Man 2.0 Engineering the Alpha

carbs in the morning with those who ate them at night, the nighttime carb feasters lost more fat and experienced less hunger.
    The benefits don’t end there. If you train in the morning or afternoon, consuming your carbs at night has a carryover effect toward your training. That’s because those nighttime carbs will fill up your glycogen, which is the energy you need to train hard. That energy will then be utilized for your workout, but without that sick feeling you get from training just after eating.
    No upset stomach, better training results, and you can have pasta for dinner? Yes, it’s all true, and it’s exactly what we’ll prescribe as part of the diet in this book.

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    REJECT THIS THOUGHT:
    Cardio is the best fat-loss strategy.
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    We don’t know how we even need to address this, but somehow there is a large majority of people that believe cardio—such as long-distance running, biking, or even a slow walk on the treadmill—is the key to fat loss. Running is still the most popular physical activity, and the most common reason people run is to lose weight.
    The reason the myth that cardio burns the most fat has persisted is that it’s still an extremely common prescription made by doctors and fitness professionals. But cardio should never be your first line of defense against fat; slogging away on the pavement or treadmill for sixty to ninety minutes is not the key to a lean, athletic physique.
    You know how we know this? Because every single fitness blogger in the world has done the same damn blog post with the same damn picture comparing the sprinter to the marathon runner. In it, the sprinter looks jacked, lean, and muscular, while the marathon runner looks gangly, ill, and thin.
    The point that they’re making is that long-duration cardio may be good for weight reduction, but it’s not ideal for a great-looking body. Science shows us that all exercise burns calories, but all activity is not created equal. The low-intensity, long-duration cardio might help you drop weight, but a significant percentage of that might be muscle. Whereas weight training or high-intensity work (whether with resistance-training exercises or sprints) will ensure that the majority of calories you burn are fat. More importantly, it’ll build and maintain your muscle, which will help your metabolism continue burning calories for twenty-four to forty-eight hours and improve your insulin levels so the food you eat is not as readily stored as fat.

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    REJECT THIS THOUGHT:
    Light weights + high reps = shredded body
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    Math equations suck—especially those that don’t actually end with the correct solution. The equation you see above is one of the most commonly believed in the fitness world. And yet, despite millions of people pumping away for endless reps, we still don’t have a nation of Roman warriors (no pun intended . . . okay, maybe a little). *
    Would you be surprised if we told you there’s nothing inherently beneficial about high reps and low weights? Probably not. If you just do lots of light-weight reps and there’s no struggle, your body won’t change. Likewise, if you follow a traditional bodybuilder approach, with lots of sets and rest, then you won’t create a metabolic change.
    With light weights, not only are you not lifting enough weight to cause growth, but also your workout is not designed to burn fat. You’re not really challenging yourself aerobically or anaerobically, which is why your body doesn’t seem to make progress even if you do get tired during your workouts.
    Fitness routines aren’t rocket science, but they are a science. We don’t want you to have to worry about any equations, so we did the work for you. Only this time, you won’t wonder why you’re getting results—you’ll just wonder why it took so long to figure out a better approach.

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    REJECT THIS THOUGHT :
    Supplements are complete bullshit.
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    DON’T HATE THE CARDIO, HATE THE FITNESS GAME
    We just told you that cardio isn’t ideal for fat loss, which is why our program will take a more efficient approach to giving you the body you want while still allowing you to eat the foods you love most. But that doesn’t mean traditional cardio is bad.
    As much as we’re frustrated by the overblown claims regarding slow cardio, we’re just as pissed at the experts who say there’s no place for that type of physical activity. These people posit that you can get the same benefits from weight training, dieting,