone times for each of these windows, the most common setup was in this neighborhood:
- Feeding window: 12 p.m. – 8 p.m.
- Fasting window: 8 p.m. – 12 p.m.
In other words, wake up, don't eat anything for breakfast, make lunch your first meal, and stop eating at 8 p.m.
Since I couldn't cook breakfast, I decided to give 16/8 intermittent fasting a try. I got used to not eating breakfast. It was refreshing, not having to stress about breakfast before going to work. So much so that I stuck with 16/8 intermittent fasting after my foot healed. And then, when I started muscle-based again, I saw incredible results. I lost fat. I built muscle. I was in the best shape of my life. I attributed my newfound success to 16/8 intermittent fasting.
Back then, intermittent fasting had a certain mystique. It was new and unknown. Most everyone at the time still believed eating small meals every three hours increased metabolism (it doesn't). The fasting cult was throwing around false claims of their own, too: intermittent fasting increases fat burning; intermittent fasting boosts testosterone levels; intermittent fasting…
Plenty of propaganda powered its rise to popularity and made people (like me) think we had the power of alchemy at our fingertips. We didn't. Current research suggests intermittent fasting isn’t the all-powerful beast it was made to be. It may carry some health benefits (thanks to autophagy), but it doesn't seem to have any direct body composition benefits.
So fast in the morning.
Or don't.
THE SPECIFICS ARE SLAVE TO THE STANDARD.
The reason I continue to fast, as mentioned, is superstition. I used to tell myself fasting was more convenient, but that's a lie. I eat yogurt and a banana every day for lunch. I could eat this for breakfast. Takes zero minutes to cook and prepare. (Even easier would be a cup of kefir.)
3, Fasting foolishness.
I started fasting because I had no choice. I wouldn't have been able to will my way into life without breakfast. If you want to start fasting, but are finding it difficult, I only have a few words of wisdom.
First, talk to your doctor. Because, liability.
Second, use black coffee or plain tea to your advantage. Both will blunt hunger and help you get through the fast.
Third, realize you aren't dying. Unless you have some kind of abnormal metabolic condition, you can survive three weeks without food. Missing breakfast won't kill you.
Fourth, stay busy. The best way to get through your initial fasts is to forget you're fasting. Stay active. Put yourself in a situation where you can’t eat. On the day of my first ever 24+ hour fast, I went golfing in the morning. I didn't eat before I left. I didn’t have anything to eat on the golf course. The act of golfing kept my mind off of food.