Man 2.0 Engineering the Alpha

increases the production of more cortisol and causes more stress. It’s easy to see why we blame cortisol for so many problems, but there are simple solutions that are much more effective than pills.
    Even if you’ve been crushed by cortisol for years, adding in certain exercise and diet strategies can reduce the impact of cortisol. Strategies like lactic acid training and intermittent fasting (see part 3) also produce GH, which further reduces cortisol. This cocktail will offset all the problems caused by cortisol and in particular will remove your belly fat. And if you’ve ever been stressed by belly fat, well that’s just one less thing that you’ll have to worry about.

    OPEN YOUR EYES
    Unlike many people who miss the Call to Adventure because they never see it—you no longer have that excuse. We have portrayed this as directly as possible in an attempt to help you do what you might think is impossible. The only way we could make this more obvious is if turning this page opened a holographic image of a princess asking for help. Or perhaps a small Italian lady asking for thirty white polo shirts.

CHAPTER 5
    Discovering the Answers
    EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT HORMONES
    LUKE SKYWALKER: I’m looking for someone.
    MASTER YODA: Looking? Found someone, you have, I would say, hm?

    NEW YORK CITY, 7:48 A.M.
    JOHN ROMANIELLO’S APARTMENT
    “W ell, that’s not a fun way to wake up.” Being called an idiot, that is. Which is what I was being called, more or less—and first thing in the morning, to boot.
    Like every morning, I began checking my e-mail at 7:45. It was now 7:48 A.M. , and I had sorted things into their correct folders, deleted the spam (no, I would not like a bigger penis, thankyouverymuch), and prepared to dive headfirst into the shit storm that is my inbox—until the very first e-mail stopped me in my tracks.
    It was from one of my clients who had a rather simple message to share: I didn’t know what the fuck I was doing.
    Well, to be fair, he didn’t say that exactly; it was implied fairly strongly, however, at least in the sense that incredulity and disbelief were evident in every line of the e-mail.
    It was from Colin, a forty-nine-year-old powerlifter who’d decided for the first time in his life that he wanted to get lean. He signed up for my coaching program, and within twelve hours and six minutes of receiving his instructions—according to my sent mail log—Colin had sent a three-page e-mail telling me exactly what was wrong with everything I had designed.
    Of course, he didn’t specifically say, “Roman, you’re wrong.” Nothing so direct. Instead, he questioned everything I had laid out for his new workout program.
    Colin wasn’t aggressive, but he was defensive of his ideas, his understanding of the training world, and what he “knew to be true.” My ideas ran counter to all that, and his perception—and, in a sense, his ego —was going to be difficult to reconcile.
    Like anyone else, I am prone to experiencing the whims of ego, and so my first instinct was to be offended and indignant that anyone would question my work. That instinct exists in every person and in every profession. Again, it’s ego. It’s based on a feeling of being right—and believing you’re right.
    Like Colin, I felt challenged, felt like my understanding of the world had been challenged—and I felt the urge to push back. That urge was quickly sublimated.
    Instead, I took a deep breath and put myself in Colin’s shoes. I read through his e-mail again and quickly realized that he wasn’t challenging me as much as he was declaring the way my program confronted his view of the world. And, in fairness, the program was radically different.
    Colin was a competitive powerlifter, a guy who routinely benched 350 for 3 reps and deadlifted more than 450 pounds for 3 reps. He’d been training for years—more years than I had, certainly—more years than I had been alive, in fact. And everything he had achieved was based on his training methods and his thoughts on his approach.
    My program was not based on those same principles, not dependent on what Colin “knew” to be true. In order to accept my programming as effective, Colin was going to have to accept the fact that what he had done in the past wouldn’t necessarily work for his new goals. Colin had to accept the fact that there are different methods for different goals.
    Accepting my program required Colin to resolve the dissonance