After learning a few months back about Occam’s Protocol from Tim Ferriss’ book The Four Hour Body, the time has finally come to give it a try. The focus for me over the next 30 days will be to try to gain anywhere from 10 to 15 pounds of muscle to add onto my frame. The two main reasons for this project are to experiment with body composition manipulation, and to add more muscle though hypertrophy in order to support desired strength gains for advanced body weight movements (hand stand pushups, flag, planche, one arm hand stand, one arm pullup, etc.). To prepare for the project prior to day one, I set the following standards and staged all the necessary materials for each of the following areas of the program:
Diet: Each day I’ll be eating anywhere from 3200 to 4400 calories, focusing on the principles of a slow carb based diet (as based in The Four Hour Body) with whole wheat carbohydrate sources allowed. Similar to the slow carb diet, I will be having a cheat day once a week, but other than that I will generally following a meal plan that consists of meals similar to the ones below, which I have procured the ingredients for for the first week already:
Breakfast: Bagel with peanut butter, and Huel shake with 2% milk and an extra scoop of protein (1230 calories, 114g carbs, 45g fat, 96g protein)
Lunch: Macaroni with turkey chili, tuna, and two cups of 2% milk (1260 calories, 148g carbs, 31g fat, 106g protein)
Dinner: Tortilla soup, 8 oz of chicken, half a cup of quinoa, and two cups of 2% milk (1120 calories, 116g carbs, 28g fat, 98g protein)
Snack: Huel shake with 2% milk and an extra scoop of protein (780 calories, 60g carbs, 26g fat, 78g protein)
Workout days will be comprised of roughly all the meals above (~3600 calories) while non workout days will be slightly smaller portions and not have snacks (~3200 calories). Then once a week there will be a cheat day with upwards of 4000 calories. Midway through the 30 days, I will also increase each caloric intake per day by 400 calories to help aid with recovery as I get bigger.
Supplements: Every day I will take a supplement stack as recommended by the program in The Four Hour Body. I am not well versed in supplements, so I decided to follow the recommendations from the book strictly.
For fat gain management with the large number of calories I’ll be ingesting, I will be taking 2400 mg of cissus quadrangularis and 300 mg of alpha-lipoic acid three times a day with whole food meals.
To aid in muscle recovery and nutrient absorption, I’ll be taking 3.5 g of creatine monohydrate twice a day, and 10g of l-glutamine upon waking and every 2 hours after that until reaching 80g. This loading phase for l-glutamine will last for 5 days after which I will only take 10g after each workout.
Lastly, for overall health I will continue to take a greens supplement and multi-vitamin each day.
I’m not too concerned about most of the supplements as many are used very regularly, but cissus quadrangularis is one that I know isn’t as often used. As I’ll be taking more than the recommended dosage on the package (even though there is no daily value set yet by the FDA) I will keep an eye on how I feel and cut back or see a physician if needed.
Workouts: As I have been lifting weights consistently for the past couple of years, I decided to go with a similar workout program as in The Four Hour Body, but with additional exercises. I have two different workouts I will perform back and forth for the cadence as detailed in the book, and I will follow the same principles for muscle grown as detailed in the book (one set to failure, 5/5 cadence, etc.). The two workouts are push/pull focused and are detailed below. In addition to these strength workouts, I will also continue mobility work through the GoWOD Mobility app on a daily basis, as well as corrective exercises for the golfer’s elbow that has long plagued my right elbow.
Push Workout: chest press, shoulder press, pec deck, leg press, calf raise
Pull Workout: close grip supinated pull down, reverse curl, hip thrust, 45 degree hyper, weighted ab crunch
For the next 30 days I will try to post each day with details about what happened each day and how I’m feeling and progressing. Wish me luck!