Man 2.0 Engineering the Alpha

Simply, you need to burn more calories than you take in. It’s this principle that allowed Kansas State professor Mark Haub to drop weight on his highly publicized Twinkie Diet. In fact, it’s upon this principle that all diets theoretically function.
    Theoretically.
    For someone like Haub, who wants to drop from a soft 33 percent body fat to a soft 25 percent body fat while starving himself by subsisting on a few Twinkies a day, then sure, that principle works. As a matter of fact, it works for just about everyone who starts any diet at all, Twinkies or not—for a little while, at least.
    But if getting lean were as simple as eating less and doing more, everyone would be walking around with a six-pack. The truth is that at some point, fat loss stops, and for most people, that point is sooner rather than later. After a few successful weeks of dieting, the scale stops moving.
    After all, no matter how long you’ve been on a diet or how close you are to your goal, the real determinant of success is how balanced your hormones are. Hormones in check are the real secret to unlocking the “unrealistic” changes that separate the ordinary from the elite.
    When you’re in a calorie-reduced state for an extended period of time, your body eventually starts to rebel against you. This is because leptin drops dramatically. And just like that— bam —fat loss stops dead. This is what’s often referred to as starvation mode.
    Sadly, almost every man who has ever tried to exercise and diet has experienced the phenomenon. Had Haub (a professor of nutrition, by the way) stayed on his exceedingly brilliant nutrition plan of snack cakes and irony, he would have hit the unfortunate wall with a crash. But it’s not limited to gimmick diets. Even people on regular diet programs—you know, like all the ones you’ve tried that have left you frustrated—reach a point where fat loss stops.
    Once you get to a certain level of leanness, other hormones come into play. As mentioned, estrogen keeps men from developing their testosterone-fueled physique, instead resulting in man boobs. Insulin (or rather, resistance to it) keeps love handles right where they are: attached to the waist—or even worse—causes metabolic syndrome and threatens to shorten life. And perhaps worst, stress-enhanced cortisol keeps your abs covered in flab—because it’s cortisol that prevents all people from losing belly fat.
    Ever known anyone who was just trying to lose the last few pounds? Of course you do. Well, those people are the victims of their hormones. And unless they do something about it, those last few pounds will be there forever—their adipose tissue will adapt, making it harder and harder to drop those pounds.
    Something else to consider is that these things don’t just affect the way you look; they affect everything else, starting with your health. Here’s a brief list: insulin resistance is the first step to diabetes; high estrogen is a factor in a host of cancers; and belly fat resulting from cortisol has been linked with metabolic disorder, heart disease, and brain degradation. Oh, and if that wasn’t bad enough, all three hormones can lead to erectile issues.
    Not addressing these hormones isn’t just keeping you fat; it also might kill you. But if you reprogram your hormones, you literally have the chance to upgrade the way you look, feel, and age.
    Program Stagnation
    On the reverse side of the coin, the guys trying to build muscle have it just as hard as those trying to lose fat. That’s why the term hard-gainer exists—because for some people, gaining muscle seems to be the most difficult task in the world . . . when it should be the easiest.
    The motto for gaining muscle should be easy: eat big, lift big, get big. But it’s not. Once again, hormonal issues control the speed at which you gain muscle.
    But the average guy at the gym doesn’t know that. In fact, he doesn’t know anything. He just does what seems to come naturally to him—what he’s always done.
    This guy starts out with the same program he used for high school football. He has no idea why he’s not seeing results; he just knows he’s not. So he steps it up and jumps onto a program from a magazine. He doesn’t know why he picked that program; he just thought the exercise model looked good. Again, this guy knows nothing, so he doesn’t know if it’s a good program—he also doesn’t know enough to match his diet to that program. So, again, no