“How much protein?” This has probably been the single most asked question in muscle-building and sports nutrition history. What better place to go for answers than straight to one of the world’s top researchers in the field – Dr. Peter Lemon? We recently interviewed Dr. Lemon for our private members-only fitness site, the Burn the Fat Inner Circle. Inner circle contributor and natural bodybuilder Kostas Marangopoulos conducted the call. It was up to date (2011 protein info) and so in-depth, it prints out about 20 pages – far too much to publish here – so I’ve culled it down to the highlights for all our Holy Grail Body Transformation subscribers. Inner circle members can access the entire interview by CLICKING HERE. You can join the inner circle by CLICKING HERE. For the Dr. Protein

Question: I just read a new article on T nation by Mark Rippetoe and I have actually seen other articles like this one that recommend a gallon of milk and huge amounts of food. It suggests for optimal muscle growth, many more calories than most people recommend are necessary for optimal bulking. He says it takes 5000 to 6000 calories a day! That seems a little crazy to me and goes against everything you said in your Holy Grail program, but apparently this high calorie bulking is common amongst body builders. Tom, could you give me your opinion on this?

-John

Answer: Actually “bulking” used to be common among bodybuilders, but most have abandoned it for newer methods that create leaner, fat-free muscle gains. Strength athletes on the other hand, who just want to be big and

Will cheating on your diet actually help you get leaner? Sounds crazy, but depending on your definition of cheating, there may be something to it, as we discussed in part one of this interview. In part two of our interview with Cheat Your Way Thin author Joel Marion, you’ll learn: how cheat days affect overweight and lean people differently, what is the best way to cycle carbs, the debate about the glycemic index, is refeeding the same as cheating? should refeeds be clean foods or cheat foods, are there downsides to the cheating method, and much more…

Tom: I’ve found a lot of evidence to suggest that an overweight person and an already lean person have some significant physiological differences that can influence how they respond to a particular diet. Do you suggest a different

“If you cheat on your diet, it will actually help you lose more fat.” That claim sounds like typical fad diet hype. Nevertheless, it does seem that the majority of fat loss experts recommend some flexibility in the form of occasional meals off the regular plan, for psychological reasons if no other. A few diet gurus even suggest that if you take full-out “cheat days”, you’ll get better fat loss for physiological reasons. Controversial? Yes. Some truth to it? Quite possibly, yes… it all depends on how you approach it…

Earlier this month, Joel Marion re-released such a program which made a claim that sounded too good to be true. He said that if you cheat on your diet – I mean really cheat, for a full day – it will actually help you lose more fat – as

Fat cells – also known as adipocytes – are like fuel tanks where you store energy for future use. Fat cells also function as endocrine glands, secreting hormones and adipocytokines that communicate with your brain and other cells in your body.

An infant usually has about 5 – 6 billion fat cells. This number increases during early childhood and puberty, and a healthy adult with normal body composition has about 25 to 30 billion fat cells. A typical overweight adult has around 75 billion fat cells. In the case of severe obesity, fat cells can number as high as 250 to 300 billion.

The average weight of an adult fat cell is about 0.6 micrograms, but they can vary in size from 0.2 micrograms to 0.9 micrograms. An overweight person’s fat cells can be three times larger than a person with

In this post, I’d like to talk to you about how to retain lean body mass (or even gain some) while dieting, by avoiding common mistakes that lead to muscle loss.

One of those mistakes is lack of sleep.

I’m not sure about you, but in the last few years I’ve been hearing a lot about the effect of sleep on body composition.

Specifically, I’ve been reading (in peer-reviewed journals) about how insufficient sleep can hinder fat loss or even lead to fat gain.

The earliest of these studies started with an observation of an association. In this case, researchers noticed that sleep duration has decreased over the last two decades and that a rise in obesity has paralleled the decrease in sleep duration.

Of course, this only reveals a correlation and correlation does not equal causation. So at that point, researchers began looking for mechanisms that might explain this correlation, and they wondered if

In light of the ever-present criticism of milk and dairy products on the Internet – usually by alternative health types of websites (which mostly ‘scare-monger’ and seldom cite primary research), I thought it timely to write about the peer-reviewed studies that continue to emerge, confirming the benefits and quality of the dairy proteins, including whey.

In fact, a recent paper about protein/ Essential amino acids and resistance training was subtitled, “A case for whey.”

(Effect of protein/essential amino acids and resistance training on skeletal muscle hypertrophy: A case for whey protein. Hulmi, et al. Nutr Metab. 2010; 7: 51)

I’m a few months behind on my research, but I just got done reading the full-text of this paper. Kind of a long and boring read except to science geeks, but you can get a good summary just by browsing

“Cardio bashing” has become rampant in the fitness industry in the last few years. Have you noticed? I sure have.

Both practitioners and experts alike have been blogging away, posting on forums and writing books based on the notion that:

* Cardio is a waste of time (“just lift weights and eat right”)
* Cardio will chew up your muscle
* Cardio will sap your strength

Even degreed and certified strength and conditioning coaches have been known to tell their clients to avoid cardio completely and just focus on weight training.

What if I told you they may be mistaken!

What if I told all those cardio haters that there’s a way to do cardio that will actually…

INCREASE MUSCLE GROWTH?

My guess is that a lot of them wouldn’t believe me (or they’d just get P****d off because

Here are the 15 lucky winners of our blog contest (includes comment post time and date to help identify your post):

1. Risto Uuk (9-27-10 7:56 am)
2. Amor Kisling (9-27-10 8:43 am)
3. Anna Goldenberg (9-27 9:27 am)
4. Chris Ryan (9-27-10 10:38 am)
5. Jim Wisinski (9-27-10 12:10 pm)
6. Cameron Harris (9-27-10 1:41 pm)
7. Trent Mitchell (9-27-10 3:04 pm)
8. Mike C. (9-27-10 3:44 pm)
9. Colleen C (9-27-10 6:04 pm)
10. Glenn Randall (9-27-10 6:28 pm)
11. Tariq Yaseen (9-27-10 8:18 pm)
12. Kadi R (9-27-10 8:38 pm)
13. Stephenie King (9-27-10 9:39 pm)
14. Kevin Valuzzi (9-27-10 11:13 pm)
15. Glenn Ritchey (9-27-10 11:36 pm)

CONGRATULATIONS to all our winners… and THANK YOU to every single person who posted (all 1183 of you)

- Tom Venuto
www.HolyGrailBodyTransformation.com

PS to collect your winnings, contact us at the link below and identify yourself as a winner, include your name

YOU BROKE MY BLOG!

Sorry guys, the comment posts to enter the contest were coming in so fast and furious today that when it got near 1,000 comments our blog apparently broke

Holy Grail Free Giveaway Contest (Random Drawing)

The last post there says,”Fatal error: Allowed memory size of 33554432 bytes exhausted .”

My webmaster is looking at it, but I figured it might either be (a) at capacity for one blog post (b) or the comments were just coming in too fast.

No worries! The show must go on… so we shall simply try to continue here and see if this works!

TODAY ONLY! (September 27th)
I’m Giving Away 15 Copies of the ENTIRE Holy Grail System!

Win a FREE copy of the Holy Grail Body Transformation system! (e-book AND complete audio edition!)

At the end of