The following is an excerpt from my third, and soon to be published book "The Ultimate Diet 2.0". It is a redesign/update of the original Ultimate Diet introduced by Dan Duchaine and Michael Zumpano nearly 20 years ago. Based on the most current research into human physiology, the UD2 is a 7 day integrated cycle of diet, training, supplements and/or drugs that will allow the genetically average to sidestep many of the physiological problems inherent in achieving a supranormal body. The UD2 is not for everyone and the excerpted chapter what trainees it is appropriate for.

Chapter 2: Your body hates you

As I'm fond of saying, your body hates you. Actually, that's backwards. Your body loves you. It loves you so much that it will do everything in its power to keep you alive even if that means keeping you small(er) and fat(ter). Because to your body, that gives you a better chance of survival. That you want to do something different doesn't matter as far as your body is concerned.

I want you to put this book down and go look in the mirror for a second. Don't get so caught up in throwing most muscular poses that you forget to come back. What you just saw is perhaps the most complicated machine in existence. Over millions of years (or 7 days, depending on your personal cosmology), it has developed ways of adapting to just about anything that you can throw at it.

This most complicated machine, your body, the one that hates you (but really loves you), still thinks that you're living the rather plebeian existence of our ancestors. Our modern lifestyle has only been around for the last couple of thousand years or so, far too short a time for our bodies to adapt. As far as your body is concerned, you might as well be a paleolithic man named Og (no jokes about the mental capacities of athletes, please) living on the plains.

Let's look at the implications of this by trying to see things from your body's perspective. For the most part, your body has one overwhelming goal, which is to keep you alive long enough to have children and ensure the survival of your genes. Everything else is pretty secondary to that goal. So what does that mean? Again, a few things.

First it means that your body needs a nice space-efficient way to store scads of energy. That's to get you through the times when there isn't food available (as it frequently wasn't prior to the advent of 7-11). That energy store exists, it's called bodyfat, and your body thinks it's great. Fat is space efficient, easy to store, doesn't take much energy to sustain, and can hold literally an infinite number of calories. If your fat cells get full, your body can even make new ones to store more incoming calories. The new fat cells are a lot harder to get rid of then they were to gain, by the way, which is a very good reason not to get too fat in the first place. Bodyfat is truly an ideal way to store energy.

From your body's perspective it looks like this: If food becomes unavailable, the more fat you have, the more likely you are to survive long enough until food becomes available again. In societies with seasonal food availability, being able to store a lot of fat when food was plentiful was the only way to get through the times when it wasn't. The extra fat also helped keep folks warm during the winter. No central heat or Gortex parkas back then.

In many societies people would fatten up in the summer so that they could survive through the winter and repeat this cycle for as long as they lived. Now, we just stay in one long fattening cycle (if you're a powerlifter, you can call this a bulking cycle and not feel guilty) without a break. That's at the root of the modern problem of obesity: constant availability of high calorie, high-sugar, high-fat foods. Decreases in daily activity is the other big part. Though our genetics are the same as they were 10,000+ years ago, our environment has changed drastically.

Lean individuals would have been at a big disadvantage hundreds of thousands of years ago when the next meal wasn't as simple as driving down to the local fast-food restaurant. Folks who didn't fatten up wouldn't have survived the food shortages, for the most part, so their genetics usually got weeded out of the pool. This probably isn't true for ethnic groups that lived in areas of the world where food was available year round: those are the ethnic groups that tend to stay lean pretty naturally.

The people who could store fat the best, who were most likely to survive the famines, were the ones who survived and passed on their genetic code down the line to us. In our current society, bodyfat is just a health-risk, not a necessary element to keep us alive for the most part. This fact is clearly shown in the survival times of lean versus obese folks during total starvation. A lean individual may die after 60 days of total starvation while an obese individual may make it for months or longer. Extreme leanness is generally incompatible with survival if food becomes unavailable. I'll come back to this in a bit.

But what about muscle, that's useful right? You've got to be able to kill stuff to survive and that means muscle. Yes and no. Although it's wonderful to imagine Paleolithic man taking down wild animals with his bare hands like in all the "Tarzan" movies, it's more likely that man used his bigger brain to outfox animals when it came to hunting. Our brains are staggeringly large (relative to our bodyweight) compared to all of the other animals; most likely we used our brains to compensate for relatively less muscle mass.

So while a modicum of muscle was necessary for survival, and our ancestors are thought to have had more muscle than the average American couch potato (which isn't really saying much), excessive muscle mass was probably a liability. Sure, you need enough to get around and get food but anything more than that is basically dead weight. In the wild, with the possible exception of impressing a potential mate, an 18 inch arm wouldn't have been much of a benefit. If anything, it might have slowed down your spear-throwing arm a bit.

In contrast to fat, muscle requires a lot of energy to build, requires a lot of energy to sustain, and doesn't provide much energy when it is broken down. Even then, your body will happily break it down when you diet. My point being here is that you run into an equally difficult set of adaptations occurring when you try to push your muscle mass beyond a certain point.

The end result of all of this is that, to your body, which thinks it’s still on the plains eking out an existence, being fat and small are beneficial, because it means greater survivability. Our physiology reflects this, making things really suck for folks who want to be bigger and leaner. In short, we're fighting against millions of years of evolution and adaptation to reach our goals of being bigger and leaner. Usually, the body wins.

Now, you may be thinking that I'm full of it already, because you can look at any magazine and find many sterling examples of individuals who are both huge and lean. They are called pro-bodybuilders. There are a few reasons why the images in the majority of the magazines aren't very relevant to the rest of us. First and foremost, pro-bodybuilders (or athletes in general) have better genetics than the rest of us. They are the genetic elite. This isn't some type of personal grouse or whine, simply a statement of fact and reality. If you had their genetics, you wouldn't be reading this book.

If you look at pro-bodybuilders in their early stages, they are still typically leaner and bigger than the normal individual. From a physiological standpoint, they probably have higher than average testosterone levels and don't overproduce cortisol. Thyroid levels are probably optimal or close to it, helping to naturally optimize metabolic rate, fat burning and protein synthesis.

They have good skeletal muscle insulin sensitivity and tend to put calories into muscle more effectively (i.e. they partition calories towards muscle instead of fat). They probably have fewer fat cells than most people and that fat is evenly distributed (although even female pros have problems with lower bodyfat). When they diet, they don't have as many problems with metabolic slowdown. Their evenly distributed fat comes off easily and, since they can use fatty acids easily for fuel, they don't lose as much muscle when they diet. All of these factors contribute to their success.

We can contrast that to the average individual who could have any number of potential metabolic defects that prevents him or her from reaching his/her desired goals. Testosterone might be on the low side of normal, cortisol production is elevated, thyroid or nervous system output may be low (meaning a lower than optimal metabolic rate). Skeletal muscle insulin sensitivity is low which means that excess calories get pushed towards fat cells more effectively. When these folks diet, the brain tends to overreact, lowering metabolic rate (which probably wasn't optimal to begin with). Fat loss slows to a crawl. Difficulties mobilizing bodyfat, along with problems with testosterone and cortisol, lead to increased muscle loss. I could keep going but you get the idea.

I'm not just telling you this to depress you; consider it more of a reality check to make you aware of what is and isn't possible. My point is that pro-bodybuilders (hell, pro-athletes of any sort) are the genetic elite. You are not like them and they have advantages naturally that you don't. Most importantly, trying to mimic what they do, or expecting their results, can only lead you down an endless path of frustration.

And then there are drugs.

All professional bodybuilders (and most athletes) use drugs. Anyone who says differently is lying or trying to sell you something. Again, this isn't a grouse or whine, but rather a statement of fact. When you introduce the myriad of anabolic drugs into the equation, it becomes possible to not only side-step, but almost ignore, "normal" human physiology. Couple better-than-average genetics with enough drugs and you get professional bodybuilders. You are not one of them. You will not be one of them. No amount of wishful thinking can change that. Even if you had access to all of their drugs, there's no guarantee you'd get as big; it's likely that one of the genetic advantages that professional bodybuilders have is a high sensitivity to the drugs that they do take.

Anyone who tells you that the various bodybuilding drugs (anabolic steroids, insulin, clenbuterol, etc.) don't work, or aren't necessary to reach a monstrous level of development, is bullshitting you. Usually they have an all-natural supplement or steroid replacement to sell you in the first place (I just have a book). I'd be lying if I told you that anything you'll read in this book could take you to the development level of even the worst pro. It can't. Without both their genetics and their drugs, it simply can't be done. At best proper/meticulous/crafty nutrition and training will let you maximize your own potential and move beyond ordinary. To go above your genetic potential requires drugs. The sooner you come to terms with this, the better off you'll be.

The fact is that drugs, even the relatively simple testosterone, can take you to a level of development otherwise unachievable by any natural training, diet and supplement methods. At even moderate doses, testosterone allows you to sidestep your normal physiology and reach a higher level. It raises the "setpoint" of how much muscle you can carry; it reduces your fat mass at the same time. Once you introduce all the other drugs endemic to pro-bodybuilding, you get a physiology that is unattainable in non-drug using individuals.

Still not convinced? A single example should help to make my point. In natural (read: non drug using) individuals who have dieted down to extremely low bodyfat levels, say 5%, you see a common hormonal pattern. Testosterone levels are typically bottomed out (some studies even find castrate levels which is why a lot of natural contest bodybuilders can't get their dick hard, not that they have a sex drive in the first place), thyroid levels are bottomed out, IGF-1 levels are bottomed out, sympathetic nervous system output is way down meaning decreased caloric and fat burning, appetite is through the roof, cortisol is through the roof, on and on it goes. This makes good evolutionary sense: at 5% bodyfat, you are starving to death. Your body is turning off every system (metabolic, reproductive, immune, etc.) that it can to keep you alive until you get some food.

Contrast that to a dieting professional bodybuilder. With the choice of the right drugs, he can eliminate pretty much all of the above problems. Anabolic steroids replace natural testosterone, synthetic thyroid replaces what the body is no longer making, injectable insulin, GH, and IGF-1 fix the insulin, GH and IGF-1 problem, clenbuterol replaces sympathetic nervous system output, appetite suppressants can deal with appetite and anti-cortisol drugs deal with the cortisol problem. That's only a partial drug list, by the way.

Getting to the point

The drug using bodybuilder has completely shut the door in the face of his normal physiology while the natural bodybuilder is basically fucked (physiologically speaking). Again, my point in explaining this isn't so much to give you a metaphorical kick in the nuts before we get started; it's to explain the basic realities of the situation. One of the worst things that a natural athlete or bodybuilder can hope to do is to emulate the pros in terms of their results, training or diet. Pro athletes and bodybuilders have at least two major advantages that you don't have: genetic and drugs. Hoping that you can achieve what they achieve or, even worse, trying to use their approach to do it, is destined to bring failure. But all is not lost. One of the goals of the UD2 is to mimic, to as great a degree as possible, some of the processes that occur normally in the genetic elite. We may not be able to do it 100%, but we can get in the ballpark and this will improve results. By using specific nutritional and training practices, the occasional supraphysiological level of supplements and even the occasional drug, we can duplicate some of what's going on.

What you should expect during the diet?

I'll say up front that the UD2 is not an easy diet. You'll have to count/decrease calories and carbohydrates 3-5 days out of every 7. While you don't get to eat everything in sight on the other days, it'll sure seem like it. On some days you can even eat some junk food. If you use the fat loss variant, you should be losing a pound or more of fat per week, while gaining some muscle. At the very least you'll maintain muscle without loss which can be an improvement for most people. Performance athletes can lean out while maintaining or even increasing performance as well. For the muscle gain variant, it's a little harder to predict. Women, of course, will have slightly smaller changes overall for what should be obvious reasons.

Despite what you may be used to, you'll only be lifting 4 days per week. Each workout should take about an hour or so, with one workout running maybe an hour and a half. If you can't find 4 hours per week to train consistently, this diet won't do you much good. Cardio is optional for men, but generally necessary for women to lose their lower bodyfat at any decent rate. Still, you shouldn't need a ton of cardio with this diet—not nearly as much as you think anyhow.

There are only one or two required supplements, although there are some that can be genuinely helpful. Beyond that, the diet revolves around basic foods that you can get at any supermarket (I assume that bodybuilders and athletes have no problem with protein powder). While I'll mention drug options to further optimize the diet, they are by no means required.