Man 2.0 Engineering the Alpha

it’s coming on the heels of a cheat day.
    Remember, dieting causes leptin levels to drop, which slows down fat loss; strategically overfeeding boosts leptin levels back up, increasing the rate of fat loss. Putting a fast day after a cheat day, therefore, does two things:

    1. Prevents any fat gain from the caloric spillover of eating, oh, we dunno, 14,000 calories worth of ice cream * by creating an immediate deficit
    2. Prevents stagnated fat loss, allowing the hormonal benefit from the fast to proceed uninterrupted

    More than anything, though, this is just a practical approach created to alleviate discomfort.
    While the feast/fast model is undoubtedly a potent fat-loss technique, it’s not a perfect system. The main drawback is that you’re really looking at a thirty-two- to forty-hour fasting period. If your last meal on your cheat day is before bed (say, ten p.m.) on Sunday, and you don’t eat at all on Monday, your first meal is breakfast Tuesday. And if you want to stick with your 16/8 schedule (which we recommend), that meal may not be until one p.m.
    As you can probably guess, this has proven to be challenging for a number of people. That said, we believe that with some practice, just about anyone can abstain from food for an extended period of time with very little discomfort. Remember, when you fast, you’re training decreased frequency of ghrelin secretion, meaning you control hunger, instead of it controlling you.
    Still, for a lot of people, the idea of going without food for up to a day and a half is a bleak proposition. If you fall into this category, we’re going to let you keep the training wheels on for a few weeks. So instead of the full-day fast, you can have a small dinner (up to 400 calories) on Monday night to take the edge off the hunger. This won’t detract from any of the hormonal benefits (you still fast), but it does add some calories where there weren’t any before. While this won’t stop fat loss, it might slow the speed at which you can change your body.

    SCHEDULING YOUR FEAST/FAST
    In the schedule we’ve provided you, cheat days fall on a Sunday with a full fast day following on Monday. This is not set in stone; you can really have your cheat day whenever you want—as long as you are able to follow it up with a fast. That said, understand that we’ve designed the entire workout and diet plan for convenience. So if you move your cheat day—and assuming you’ll follow the plan and do a full fast after the cheat—then you need to realize that you will need to shift all the training days to correctly align with your workout days. We’ve provided a schedule to make this a thoughtless process.
    While we’re not going to give you a hard-and-fast rule for this, we strongly recommend scheduling your cheat day on Sunday (instead of Friday or Saturday) for three reasons.

    1. The NFL: We have anecdotal evidence showing that cheat days are more effective when they coincide with watching football. *
    2. The social aspect: For most of us, Sundays are lazy days—the days we don’t have much scheduled to keep us busy and we get to spend time with our families and friends to just kick it. * Given that cheat days allow for a diet that is more adaptable to socially friendly eating, we’ve found that Sundays make for the most logical and acceptable choice. Whether you’re fifteen or fifty, it’s hard to beat Sunday brunch with your family. So go enjoy some pancakes, all right?
    3. Practicality and staying occupied: Because you’ll be fasting for a full thirty-six hours following the cheat day, it’s best to arrange things so that your fast falls on a day when you’re busy. As the old saying goes, idle hands are the devil’s playthings. In other words, if you are fasting on a day during which you’re sitting at home doing nothing, like a Sunday, you’re going to hear the Siren’s call of food beckoning you from the kitchen a lot more frequently.

    The busier you are, the easier it is to fast. By planning your fast on a workday, you create a situation where you’re busy throughout the day, making adherence to the entire fast an easier process. For this reason, Monday makes the best fit for your full fast day, as it’s generally the busiest day of the week. Trust us when we say that doing a fast day on a Sunday sucks.
    Again, you can choose your own feast and fast days to fit your schedule. Just make sure that you reorganize the workout and fasting schedules accordingly. For