KNIFE, FORK, MUSCLE_ Book I_ DI - Brooks D. Kubik (1)

KNIFE, FORK, MUSCLE
DIET AND NUTRITION FOR
LIFELONG STRENGTH AND
HEALTH
BOOK I:
PROTEIN REQUIREMENTS FOR STRENGTH
TRAINING, MUSCLE BUILDING AND
HEALTHY LIVING
www.brookskubik.com

NOTE: This Kindle e-book is Book I in a four-book series. Together, the four
volumes will give you a comprehensive overview of a healthy and effective
diet and nutrition program for lifelong strength and health. We have broken
the material into four volumes to allow us to more easily update or
supplement the different volumes as new or additional information becomes
available in the rapidly expanding field of diet and nutrition for optimal
health. (If necessity arises, we may extend the series beyond four volumes.)
The four volumes were previously issued in hardcopy format as a single
volume. Together, the four-volume series in e-book format will give you all of
the material in the original hardcopy edition of Knife, Fork, Muscle.

CONTENTS
Foreword by Bill Hinbern
CHAPTER ONE: Exercise, Diet and Nutrition – Your Keys to Lifelong
Strength and Health
CHAPTER TWO: How Much Protein Do You Need?
Q. People talk about protein all the time. But what is it?
Q. Why is protein important for strength training and muscle building?
Q. How much protein do I need?
Q. That sounds like a lot of protein! Do I really need that much protein
for good gains?
Q. But some people say you only need 40 or 50 grams of protein a day!
Are they wrong?
Q. I’ve read that the “champs” eat 300 or 400 grams of protein per
day. Shouldn’t I be doing that, too?
Q. Can you go into more detail about the importance of high quality
protein?
Q. If I train extra hard or extra heavy do I need more protein?
Q. How much more protein do I need to gain muscle mass?
Q. How can I be sure I’m getting enough protein?
Q. Is it possible to eat too much protein?
Q. What is meant by the term “animal protein?”
Q. What is meant by the term “vegetable protein”?

Q. Which is better for you – animal protein or vegetable protein?
Q. Are raw foods the best sources of protein?
Q. Do protein foods supply other nutrients?
Q. Do protein foods supply energy?
Q. Is it possible for humans to live on protein alone?
Q. Is an all-meat diet healthy – or even possible?
Q. I understand that primitive cultures have lived on all-meat diets, but
surely they adapted to such a diet over many centuries. Could a
modern man survive on an all-meat diet?
Q. Did Stefansson’s work influence bodybuilders and weightlifters?
Q. Do bodybuilders and weightlifters live on nothing but protein?
Q. Is eating meat healthy? Meat has lots of saturated fat and
cholesterol…
Q. Is it possible to follow a vegetarian diet and get enough protein to
build strength and muscle mass?
CHAPTER THREE: The Best Sources of High-Quality Protein
Q. What are the best protein sources?
Q. Do some protein foods work better for some people than for others?
Q. How do I know if I’m purchasing healthy, high quality foods?
Q. What are the benefits of eating grass-fed beef?
Q. What’s the difference between grass-fed beef and grass-fed, grassfinished
beef?
Q. What if I can’t find or afford grass-fed beef?

Q. How is protein content measured in the foods we eat?
Q. Is it better to eat raw meat, or at least, to eat rare meat?
Q. What cuts of beef provide the most protein and all-around
nutrition?
Q. Do you ever use meat marinades or meat tenderizers?
Q. Is lamb a good source of protein?
Q. Is mutton an acceptable source of protein?
Q. Is pork a good source of protein?
Q. I’ve heard that chicken is a good source of protein. Is that true?
Q. Is turkey a good source of protein?
Q. What about duck? Is it as high in protein as chicken and turkey?
Q. Is bison (buffalo) meat a good source of protein?
Q. What do you think about wild game? Is it a good source of protein?
Q. What do you think about processed meats, deli meats, lunchmeat,
hot dogs, etc.?
Q. Is fish a good protein food for bodybuilders and weightlifters?
CHAPTER FOUR: Eggs, Milk and Other Dairy Products
Q. Are eggs a good source of protein – or are they too high in fat and
cholesterol?
Q. I’ve heard that you need to drink lots of milk every day to build
strength and muscle mass. Is that true?
Q. Are there any good alternatives to cow’s milk for those of us who
are allergic to it or are following vegan diets?

Q. Are cheese, cottage cheese and yogurt good sources of protein?
Q. One of my friends drinks something called kefir, and swears by it. Is
kefir a good substitute for milk and other dairy products?
CHAPTER FIVE: Plant-Based Protein Sources
Q. Are beans, lentils and legumes a good source of protein?
Q. I’ve always heard that soybeans were one of the best sources of
protein. Have you heard that? Do you agree?
Q. Are peanuts and peanut butter a good source of protein?
Q. Are other nuts and nut butters a good source of protein?
The Wrap Up
Further Reading
Testimonials
Dedication
About The Author

FOREWORD by Bill Hinbern
If you are at all familiar with this famous Iron Game author, then you have
read Dinosaur Training: Lost Secrets of Strength and Development. After
reading and applying the weight training principles found in that book, you
undoubtedly increased your overall strength. From there, you moved on to
many of his other publications and garnered even more valuable secrets, tips,
and time-tested strength training routines.
Most of the valuable information that he provided was on the subject of
exercise, with little specific content regarding nutrition, unless you read his
daily emails or blog posts. While the author would often suggest eating plenty
of wholesome food and staying away from junk food, many readers may have
walked away with the mistaken notion that he pays little or no attention to
diet or nutrition.
I assure you, nothing could be further from the truth! The author did not
become a five- time National bench press champion by ignoring sound dietary
principles. As a matter of fact, the author still trains, today, at almost 60 years
of age, in his garage, with barbells and dumbbells. You don’t have that kind of
training longevity – from high school wrestling champion to 60-year old
weightlifter – without careful attention to diet and nutrition.
You may ask, “Why hasn’t Brooks ever written a book exclusively on
nutrition?”
The answer is simple.
All of Brooks’ publications are a product of extensive, painstaking research.
As a close friend, I am well aware that he has been working on this book for
over five years. He has done an enormous amount of research, study and
personal experimentation.
Therefore, you can expect, as with all of his other publications, a well-written,
in-depth discussion on all of the aspects of, not only eating for GREAT
STRENGTH, but also, and more importantly, eating for GREAT HEALTH!
While some weight training authorities will touch on this subject, much of the
information contained herein simply cannot be found in any other book
covering diet and nutrition for strength training and muscle-building. For
example, the author’s research and advice on the issue of food allergies and

intolerances is unique in the history of diet and nutrition books in our field,
and I consider it to be of enormous benefit to all of us in the Iron Game
community.
So now you have another piece of the puzzle in your quest for lifelong
strength and health. Read it, enjoy it, and apply it. And may you have the very
best of success in your training, and in your pursuit of lifelong strength and
health.
Bill Hinbern
World Famous Weight Training Authority
Author, collector and publisher
Of Strongman Memorabilia, books, courses, etc.
http://www.superstrengthtraining.com/

CHAPTER ONE:
Exercise, Diet and Nutrition– Your Keys
to Lifelong Strength and Health!
Congratulations! By purchasing this ebook, you’ve taken a big step on the
road to lifelong strength and health. And that’s one of the most important and
most meaningful journeys you will ever make. The gift of strength and health
is priceless – and it’s a gift you give to yourself. It’s also a gift you give to
your friends, family and everyone who depends on you – and even to
strangers you meet, who may be influenced by your example to pursue their
own strength and health journey. It’s a journey that everyone should make –
and this book provides a roadmap to help you get there as fast and efficiently
as possible.
Strength and health are worth any effort it may take to achieve them.
Everyone wants to be strong and healthy, and everyone deserves to
experience the happiness, self-reliance and self-confidence that comes from
the possession of strength and health. Strength and health are two of your
most important possessions, and you should do everything possible to achieve
and maintain great strength and optimal levels of health for your entire life.
You do that by regular physical training – preferably, progressive strength
training – coupled with a sensible diet and nutrition plan tailored to your
specific goals, needs and objectives. You need both sensible training and a
sensible diet. Training without proper diet and nutrition to support your
efforts is reckless and often useless. Even when it appears to be effective,
your rate of progress and eventual results will always be far less than what
you could have achieved by combining sensible training with the right kind of
diet and nutrition.
Make no mistake about it. A lifelong program of sensible physical training
combined with a personalized diet and nutrition program is one of the very
best investments that you will ever make – and one of the greatest gifts that
you can give to yourself and your loved ones. That may sound like a strong
statement, but consider the following benefits that can be yours when you
combine sensible exercise with the kind of sensible diet and nutrition program
outlined in this book:
1. You’ll develop the “Look of Power.”
Everyone wants to look strong, healthy and fit, and the right combination of

diet and exercise is the way to get there. And note that looking strong, healthy
and fit doesn’t mean you look like the skinny guy with the abs and the tan in
the underwear ad. It means you look like an athlete: strong, powerful,
muscular, healthy, and well conditioned. That’s “the look of power.” It’s the
look possessed by the bodybuilding and weightlifting champions of the
1930’s, 1940’s and 1950’s. It’s the look the old-time strongmen had. It’s the
look that tells the world you train hard and heavy, you’re smart about what
you eat, and that you’re pretty darn strong and powerful.
You develop the look of power by building muscles that can DO things,
without allowing extra body-fat to slow you down. And that probably requires
some discussion, because many people who have read Dinosaur Training and
my other books and courses erroneously believe that old-time strongmen and
weightlifters were “strong but fat.” That’s certainly true in the case of a small
number of old-timers, but it’s grossly inaccurate with regard to the majority of
them. There also are plenty of trainees who get carried away by the “Bigger is
better!” philosophy, and end up big and strong, but FAT – and even then they
continue to try to pack on greater and greater muscle mass – and end up
getting bigger and fatter. That’s not a recipe for life-long strength and health.
There’s a much better way to do it. And if you study the history of the Iron
Game, you’ll see plenty of examples of what I’m talking about.
Look at photos of the bodybuilding and weightlifting champions of the
1930’s, 1940’s and 1950’s (before steroids entered the picture and turned
bodybuilding into a modern-day freak-show). You’ll see some amazingly
well-developed, strong and powerful men: John Grimek, Steve Stanko, Jules
Bacon, George Eiferman, Steve Reeves, Reg Park, John Farbotnik, Clancy
Ross, Maurice Jones, Tony Terlazzo, John Davis, Norb Schemansky, Louis
Abele, Frank Spellman, Pete George, Tommy Kono and Clyde Emrich, to
name just a few. Note that this list includes bodybuilders who won
weightlifting titles and who were fully as strong as the top weightlifters of the
era, and it also includes weightlifters that won bodybuilding contests and
were fully as well developed as the leading bodybuilders.
Allow me to give you some examples. John Grimek was the best-built man of
his generation. He won the Mr. America title not once but twice, and was so
far ahead of the other competitors that the AAU passed a special rule (often
referred to as “the Grimek rule”) that prohibited former winners from reentering
the Mr. America contest. They wanted to give other men a chance to
win the title, and they knew that if he had wanted to do so, Grimek could have
gone on winning the contest for many years.

Grimek went on to win the title of Most Muscular Man in America, the Mr.
Universe title (where he defeated Steve Reeves in a legendary contest), and
the Mr. USA contest (where he defeated Reeves, Clarence Ross, and a host of
other Mr. America winners and top title winners). Grimek retired from
bodybuilding competition with an undefeated record, having won every
bodybuilding contest he ever entered. He was hailed around the world as the
“Monarch of Muscledom” and if any man deserved the title, it was John
Grimek.
But Grimek was more than a man who looked good under the posing lights.
He was also a weightlifter, and a very good one. In 1936, Grimek won the
Heavyweight class at the USA Senior National Weightlifting Championships,
and set an American record in the military press. He represented the USA in
weightlifting at the 1936 Olympic Games, making him the only Mr. America
winner to compete in the Olympic Games. In 1938, he won the 181-pound
class at the North American Weightlifting Championships, defeating John
Davis, who went on to win the World Championship later that year. A severe
case of food poisoning almost kept Grimek from lifting at the World
Championships, but at the last minute he dragged himself out of bed and
competed – and took fourth place, close behind Davis and not one but two
former Olympic and World champions. His victory over Davis at the 1938
North American Championships made him one of only two men in history to
defeat Davis in weightlifting in international competition (the other being
Doug Hepburn).
Several years later, while focusing on winning the Mr. America title rather
than on lifting titles, Grimek set an unofficial World record in the military
press. He could military press 100 pounds over his bodyweight. If that doesn’t
sound impressive, load up the bar sometime and give it a try. And remember,
this is a strict military press, not a bench press, a clean and jerk or a push
press. You clean the bar to your shoulders, pause, and then press it overhead
from a dead-stop, with no heave, no knee kick, no leg drive, no hip thrust, no
drop and slump, and no movement of your upper body. It’s nothing but arm
and shoulder power – combined with the total body strength required to
maintain a military position while pressing a heavy barbell.
And then there was Steve Stanko, the legendary “Big Champ.” Stanko won
the United States Senior National weightlifting title three years in a row, set
American and World records, placed second in the World Weightlifting
Championships of 1938, and was the first man in history to total over 1,000
pounds in the three Olympic lifts. (When Grimek and Stanko competed – and
until 1972 – Olympic weightlifting consisted of three lifts in competition: the

clean and military press, the snatch, and the clean and jerk. The press
eventually became too difficult to judge and was dropped from competition.)
When a severe case of phlebitis in his legs brought his lifting career to a halt,
Stanko tried his hand at bodybuilding – and in short order won the Jr. Mr.
America contest, the Mr. America title, and the Mr. Universe crown.
Tony Terlazzo won 12 United States Senior National championships in
weightlifting, with nine of those wins coming in consecutive years from 1937
through 1945. He won the bronze medal in the 132-pound class at the 1932
Olympics, and won the gold medal in that class at the 1936 Olympics, making
him the first American to win an Olympic gold medal in modern
weightlifting. He won the World Championship in the 148-pound class at the
1937 and 1938 World Championships. He set numerous American records
and seven official World Records. At one time, he was rated as the best lifter
in the entire world on a pound for pound basis. But he also found time to enter
a couple of bodybuilding shows, and even won his height class at the Mr.
America contest.
John Davis won six World Championships, two Olympic gold medals, the
North American Weightlifting Championship, the Pan-American
Weightlifting Championship, and 12 United States Senior National
Championships. At one time, he held all the World records, all the Olympic
records and all the American records in the Heavyweight class – a feat that no
other lifter (including Paul Anderson) has ever matched. He was undefeated
in international competition from 1938 through 1953 – an amazing 15-year
run. For most of that time, Davis competed in the Heavyweight class, even
though he weighed a mere 225 or 230 pounds and his competitors often
outweighed him by 50 or more pounds.
On one occasion, Bob Hoffman prevailed on Davis to enter the Mr. America
contest. Although he did no bodybuilding work of any kind, Davis entered the
contest. When the judges asked for a back pose during the pre-judging, he
simply turned around and stood straight, with no flexing and no lat spread.
Even without posing, he looked majestic. He won the award for Best Back –
which was probably the first and only time in history that a man won a best
body-part award at a major physique contest without posing. Peary Rader, the
founder of Iron Man magazine, once said that John Grimek had the most
impressive physique he had ever seen. But he rated John Davis at the time he
won that Best Back award as having the second most impressive physique he
had ever seen.
And then there is Tommy Kono, rated by many as the greatest weightlifter of

all time. Kono won six World Championships, two Olympic gold medals, and
a silver medal in his third Olympic Games. He won the Pan-American
Championships three consecutive times. He won the United States Senior
National Championship 11 times, and won the Best Lifter award in seven of
those contests. He set 26 official World Records in FOUR different weight
classes, and won major international championships in three different weight
classes – and this was at a time when there were only seven different weight
classes in official international competition.
Kono also competed in bodybuilding contests. How did he do? Not too bad.
He won the Mr. World title in Roubaix, France in 1954, and the Mr. Universe
title on three different occasions (in Munich, Germany in 1955, in Teheran,
Iran, in 1957, and in Vienna, Austria in 1961).
Study these men carefully, and give serious thought to what made them great.
It was a combination of enormous strength and power, paired with rugged,
clean-cut, hard-chiseled muscular development. This rare combination of
strength, power and muscular development was the result of plenty of the
right kind of training – and the right kind of diet and nutrition.
You see the same thing when you go even further back in time. Study the oldtime
strongmen such as Arthur Saxon, Eugene Sandow, Maxick, Bobby
Pandour, Otto Arco, George Hackenschmidt, John Grun Marx, Hermann
Goerner, Sig Klein, Charles Rigoulot, Henry “Milo” Steinborn, Ernest
Cadine, John Y. Smith, and others of their era. That’s the kind of development
you want to achieve!
The right kind of training – combined with the right kind of diet and nutrition
program – will get you there. And make no mistake about it. The majority of
the old-time champions paid careful attention to diet and nutrition. Did you
know that some of the old-time champions lived in Paris – a city that was
famous for its extensive network of vegetable gardens, which many
considered to have been the finest in the entire world? Did you know that
Grimek, Stanko and Terlazzo purchased their groceries at one of the very first
“health food stores” ever established? Were you aware that many of the
greatest old-time strongmen worked as butchers, and had ready access to a
continuous supply of fresh, 100% organic, protein-packed beef and pork
products? Modern research is only now confirming the enormous benefits of
the diets followed by so many old-time champions and Golden Age
weightlifters and bodybuilders. There’s much to be learned by studying the
old-timers – and much to gain by striving to achieve their unique blend of
strength and development.

2. You’ll feel better.
How you look is important, but how you feel is even more important – and
with the right kind of diet and training, you’ll look and feel great! You’ll sleep
better, and you’ll jump out of bed alert, refreshed and ready to take on the
world. You’ll be able to put in a hard day’s work, come home, do some
serious training, and feel terrific when you’re done. You’ll experience that
wonderful “It’s great to be alive feeling!” that everyone should know, but
which seems to escape the vast majority of people in today’s fast-paced, highstress
modern world.
3. You’ll be able to train harder and heavier.
Lots of books about diet and nutrition promise great results “without
exercise” (which doesn’t work very well, and is usually a way of selling a
“diet book” to people who don’t like to train). But this is a book for people
who are serious about their training – people who love the feel of pushing,
pulling or squatting heavy iron. For people like us – people who love to train
– one of the most important benefits of a healthy diet and nutrition program is
that it lets us train harder and heavier in our workouts. And training harder
and heavier is a very good thing.
4. You’ll get maximum results from your training program.
When you train harder and heavier, good things happen – as long as you
support your training with the right kind of diet and nutrition. And the best
part is, providing the right kind of diet and nutrition program for serious gains
in strength and muscle mass – or the right kind of program to lose excess
body-fat while maintaining strength and muscle mass – means that you’ll be
enjoying some of the best tasting, most delicious and most satisfying meals of
your life. Eating for strength and health does not have to be an exercise in
deprivation or an endless series of dreary and melancholic misery meals. Far
from it!
But amazingly, the vast majority of trainees get the diet and nutrition part of
the program completely wrong. They end up nullifying the hard work they do
in the gym by following a less than optimal diet and nutrition plan. In far too
many cases, hard-working trainees sabotage their training efforts by following
a second or third rate – or downright ridiculous – diet. And that’s a shame.
Squats, deadlifts and other Dino-style exercises are hard work. If you do
them, you ought to do everything you can to get good results from your

efforts. That’s where the right kind of diet and nutrition comes into play. And
that’s one of the reasons why I decided to write this book. I don’t want to see
you fail – or achieve anything less than your maximum potential.
5. You’ll start lifting heavier weights and setting more PR’s.
This should come as no surprise if you’ve been paying attention. We’ve
already established that the right kind of diet and nutrition program – a diet
and nutrition program tailored to the demands of a hard-training Dinosaur –
allows you to train harder and heavier to get maximum results from your
workouts. And we all know what that means! Heavier weights, and tons and
tons of PR’s!
6. You’ll increase your rate of progress.
Notice that I did not say, “You’ll double or perhaps even triple your rate of
progress” – although that might happen if you switch from the wrong diet to
the right diet. When you pay attention to your diet and nutrition program,
good things happen. And one of them is that you start to gain more strength
and more muscle – and to do so faster than ever before.
And here’s the fun part. Since you’re engaged in regular, serious strength
training, you won’t have to wonder if you’re getting better and faster results.
You’ll be able to see and measure the difference as easily as you add up the
weight on your squat bar. That’s one of the big advantages you have over
people who focus on diet alone. Without exercise, it’s hard to measure your
results. Stepping on the scale every morning doesn’t tell you very much. If
your weight is going down, it may be that you’re losing fat (which is good),
or water (which is temporary), or muscle (which is bad). Your squat bar is a
much better measure of how well your diet and nutrition program is really
working. When you’re doing serious strength training, and keeping a detailed
journal of your workouts (exercises, weight on bar, sets and reps), it becomes
very easy to see exactly what your diet and nutrition program is doing for
you.
7. If you need to do it, you’ll gain muscle mass.
Gaining muscular bodyweight has always been one of the top priorities of
many trainees, particularly beginners and intermediates. But for many, it’s so
difficult that it often seems to be impossible. Many trainees struggle for years
to gain weight and muscle mass. Some find it so difficult that they give up
training entirely. Others turn to anabolic steroids and other drugs (which is

always a mistake, and always unnecessary). And virtually all trainees, at one
point or another in their careers, try to add bodyweight by chugging endless
gallons of milk or drinking massive amounts of stomach-stretching, bodybloating
blender-bombers loaded with everything under the sun that might aid
in their quest for bigger muscles. Since that sort of thing is the standard
advice for “how to gain weight and muscle,” it’s easy to see why they do it.
But is it really necessary – or even helpful?
Here’s the fact of the matter. You don’t need anabolic steroids to gain muscle
mass. You don’t need hormone replacement therapy (HRT). You don’t need
supplements. You don’t need to guzzle massive amounts of moo-juice. You
don’t need to force-feed yourself, and you don’t need to chug those foultasting
concoctions that promise to “pack on the pounds.” There’s a better and
simpler way to do the job. When you combine the right kind of exercise with
the right kind of diet, you’ll find that gaining muscle mass is relatively easy.
In fact, your biggest problem may be paying for new clothes when you grow
out of the ones you currently wear.
But please note. I know that some readers already carry plenty of muscle
mass, and do not want or need to get any bigger. Other readers compete in
sports such as wrestling, judo, weightlifting or powerlifting, where they have
to keep their weight down in order to stay in their current weight-class. So
they actually worry about adding additional muscle mass. If that’s you, don’t
worry. We’ll cover exactly what to do to continue to add strength without
adding additional muscle mass.
8. If you need to do it, you’ll lose unwanted body-fat.
Losing unwanted body-fat is the primary focus – indeed, often the only focus
– of the vast majority of diet and nutrition books. That’s understandable,
because the vast majority of people in the modern world are seriously
overweight, and the extra pounds definitely do not consist of functional
muscle. The obesity rate in the United States is 34.9% as I type these words,
and by the time this book goes to print it will probably be even higher. That
means that 4 out of 10 Americans are seriously overweight – and more and
more are eating themselves into clinical obesity every day. Anyone who
works in the health care field can attest to the fact that severely overweight
patients are literally crippling our medical and health-care system. And if you
wonder why Social Security is broken, consider the fact that so many
Americans suffer weight-related disease and illness.
And yes, I understand that the BMI doesn’t work for those of us who are

carrying large amounts of muscle mass. Many lifters are big, strong, and
muscular, with the body-fat levels of an Olympic athlete, but the BMI labels
us as obese. I get it. I’m right there with you. The last time I bought a life
insurance policy I had to send photos to convince them that I was heavily
muscled rather than obese, or they would have added a hefty penalty to my
monthly premium.
But unfortunately, there are many trainees who do serious lifting or other
progressive resistance exercise on a regular basis, but who are carrying far too
much excess weight (a/k/a Lard Lumps) for their own good. Remember,
excess body-fat is associated with virtually all of the so-called diseases of
civilization, including high blood pressure, cardiovascular disease, heart
attack, stroke, Type 2 (adult onset) diabetes, Alzheimer’s, arthritis and
rheumatism, metabolic syndrome, and even some types of cancer. And that’s
true even if you exercise regularly, you’re strong as a gorilla, and you’re
packing two or three times the muscle mass of the average man. Excess fat is
still a problem for you. It’s a problem for everyone.
But it’s a problem with a solution. The right kind of diet and nutrition plan –
in combination with the right kind of exercise program – can help you lose
unwanted body-fat while maintaining your hard-earned strength and muscle
mass. We’ll cover this in detail later in the book.
9. Your ability to recover and recuperate from hard workouts will
increase.
Once you progress past the beginner phase of your strength training, recovery
and recuperation become critical to your success. And for older trainees,
recovery and recuperation is critical even in the beginner stage of their
training. Remember, it’s not enough to train hard enough to stimulate gains in
strength and muscular development. You also need to recover from your
workouts. If you stimulate growth but don’t fully recover from workout to
workout, you will not only fail to make progress, you will actually begin to
lose strength and muscle – which means that all of your hard work, effort and
sweat will be wasted. In fact, it will be worse than wasted. It will start to
negatively affect your health by driving you into a constant state of
overtraining.
In contrast, once you learn how to train hard and heavy while maximizing
your recovery, you’ll increase your rate of progress enormously – and you’ll
end up building far more strength and muscle than would otherwise be
possible. So place as much emphasis on recovery as you do on training. They

work together. You can’t have one without the other.
There are many things you can do to maximize recovery and recuperation
from your workouts. One is to use the kind of sensible, abbreviated workouts
detailed in Dinosaur Training, Gray Hair and Black Iron, Strength, Muscle
and Power, Chalk and Sweat and my other books and courses – including
Dinosaur Training Secrets, Vol. 1 and The Dinosaur Training Military
Press and Shoulder Power Course, both of which are available in the Kindle
bookstore.
For many trainees, particularly older trainees, simple cycling programs or
intelligent use of the Light/Medium/Heavy system help to improve recovery.
Another important recovery aid is to pay attention to your sleep (which is
affected, either positively or negatively, by your diet and nutrition). You also
can try self-massage, foam rolling, hot and cold showers, heat, ice,
swimming, soaking in a Jacuzzi or hot-tub, tai chi, yoga, stretching and more.
You may also want to try restorative procedures such as sports massage, deep
tissue massage, trigger point therapy, acupuncture, acupressure, and similar
types of bodywork. These can be very effective.
But diet and nutrition also play an enormous role in enhancing your recovery
ability. If you’re not following the right kind of diet and nutrition program, it
becomes almost impossible to recover from your workouts no matter what
you do. But when you follow the kind of diet and nutritional program outlined
in this book – a diet and nutritional program that’s designed specifically for
strength training – you’ll increase your recovery ability enormously.
10. You’ll increase your strength.
There’s no special food, special diet or special supplement that will increase
your strength without plenty of intelligent, hard training. But if you back up
your training with the right kind of diet and nutritional program, you’re going
to get stronger – possibly much stronger than you ever imagined. And you’ll
get stronger faster. Nothing else is even possible. After all, when you feel
better, have more energy for your workouts, sleep better, and recover better
and faster, it’s almost inevitable that your strength training workouts are going
to become more productive than ever. And remember that the type of diet I’m
sharing with you has been followed by some of the strongest and best-built
drug-free athletes in the history of the world. It worked for them – and it will
work for you!
11. You’ll increase your speed and power.

Strength, speed and power are the mark of a champion. The three are
interrelated, but different. Strength is the ability to exert force. You use
strength to make a slow, grinding lift that requires sheer, unstoppable force to
complete. An example would be a heavy squat, deadlift, military press or
bench press. Speed is the ability to move from one point to another as fast as
possible (or to move one part of your body, such as an arm or a leg, as fast as
possible). Power is strength x speed. In other words, power is the ability to
exert strength with great speed of movement. The Olympic lifts (the snatch
and the clean and jerk) require power.
When you are at your optimum bodyweight, you possess maximum strength,
speed and power. If you’re carrying excess fat, you’re not going to move as
fast or exhibit as much power as you would if you were lighter and leaner.
This is one of many reasons why you want to be as strong as possible while
remaining lean and well conditioned. And the right kind of diet and nutrition
program (along with regular training) is what will get you there.
12. You’ll look and feel younger.
This sounds like something out of an infomercial, or the latest pitch from
someone selling anti-aging supplements or an HRT drugs – but in this case,
it’s true. The right kind of exercise and the right kind of diet really do keep
you looking younger than your years – and more important, they keep you
feeling younger than your years. That’s because diet and exercise help you
maintain your muscle mass (a sign of youth, and a key factor in good health),
stay lean and muscular (another sign of youth, and another key factor in good
health), and maintain high levels of testosterone (another sign of youth and –
you guessed it – another key factor in good health). I’ve said many times that
the right kind of strength training, combined with the right kind of diet and
nutrition program, is the real Fountain of Youth. That may sound corny, but
it’s true.
And in that regard, here’s an interesting fact to consider. Back in the presteroid
days, when men built their bodies with hard training and sensible diet,
weightlifters, bodybuilders and strongmen tended to live long and healthy
lives. Today, in the era of drugs, over-training and crazy diets, many
bodybuilders, powerlifters, strongmen and weightlifters actually die young.
I’m sure you’ve seen the headlines, read the reports on the Internet, and seen
the “RIP” notices pop up in your Facebook feed. And if you’re my age, you
probably remember a couple of friends and fellow Iron Slingers who passed
away when they were far too young. I certainly do.

There’s a time in your life when nothing is more important than building
enormous strength and muscle mass – or increasing your total – setting a PR
(or a school, gym, state, national or perhaps even world record) – and that’s
great. But there’s also a time when the most important thing might be staying
strong and healthy, aging well, living an active and independent life, avoiding
all those health problems that affect so many of your peers, not spending your
life savings on medical care, and being able to bounce your children,
grandchildren and perhaps even your great grand-children on your knee – or
better yet, teaching them how to train! Of course, there are never any
guarantees, but smart training and a sensible diet and nutrition plan sure as
heck aren’t going to hurt!
13. You’ll maintain healthy, high levels of testosterone – without drugs.
There’s a seemingly endless proliferation of ads for testosterone, anabolic
steroids, hormone replacement therapy (HRT), and supplements that claim to
be hormone replacers, hormone pre-cursers, or hormone enhancers. Many
who market these products claim that older trainees can neither build nor
maintain strength and muscle mass (or lose excess body-fat) without these
products. As a result, many older trainees are spending hundreds or even
thousands of dollars on gels, creams, pills, patches and injections designed to
return them to youthful vigor.
But there’s another way to stay young, vital and vigorous. It’s called diet and
exercise. It doesn’t make for great advertising copy, and it doesn’t come in
gels, creams, pills, patches or injections. It comes in the form of regular, hard
work, be it barbell and dumbbell training, kettlebell work, bodyweight
training, bodybuilding, Olympic weightlifting, powerlifting or any other form
of resistance training you happen to enjoy. Of course, you have to apply the
hard work in the right dosage – not too much, and not too often – and you
need to balance the harder, heavier workouts with lighter, less demanding
sessions. And you need to be sensible and intelligent about what you do. (See
Gray Hair and Black Iron for the details, and for suggested workouts for
mature trainees.) That’s the exercise part of the equation.
There’s also the diet and nutrition part of the equation. As you grow older,
your diet plays an increasingly important role in helping to maintain optimum
hormone levels. This includes both what you eat, and what you don’t eat. It
also includes what you weigh, and how much excess fat you carry –
particularly belly fat. Because it’s such an important topic, we’ll cover these
issues in more detail later on. For now, know and appreciate this critical fact:

the right kind of exercise and the right kind of diet and nutrition program can
help enormously in maintaining high, healthy levels of testosterone.
Of course, low testosterone is not only a problem for older men. Increasingly,
it’s a problem for younger men, as well. That’s undoubtedly the result of
many factors, including lack of exercise, the wrong kinds of food, and
exposure to estrogenic chemicals in our food and elsewhere in the
environment. These problems have become increasingly prevalent in the
modern world, and that’s probably one reason why so many teenagers and
young men get suckered into using anabolic steroids and “gray-market”
hormone pre-cursing supplements. Fortunately, the solution is the same
regardless of your age: the right kind of exercise, supported by the right kind
of diet and nutritional program.
14. You’ll learn how food allergies and food intolerances affect your
training and your health – and what to do about it.
We’re going to cover one topic in detail that you probably haven’t seen
covered before – or that you may have glossed over before – and that’s the
subject of food allergies and food intolerances. This neglected topic is vitally
important because you cannot build strength, muscle and health by eating
foods that make you sick. That’s obvious in the case of an acute illness caused
by a food allergy, such as a life-threatening allergic reaction to a particular
food. But it’s also a serious problem when an allergic reaction (or even a food
intolerance) causes a less acute response, such as a headache, stomachache,
bloating, gas, constipation, diarrhea, aching or swollen joints, anxiety,
depression, weakness, lethargy, hormonal imbalances, or a general sense of
feeling tired or unwell. In the latter case, we may blame other factors (or just
think “we’re under the weather”), and not even realize that something we ate
(and perhaps something we eat on a regular basis) is making us ill.
Now consider this. If I pick up virtually any issue of any “muscle magazine”
that I read when I was getting stated in the Iron Game, the magazine will
contain articles and advertisements extolling the alleged virtues of a small
handful of “healthy foods” and food supplements. We were told to eat
enormous amounts of these foods and supplements. The list of “healthy
foods” and food supplements included (1) milk and dairy products, (2) eggs,
(3) soybeans and soybean products, (4) protein powder made from milk and
egg concentrates or from soybean powder, (5) peanuts and peanut butter, (6)
fish and shellfish, (7) whole wheat bread and other whole wheat products,
including wheat germ, (8) wheat germ oil, and blends of wheat germ, rice
germ and soybean oil, (9) tree nuts, and (10) brewer’s yeast in powder or

tablet form, and vitamin supplements made with brewer’s yeast.
But here’s the problem. Ninety percent of food allergies are the result of eight
highly allergenic foods. What are these foods? According to the FDA, the list
includes (1) milk and dairy products, (2) eggs, (3) soybeans and soybean
products, including soybean powder and soybean oil, (4) peanuts and peanut
butter, (5) wheat and wheat products, including wheat germ, (6) fish, (7)
shellfish, and (8) tree nuts. Brewer’s yeast isn’t on the list only because few
people in the general population try to consume it, but if you’re allergic to
molds, as many of us are, you’re probably also allergic to yeast.
Now think about putting some or all of these products into your stomach
every day – in very large amounts, because they’re “good for you” and
because “bodybuilders and weightlifters need to eat plenty of good food.”
And imagine being even slightly allergic or intolerant to one or more of them.
It’s not a good scenario, and it’s one that doesn’t get discussed very often –
particularly since it turns the last 60 or 70 years of diet and nutrition advice
for bodybuilders and weightlifters right on its head! But it’s vitally important
for you, and that’s why we’re going to cover it in detail. That section of the
book will be an important step in teaching you how to develop a personalized
diet and nutrition plan, which is one of the most important things you can do
to achieve your goal of lifelong strength and health.
15. You’ll learn how chemical allergies and estrogenic chemicals in your
food and elsewhere in the environment can sabotage your training and
destroy your health – and how to protect yourself from chemical hazards.
This is another topic that gets very little attention, but it’s tremendously
important for all of us. Imagine that you just finished a hard, heavy workout,
and now you’re sitting down at the dinner table. You’re hungry, and you’re
ready for some serious food.
But before you eat, a man in a white lab coat comes in a syringe and injects
an unknown chemical directly into your meat.
A man in a rubber suit, with rubber gloves, rubber boots, a respirator and
goggles, comes in and sprays something onto your salad and your vegetables.
A third man enters, also wearing rubber gloves, and uses an eyedropper to put
three drops of something brown and nasty looking into your beverage.

Then they leave.
And now you’re supposed to eat your meal. And hope that everything is okay.
Of course, this isn’t how it happens in real life. In real life, chemicals are
added to the food supply long before our food gets to the table. But the result
is the same. We’re eating chemicals. All of us. Every day. At every meal. And
these chemicals may include known carcinogens, highly allergenic
substances, and chemicals that disrupt the endocrine system, suppress
testosterone levels, and cause animals – and people – to “fatten up” in record
time.
And remember, you train hard and heavy, and you have much more muscle
mass to feed than do most people, and lifting creates an enormous appetite, so
the portions you eat are much larger than the portions of the average person.
That means that you consume far more chemicals than the average person.
And frankly, that’s something to think about. And that’s why we’re going to
cover these issues in greater detail. Because building strength and health isn’t
just about what you eat. It’s also about what you DON”T eat. What you avoid.
What you keep out of your body.
* * *
These are just some of the many benefits of combining the right kind of
training with the right kind of diet and nutrition plan. I’m sure you can think
of many others – and I’m also sure that you agree with me that these are
vitally important and tremendously beneficial. And you’re ready to get into
the details. So turn the page, and let’s get started by talking about protein.

CHAPTER TWO:
How Much Protein Do You Need?
I’ve just finished a hard, heavy workout out in the garage, grabbed a quick
shower, changed into civilian clothes, and now it’s time for dinner. Trudi has
it waiting for me because she knows that when I finish a hard workout I need
to chow down like a saber-tooth tiger attacking a mastodon. That’s what hard,
heavy training does for your appetite. It sends it into over-drive.
When you’re involved in serious strength training, you use enormous energy
reserves when you train, and you tear down a tremendous number of muscle
fibers in your workouts. This is one reason why the advice in most of the
standard diet and nutrition books doesn’t work for serious strength trainers.
Unless someone actually knows what it feels like to do hard, heavy, and
progressively more demanding workouts built around the BIG exercises
(squats, front squats, deadlifts, cleans, snatches, presses, bench presses,
rowing, pull-ups, the farmer’s walk, heavy power rack work, etc.), they have
no idea how serious, Dino-style strength training affects your appetite. Carrot
and celery sticks don’t cut it after a heavy workout.
Nor do those in the non-training world understand how hungry you get when
you’re carrying 40, 50 or 60 pounds more muscle than the average person.
Once again, this is something you have to experience to understand. It’s not
just that you’re hungry. It goes beyond hunger. You become downright
ravenous as mealtime approaches, especially if it’s after a hard workout. Your
body demands to be fed – or, more accurately, your muscle mass demands to
be fed. And the food element you crave the most is protein.
That’s the instinctive wisdom of a Dinosaur’s body. You’ve just completed a
hard, heavy workout, and you’ve torn down a massive amount of muscle
fibers. Your body needs protein to start the rebuilding process – and it needs it
as fast as possible. Your muscles send out frantic messages for help: “Hey,
this lunatic just smashed me to pieces with heavy squats, pulls and presses!
He did fives, triples and singles. And then he finished things off with the
famer’s walk until his fingers turned into death-grip claws that wouldn’t open
for five minutes! Plus, he did bent-legged sit-ups and weighted leg raises for
two sets each – and you know I hate doing gut work! Everything hurts now.
I’m barely holding it together. I need food – and I need it NOW! Massive,
enormous, gigantic amounts of food. Do you hear me? PROTEIN ALERT!
PROTEIN ALERT!”

So bear with me while I sit down to a post-workout Dino Dinner. Tonight it’s
12 oz. of grilled, grass-fed, grass-finished steak, a fresh salad with a dozen
different greens, herbs and lettuces from our backyard vegetable garden,
steamed carrots and broccoli from the garden topped with organic butter and
fresh chopped parsley, and for desert, fresh berries from the local farmer’s
market and half a grapefruit. I wash it down with a big glass of sparkling
mineral water with fresh squeezed lemon juice, and a smaller glass of our
favorite red wine that pairs well with big hunks of grilled mastodon or other
red meat.
That’s a typical dinner here at Dino Headquarters. Thanks for letting me eat. I
was pretty darn hungry after that workout.
And now, I know you have some questions about protein. Specifically, you
have questions about protein requirements for those of us that do plenty of
hard, heavy, serious strength training. So let’s see if we can answer them.

Q. People talk about protein all the time. But what is it?
A. Protein is made up of amino acids. There are two kinds of amino acids:
essential amino acids and non-essential amino acids. Your body requires the
essential amino acids for tissue repair, growth, proper functioning and good
health. Your body cannot synthesize essential amino acids, so you must
supply them in the food you eat. In contrast, your body can synthesize the
non-essential amino acids. As a general rule, if your diet supplies enough of
the essential amino acids, you’ll also get enough of the non-essential amino
acids. Thus, it is important to eat foods that supply the essential amino acids.
Protein is one of the three macronutrients in the human diet. The others are
fats and carbohydrates. Among other things, macronutrients provide the
calories that your body burns for energy. Vitamins and minerals are
micronutrients. Micronutrients do not supply calories, but they are very
important for over-all health. Macronutrients and micronutrients are all part of
a healthy diet, and your meal planning should include all of them.

Q. Why is protein important for strength training and muscle building?
A. Your muscles may appear to be solid masses of tissue, but they actually are
made up of enormous numbers of tiny, rope-like fibers, all connected to one
another. When you train hard and heavy, you literally destroy your muscle
fibers. You tear them apart. Not all of them, of course, but many of them. The
harder, heavier and more demanding your workout, the more fibers you
destroy. That’s why your body goes into an almost panic-stricken “Feed me!”
mode after a hard workout. This happens to everyone, including the strongest
and best conditioned of trainees. In fact, the stronger and better conditioned
you are, the harder and heavier you can train, and thus, the more muscle fiber
damage you can inflict in any given workout.
Picture the effect of 5 reps in the squat with 100 pounds on your back. For a
beginner, it might tear down a significant number of muscle fibers. But the
damage done by 5 reps with 100 pounds (even if it’s a maximum effort for
our hypothetical rookie) does not begin to approach the fiber breakdown
experienced by an advanced trainee who works up to 5 reps with 400 pounds
in the squat. The degree of effort that a strong and determined trainee pours
into a workout is literally unimaginable to people who have not experienced
or witnessed it. And if you train hard and heavy, you know exactly what I’m
talking about.
Now consider what needs to happen to rebuild the muscle fibers torn down by
strenuous exercise. They need to be rebuilt. Pieced back together. Reattached.
Repaired. The cellular “glue” that holds them together needs to be
regenerated and reapplied in liberal amounts. How does that happen?
It happens like this. Amino acids are the building blocks of your body. When
you consume protein foods after a hard workout, you provide your body with
the material it needs to repair the muscle fiber damage that you inflicted
during your training session.
And if you’re hoping for muscular growth above and beyond muscle fiber
repair, you need even more protein for muscle growth. Without it, all of your
hard work will be wasted. In fact, it will be worse than wasted. If you train
hard and heavy and you fail to supply your body with the protein it needs to
rebuild the muscle fibers you’ve torn down in your workout, you’ll actually
start to go backwards. Instead of getting bigger and stronger, you’ll start to
grow smaller and weaker. You’ll also open the door to all sorts of nagging
sicknesses and health problems: colds, flu, headaches, muscle aches, fatigue,

and a constant sense of feeling “under the weather.” That’s why, when you’re
planning your diet and nutritional program, you need to make adequate
protein a top priority.

Q. How much protein do I need?
A. Protein is measured in grams, and you need to consume it every day, so the
question becomes “How many grams of protein do you need to consume each
day?” This is a difficult question to answer precisely, but there are several
general parameters that will allow you to determine your approximate protein
requirements. Your personal protein needs depend on many factors, including
your lean bodyweight, your age, your activity level, the type and quality of
the protein you consume, how well you digest your protein, and whether you
are trying to gain muscular bodyweight.
Scientists and nutritionists debate the exact numbers, but over the past 80 or
so years the consensus among them seems to be that the average, untrained
adult man (not currently involved in strength training) requires no more than
one gram of protein for every kilo of bodyweight. (Many place the number
significantly lower.) A kilo is roughly 2.2 pounds, so that works out to just
under one gram of protein for every two pounds of bodyweight, or half a
gram for every pound of bodyweight.
Note that this simple formula – one gram of protein for every two pounds of
bodyweight –is based on total bodyweight rather than lean muscle mass.
Since the human body requires protein to feed muscles, but not to feed bodyfat,
you can get a more accurate determination of a person’s protein needs by
determining his lean body mass and basing the calculation on lean body mass
only.
To illustrate what happens, let’s assume we have two men, one untrained and
the other an advanced trainee. Each man is 5′9″ tall, and weighs 220 pounds.
But their bodies are completely different. The first man is an average,
untrained individual, with minimal muscle and a high percentage of body-fat.
For purposes of illustration, we’ll assume his body-fat percentage is 35%. The
second man is an advanced lifter who has added more than 50 pounds of
muscle to his body as the result of his training program. Let’s assume his
body-fat level is 12%. And remember, the two men are the same height and
the same weight.
If we consider the protein needs of the two men based on bodyweight alone,
we see that they require 110 grams of protein per day. But when we compare
the protein needs of the two men based on their lean body mass, we get much
different results. The untrained man’s lean body mass (LBM) is calculated as
follows: 220 lbs. x .65 = 143 lbs. LBM. Thus, the untrained man’s daily

protein requirement is 72 grams based on lean body mass. The advanced
lifter’s LBM is calculated as follows: 220 lbs. x .88 = 194 lbs. LBM. Thus,
the advanced lifter’s daily protein requirement is 97 grams based on lean body
mass.
That’s a difference of 25 grams of protein per day, or a whopping 34%
increase in protein needs based solely on the extra muscle mass the advanced
lifter is carrying. So if you’re an advanced lifter and people wonder why you
always eat so much, your extra muscle mass is part of the answer. It’s also
something to consider when people suggest that weight training doesn’t
increase you protein needs. Of course it does! By adding muscle mass to your
body, you’ve increased your protein requirements significantly.
Now let’s consider the effect of engaging in hard, heavy strength training on a
regular basis. When I was a kid, the standard formula to calculate your protein
needs if you were engaged in regular strength training was this: consume one
gram of protein per pound of bodyweight. This was not based on any research
studies, but rather, on anecdotal reports about what seemed to work for many
trainees.
The 1:1 formula probably overestimates your actual protein needs, but it’s
simple and easy to use, and it gives you a good margin of error. For teenagers
and trainees in their early to mid-twenties, it may be just about perfect. Also,
it takes the growth process into account. As your bodyweight increases, so
does the amount of protein you consume. You might weigh 140 pounds when
you begin training, which means you would try to consume 140 grams of
protein per day. But after a couple years of regular hard training, you might
weigh 190 pounds – at which point you’d be consuming 190 grams of protein
per day.
Another good thing about the 1:1 formula is that it doesn’t require you to eat
extremely high amounts of protein every day. In fact, using the 1:1 formula
may well allow you to reduce your daily protein intake, as many of you are
probably exceeding the 1:1 ratio every day, especially if you’ve been using
protein supplements.
If you’re an older trainee (age 40 and up), or if you simply prefer to be more
exact about things, then use the 1:1 formula but calculate your lean body mass
and try to eat one gram of protein for every pound of lean body mass. That
still gives you more protein than you probably need. If you choose this
approach, you don’t need to go to a university or medical center and get a
precise lean body mass calculation. You can ballpark it. If you’re lean and

muscular, assume your body-fat percentage is 10%, and calculate your lean
body mass by multiplying your weight by 90%. If you’re in good shape, but
carrying a bit more body-fat, assume your body-fat percentage is 15% and use
85% to calculate your lean body mass. If you’re bigger and heavier (or older),
assume your body-fat percentage is 20% and use 80% to calculate your lean
body mass. Remember, this is all approximate, and your goal is to find
approximately how many grams of protein to consume each day. Don’t
agonize over the precise amount. Just get into the ballpark.

Q. That sounds like a lot of protein! Do I really need that much protein for
good gains?
A. It’s definitely more protein than most people eat, but most people don’t do
heavy squats, deadlifts and other super-demanding strength training exercises,
and most people don’t carry the kind of muscle mass that an advanced lifter
carries. And besides, when it comes to diet and nutrition (or strength training
– or pretty much anything else), what “most people” do is usually wrong. If
you’re doing serious strength training, you are not “most people” – and you
shouldn’t try to eat like them.
Do you really need that much protein every day – one gram for every pound
of lean body weight? Maybe you do, and maybe you don’t. Perhaps 90% of
the amount will work fine for you. Maybe 80% will do the trick. As I
mentioned before, what I’m offering is a rough guideline. Your job is to find
what works best for you. You may need a little more than what I’ve
suggested, or you may need a little less. And your needs may (and probably
will) change over time. What works at age 20 won’t work as well at age 40,
and what works at age 40 won’t work as well at age 60.
The big advantage that serious trainees have is that we can measure our
progress in very specific, objective terms. What can I lift today, on my current
diet? What did I lift a month ago? How does my lifting today compare to my
lifting a year ago? If my lifts are going up, the amount of protein in my diet is
probably fine. If they’re not, then I probably should try increasing my protein
by 10% or 15% and see what effect it has on the weights I can handle.

Q. But some people say you only need 40 or 50 grams of protein a day! Are
they wrong?
A. They’re definitely wrong if we’re talking about someone who does
extremely demanding strength training. Go back to what I said earlier about
how a hard workout destroys muscle fibers. It would be foolish to train hard
and heavy, and try to support the rebuilding and recovery process (let alone
any additional muscular growth) on a diet containing such a low amount of
protein.
Here’s another way to look at it. One gram of protein contains 400 calories. If
you eat 50 grams of protein per day, that’s 200 calories from protein. So if
you consume 2000 calories per day, and only 50 grams of protein, protein
makes up only 10% of your diet. That’s a very low percentage of your total
calories from protein – and it probably means that the vast majority of your
calories will come from refined carbohydrates and processed vegetable oils,
which is one of the least healthy diets in the history of the human race.
Now look at a higher amount of protein and calculate the percentage of total
calories from protein. If you’re involved in regular training, you need more
calories than someone who doesn’t train, so let’s assume that you consume
3,200 calories per day. (It may well be more than that for many of you, but
these numbers are just for purposes of illustration.) If you weigh 200 pounds
and you consume 200 grams of protein per day, that’s 800 calories from
protein. That means that 25% of your daily calories come from protein. A
daily intake of 200 grams of protein may sound like a lot of protein, but it’s
not a high percentage of a 3200-calorie per day diet.

Q. I’ve read that the “champs” eat 300 or 400 grams of protein per day.
Shouldn’t I be doing that, too?
A. Not unless you’re carrying 300 or 400 pounds of lean muscle mass! This is
where many trainees go wrong. The 1:1 ratio (one gram of protein per pound
of lean body weight) will give you all the protein you need for tissue repair
and muscle growth. Your body cannot digest and assimilate much more than
that, so the extra protein is wasted. That gets expensive, and it can be counterproductive
because it places an unnecessary burden on your digestive system.
If you start taking so much extra protein that you feel bloated and
uncomfortable, that’s not going to help your training. In almost all cases, it is
better to focus on the quality of the protein you consume, not on the quantity.
If you’re going to be obsessive about things, be obsessive about finding high
quality sources of protein, not about consuming enormous amounts of protein.

Q. Can you go into more detail about the importance of high quality
protein?
A. Food quality is one of the most important factors in a healthy diet, and it’s
also one of the most important factors when it comes to building strength and
muscle. This applies to protein foods and to all other foods. High quality food
is chemical-free, hormone-free, and antibiotic-free. This is the kind of food
they called “natural and organic” when I was a kid – before the FDA yielded
to the demands of Big Agriculture and came out with a special certification
program for organic labeling that cost so much money that many small
farmers and growers couldn’t meet the certification standard even though
their foods were 100% chemical-free, hormone-free, and antibiotic-free.
It’s also the kind of food that all of the old-time strongmen, weightlifting
champions and bodybuilding champions used to eat – because all unprocessed
foods were “natural and organic” back then. If you lived in the 1930’s or
1940’s and you primarily ate meat, eggs, fresh fruits and fresh vegetables,
most of your food was locally grown, much of the fruits and vegetables were
seasonal, your meat was mostly or entirely from grass-fed cattle and freepastured
pigs, and your eggs were from chickens that walked around outside
and grubbed for worms and insects. Your food was almost completely
chemical-free.
I’m not aware of any research studies on the effect of an old-fashioned diet on
strength and muscle building, but I do know that I feel better, stronger and
healthier on this kind of diet, and that’s enough for me. I also know that it
worked pretty well for the old-timers, and if it worked for John Grimek, Steve
Stanko and John Davis, it’s probably worth giving it a try. In this regard, note
the Bob Hoffman believed so strongly in the strength, health and muscle
building benefits of high quality food that he actually opened a “health food”
store in York, Pennsylvania way back in the late 1930’s. He wanted nothing
less than the best for his lifters, friends, neighbors and fellow citizens. And
this wasn’t a store that sold vitamins, protein powder and similar products – it
was a store that sold the best, freshest and most nutritious vegetables, fruit,
meat, fish, seafood, milk, cheese, butter and eggs that Hoffman could find.
Nowadays, of course, you may have to do some work to find high quality,
chemical-free meat, eggs, fruits and vegetables. Trudi and I are lucky in this
respect, because we have a house with a big backyard that gets plenty of sun,
and we can grow many of our own herbs and vegetables. We also have a
thriving local food community, with many “farm to table” restaurants, and

many local growers who sell meat, eggs, fruits and vegetables at local
farmer’s markers, through Community Supported Agriculture (CSA)
programs, or through a couple of small, old-style “corner grocery stores” that
stock their homemade wooden shelves and bushel baskets with food from
local growers. You can even find locally sourced grass-fed beef, bison, freepastured
pork products, and locally grown fruits and vegetables at the regular
grocery stores in town.

Q. If I train extra hard or extra heavy do I need more protein?
A. The 1:1 protein formula takes regular hard training into account. It was
developed for people who train hard and heavy on a regular, consistent basis.
So it is exactly what you need even if you train extra-hard and extra-heavy.

Q. How much more protein do I need to gain muscle mass?
A. The 1:1 measure works well for all but extremely skinny beginners. If
you’re an underweight newbie, base your protein requirements on your
bodyweight rather your your estimated lean body mass, and add an additional
10% for good measure. If your training increases your appetite and you want
more food, increase your protein by another 10%. Find a balance where you
feel satisfied, but not stuffed or bloated after meals. After you have gained 20
to 40 pounds of muscle mass, try cutting back to the 1:1 ratio and see if that
works better for you.
For everyone else, consuming extra protein above and beyond the 1:1 ratio
probably will do little or nothing to increase your muscle mass. If you’re
training hard, heavy and progressively, following a sensible diet, and eating
about one gram of protein for every pound of lean body mass, you’re doing
everything you need to do to stimulate and support muscular growth. Extra
protein will not speed up the muscle-building process, and if it overloads your
digestive system, it will slow down or even stop your progress.

Q. How can I be sure I’m getting enough protein?
A. If you feel healthy and strong, are recovering well from your workouts,
your muscles feel and look strong and full, and (most importantly) you’re
adding weight to the bar on a regular basis, then you’re getting enough
protein. If these things are NOT happening, then you may want to increase
your protein intake by 10% to 15% and see what happens. But don’t try to
make up for poor training (or for overtraining) by consuming more protein!
The vast majority of training problems are the result of not doing the right
things in the gym. If you’re training isn’t right, no amount of protein will help
the situation.
And before upping the quantity of your protein, consider upping the quality.
That may make much more of a difference for you.

Q. Is it possible to eat too much protein?
A. It’s possible to eat too much of anything, but if you’re training hard and
heavy, the 1:1 ratio should work fine for you. If you stop training for any
reason, you may do better by cutting back on your protein intake, as you
won’t need anywhere near as much for muscle fiber and tissue repair.
Also, note that it’s hard to go too much above the 1:1 ratio if you get your
protein from actual foods as opposed to protein supplements. I have an
appetite that scares people, but I get my protein from meat, fish and eggs, and
it’s hard for me to eat much more than the 1:1 ratio.

Q. What is meant by the term “animal protein?”
A. The term “animal protein” refers to protein that comes from animal
sources. This includes all types of meat, fish or fowl, eggs, milk, cheese and
other dairy products (other than butter, which is 100% fat). Many commercial
protein powders are derived from milk or egg protein, and thus, are animal
protein products.

Q. What is meant by the term “vegetable protein”?
A. “Vegetable protein” refers to protein that comes from vegetables and
grains. The most common sources of vegetable protein are peas and other
legumes, beans, soybeans, soy powder, soy milk, textured vegetable protein,
tofu, tempeh, wheat and wheat products, quinoa, rice, peanuts, peanut butter,
and other nuts and nut butters (such as almond butter or cashew butter). Some
commercial protein powders are made entirely from vegetable protein
sources, including soy powder, pea powder, and brown rice.
Spirulina and algae supplements are also becoming popular as sources of
vegetable protein. Trudi has experimented with them, and likes them.

Q. Which is better for you – animal protein or vegetable protein?
A. Animal proteins are sometimes referred to as “complete proteins” because
they contain all of the essential amino acids. Vegetable proteins do not.
However, if you eat vegetable proteins together with animal proteins, the
animal proteins supply enough of the essential amino acids.
It also is possible to obtain all of the essential amino acids from vegetable
protein alone if you combine different sources of vegetable protein. For
example, beans contain a reasonable amount of protein, but they do not
contain all of the essential amino acids. However, it you eat a dish of rice and
beans, the rice provides some of the amino acids that are missing in the beans,
and thus, the two foods combine to provide all of the essential amino acids.
Some studies suggest that it is not even necessary to combine beans and rice
at the same meal, as long as you include both foods in your diet.
The problem with beans, peas and legumes is that they are hard to digest for
many people. I happen to be one of those people, and I avoid them
completely. We’ll discuss these foods in greater detail later on.

Q. Are raw foods the best sources of protein?
A. Not at all – and in fact, many protein foods need to be cooked. You can
become extremely ill from eating under-cooked pork, and raw pork would
undoubtedly make anyone extremely ill if they were foolish enough to eat it.
The same is true of chicken or other fowl. Some people enjoy eating raw fish
(sushi) and consider it to be a delicacy. If you enjoy sushi, that’s fine (as long
as you eat sushi-grade fish), but it’s not something that is necessary for
strength and muscle building. Similarly, some people enjoy eating raw beef
(steak tartare), but again, this is simply a delicacy (to some people) and you
certainly don’t need to eat raw beef to support your strength training and
muscle building.
Many recipes for protein shakes and blender bombers call for the addition of a
couple of raw eggs. That’s not necessary, and it’s not a good idea. You can get
a bad case of salmonella from eating raw eggs, and salmonella is nothing to
take lightly. It can make you violently ill, and is sometimes fatal. So leave the
raw eggs out of the protein shakes. Also note that dressing for Caesar salad is
made from raw eggs, as are various other foods. I avoid these, and urge you to
do the same.
Most sources of vegetable protein need to be cooked before you can eat them.
Grains, beans, and legumes are indigestible unless they are cooked. So are
dried peas, although fresh green peas can be eaten raw, right out of the shell.
Some vegetables, such as fava beans and potatoes, contain toxins that can
make you very ill if you eat them raw.

Q. Do protein foods supply other nutrients?
A. Absolutely! Animal proteins supply fats and calories, as well as plenty of
vitamins and minerals. People often think that fruits, vegetables and whole
grain products are their primary (or only) sources of vitamins and minerals.
That’s not true. Beef, pork, chicken, eggs and other sources of animal protein
are excellent sources of vitamins and minerals, including large amounts of the
B vitamins. In fact, animal foods are the only natural source of vitamin B12,
so vegetarians, vegans and others who avoid or eat only minimal amounts of
animal foods may be at risk of developing a vitamin B12 deficiency. Foods
providing vegetable protein also provide significant amounts of vitamins and
minerals, as well as carbohydrates. Thus, by keeping your protein intake
reasonably high, you supply many other vital nutrients to your body.

Q. Do protein foods supply energy?
A. All foods, including protein foods, provide calories, and calories provide
energy for your body. However, for hard-training lifters and other strength
athletes, protein serves the primary purpose of tissue (muscle fiber) repair, as
well as providing the amino acids that serve as building blocks for additional
growth of muscle tissue.

Q. Is it possible for humans to live on protein alone?
A. It is not possible to live on a diet consisting of pure protein because no
naturally occurring food is pure protein. All animal foods contain a
substantial amount of fat. For example, although everyone thinks that steak is
a protein food, approximately 75% to 80% of the calories in a typical New
York strip come from fat. The same is true of eggs. Approximately 37% of the
calories in an egg come from protein and the remaining 63% of the calories
come from fat.
Similarly, many sources of vegetable protein are high in carbohydrates. A
one-cup serving of black beans provides 227 calories, made up of 41 grams of
carbohydrates and 15 grams of protein. Thus, that “high protein” serving of
black beans is approximately 72% carbohydrate. And if you combine black
beans with rice, as many do, the protein percentage plummets, and the
carbohydrate percentage shoots way up.
In short, all foods that are high in protein are also high in fat (if they are
animal foods), or high in carbohydrates (or in some cases, both carbohydrates
and fats) if they are vegetable foods. Deriving all or substantially all of your
calories from protein while living on a diet of natural foods would be
impossible. It also would be ill advised. As will review in more detail later on,
high-protein diet that lacks adequate fat can make you nauseous and give you
a bad case of diarrhea.

Q. Is an all-meat diet healthy – or even possible?
A. Stone-age man and many primitive cultures that flourished before contact
with European civilization lived almost exclusively on wild game (including
fish). Anthropologists tell us that they were in excellent physical condition,
and lived healthy, vigorous lives on their simple stone-age diets. Neanderthal
man lived almost entirely on wild game, and scientists tell us that
Neanderthals were heavily muscled, remarkably powerful and strong, and
possessed very dense bones. It was almost as if they were a race of weight
lifters, powerlifters, strongmen and bodybuilders. An average Neanderthal
man have been 3 to 4 times as strong as a modern human adult male of the
same bodyweight. Neanderthals also had extremely high testosterone levels,
which have been attributed to their vigorous lifestyle, living in a cold climate,
and following an all-meat diet.
But we don’t have to look back to the Ice Age. There are many more recent
examples of races that not only survived, but actually flourished on all-meat
or largely meat diets. For example, when European explorers first
encountered the North American Buffalo People, the men of some tribes lived
entirely on buffalo meat and other wild game, deeming vegetable foods to be
suitable only for women and children. These men were literal supermen. They
averaged well over six-feet tall, with some of them exceeding 6′6″ in height.
They literally dwarfed the much shorter Europeans of the era. Some
anthropologists believe that when Europeans first set foot on the North
American prairies, the Buffalo People were the tallest race in the entire world.
To the degree that height is the sign of a healthy and nutritious diet, we may
assume that their all-meat diet was one of the healthiest diets of any people on
the planet.
There are similar reports concerning the Masai in Africa, another tall and
superbly conditioned race where the men lived almost entirely on meat, milk
and fresh blood from their cattle. To become a warrior, a Masai youth had to
kill an adult male lion with only a short spear, a rite of passage that tells us
everything we need to know about the physical prowess of this remarkable
warrior race.
All of this came home to me with great force on a vacation to Victoria, British
Columbia about a dozen years ago. I was walking through the First Nations
exhibit at the British Columbia Museum of Natural History, when I spotted a
magnificent buckskin war-shirt on display. I stopped and stared at it in
amazement. The shirt had been made for a man with the upper body

development of an advanced weightlifter, powerlifter, or bodybuilder. Wide
shoulders, thick deltoids, enormous traps, big chest, big lats, thick arms and a
relatively small waist. The man who wore that shirt must have been in
tremendous physical condition!
And what did the First Nations people on Vancouver Island eat before they
encountered European civilization and European foods? They lived primarily
on wild game, fish, seafood, and oolichan oil (derived from a small, smeltlike
fish native to that part of the world), supplemented with bones and wild
plants, seaweed, kelp and wild berries. It was very close to an all-meat diet,
and it certainly worked well for the heavily muscled warrior who spoke to us
so powerfully through the cut and shape of his ancient shirt.
And here’s a slightly more mundane but very interesting fact. In 1905, the
Peabody Museum of Harvard University sent John W. Hastings and
Vilhjalmur Stefansson to Iceland to conduct anthropological research into
the lives of the medieval Icelanders. The men found a medieval graveyard
that was being cut away by the sea, leaving many skulls of long-departed
Icelanders rolling about in the water at high tide. They received permission to
excavate the cemetery, and returned to Harvard with more than eighty skulls,
and many additional bones and loose teeth. And that’s when the real fun
began.
A series of dentists and physical anthropologists studied the collection in
detail, and discovered, to their amazement, that they could find no dental
cavities and no signs of dental caries. The medieval Icelanders (who had no
access to dental care, didn’t use fluoride in their drinking water, and lacked
anything approaching modern toothbrushes, toothpaste or dental floss)
appeared to have been completely immune to dental decay and resulting
cavities.
Stefansson believed that the simple diet of the medieval Icelanders was
responsible for their remarkable dental health. And what constituted that diet?
The medieval Icelanders primarily ate fish, mutton, milk, butter and cheese,
augmented with very small amounts of beef and even smaller amounts of
horse meat. There was virtually nothing else in their diet. Cereal grains had to
be imported, and the few that arrived were probably used for beer rather than
porridge. Bread was almost completely unknown, and the Icelanders ate
virtually no vegetables or vegetable foods of any sort. Of course, they had no
sugar, and no sweets of any sort, which also must have helped their dental
health.

The immense strength and power of Neanderthal man are proof that an allmeat
diet was perfectly suited to his needs. The height, physical proportions
and athleticism of the Buffalo People, the similar attributes of the Masai, and
the impressive muscular development of the First Nations war chief whose
short I saw on Vancouver Island demonstrate the same. Similarly, the dental
health of the medieval Icelanders confirms that their diet of fish, meat, milk,
butter and cheese was exactly what they needed for optimum health.
The foregoing examples – and there are many more – tell us that an all-meat
or close to all-meat diet provides more than adequate nutrition for humans to
build and maintain extremely high levels of strength and health.
And here’s something else to consider. When man changed from a stone-age
diet where he lived primarily on wild game to an agrarian (agricultural or
farming) diet that was high in grains, humans began to shrink. They literally
lost several inches in a few generations. And they developed previously
unknown diseases and medical conditions, including dental cavities, clogged
arteries and heart attacks. The effect of switching from meat to grains as the
dietary mainstay was so dramatic and so pronounced – and so bad – that
agriculture has been called the greatest mistake in the history of the human
race.

Q. I understand that primitive cultures have lived on all-meat diets, but
surely they adapted to such a diet over many centuries. Could a modern
man survive on an all-meat diet?
A. Once again, we can turn to Vilhjalmur Stefansson to answer the question
– which he did three different times in his life. The first occasion occurred in
1906, when Stefansson, then a professor of anthropology, made his first
expedition to explore the Arctic and study the indigenous people who were
still living a stone-age existence in the seemingly inhospitable frozen wastes.
Stefansson immediately proved himself more than a mere academic by
spending the entire winter with an Eskimo tribe wintering at the Mackenzie
River delta in northern Canada. Their diet consisted almost exclusively of fish
and fish broth, and in the spirit of scientific inquiry, Stefansson joined them.
He lived with his hosts in a wooden longhouse, and ate nothing but boiled fish
and fish broth for the entire winter. Although he had always detested fish
when he lived in the civilized world, he soon came to relish his stone-age
meals. Without any fruit or vegetables, and without vitamins, lime or lemon
juice (which other explorers used to prevent scurvy), he enjoyed perfect
health through the entire winter – on a diet consisting of nothing but fish and
fish broth!
Stefansson also enjoyed remarkable physical condition, strength and stamina,
and was able to join his hosts when they went for long hunts or other
journeys. These long treks were no mere walk in the woods. When the
Eskimo travelled, they jogged along as their dogs pulled the heavily loaded
sleds, and maintained a brisk, 4-mile an hour pace over the snow and ice.
They could cover 20 to 30 miles a day at this pace – and Stefansson was able
to keep up with them. That’s not bad for a university professor – and the fact
that Stefansson and the Eskimo were able to perform such a grueling longdistance
run day after day on an all-meat diet makes you question everything
you ever heard about carb loading for endurance athletes!
During the next twelve years, Stefansson spent ten winters and the ensuing
summers living with different Eskimo tribes, following their lifestyles, and
eating their foods exclusively. The diet varied from tribe to tribe and from
season to season, but was always a stone-age diet featuring wild game or fish
as the almost exclusive component of their meals. As he had done during his
first winter in the Arctic, Stefansson followed the Eskimo diet exclusively,
without any European foods, vitamins, lime or lemon juice, and enjoyed great
vigor and excellent all-around health. His unique understanding of Eskimo
customs and ways of eating made it possible for him to explore vast territories

without having to pack large amounts of provisions. His gun and knife were
all he needed.
Nor was Stefansson’s physiology and digestive system in any way unusual
among Americans, Europeans and others who joined him ion his expeditions.
Stefansson taught the men who joined him on his various expeditions to live
off the land, as he did, and to follow the all-meat Eskimo diet rather than
supplement their fish and wild game with European provisions. The men
began by thinking the all-meat diet would be impossible, loathed it for a
period of a few days to a few weeks, and then began to enjoy their meals
enormously. And like Stefansson, they experienced excellent health on their
primitive diet.
Stefansson wrote extensively about his travels, about the Eskimo, and about
the lifestyle of these stone-age hunters. In several of his books, he described
the all-meat Eskimo diet, and explained how he and his fellow explorers had
followed the same diet, with excellent results. Many who read his books
didn’t believe him, and some even accused him of having stretched the truth.
And this was hardly surprising. It was (and is) the accepted view of virtually
all physicians and nutritionists that man requires fruits and vegetables in his
diet, and that their absence leads to scurvy and a host of other serious
diseases. The idea of Stefansson and his men living healthily and happily on
caribou, seal, bear meat and fish for long periods of time seemed utterly
impossible to many. And some believed that even if Stefansson had lived for
long periods of time on an all-meat diet, he undoubtedly had damaged his
health forever.
What was Stefansson to do? If he announced that he felt fine, no one would
believe him. They might even say that his many years on an all-meat diet had
affected his brain, and that he was undoubtedly in bad health and too feebleminded
to realize it. So Stefansson arranged to be put through a complete
physical examination and battery of diagnostic tests by Dr. Clarence W. Lieb
and other prominent physicians in New York City. If he had any health
problems, major or minor, physical or mental, these men would find them.
Instead, they found nothing. Dr. Lieb reported the medical team’s findings in
the July 3, 1926 issue of The Journal of the American Medical Association.
According to the expert physicians, Stefansson was in excellent health.
But this didn’t end the controversy. Some accepted the results. Others did not.
And some speculated that an all-meat diet might somehow work without
adverse effect in the Arctic, but would prove to be impossible if followed in

more temperate climes. Thus, the physical examination had not resolved the
fundamental question: can man survive on an all-meat diet?
Stefansson proposed a more exacting test. He volunteered to follow an allmeat
diet for one full year, living and working in the civilized world the entire
time, and being monitored regularly by a committee of leading scientists and
physicians. The committee was formed, and the experiment was undertaken at
the Russell Sage Institute of Pathology. The test subjects were Stefansson and
Karsten Anderson, who had accompanied Stefansson on one of his Arctic
expeditions.
Before beginning the study, both men followed a standard mixed-food diet,
where they ate meat, bread, cereal, milk, eggs, fruit and vegetables. The
experiment began by giving each man a thorough physical examination and a
wide variety of tests. This established a baseline for their physical condition
on a normal diet. After this, Stefansson and Anderson switched to an all-meat
diet.
Stefansson preferred meals of just one type of meat, such as a large sirloin
steak, a couple of lamb chops with the fat left on them, or a serving of boiled
mutton ribs. He particularly liked boiled meat, so that he could drink the hot
broth with his meal. At a bodyweight of about 155 pounds, eating as much as
he wanted but not forcing himself to eat, he averaged 2,650 calories a day, of
which about 2,100 came from fat and 550 from protein – meaning that he ate
about 138 grams of protein a day. (Note that this is almost exactly 90% of the
1:1 protein to bodyweight ratio that we’ve discussed, so he was pretty close to
what I’ve suggested for you.)
Stefansson and Anderson followed the all-meat diet for one year while
receiving regular examinations and tests from the medical team. When the
experiment started, there was a surge of media fanfare, and many who read
about the experiment in their local papers were sure that the men would
quickly become so ill that the physicians running the study would be forced to
stop it on humanitarian and ethical grounds. But that didn’t happen.
In fact, nothing dramatic happened. Both men were happy and satisfied with
their seemingly monotonous diet, and both remained in good health over the
course of the year. Stefansson had been a little heavy at the start of the
experiment, and was happy when he lost ten pounds of excess weight while
following the so-called Eskimo diet. Karsten had worked in an orange grove
in Florida before the experiment began, and had been eating large amounts of
fresh fruit and vegetables. On that diet, he suffered from frequent, severe head

colds, his hair was thinning, and he was diagnosed with intestinal toxemia (a
condition caused by poorly digested or undigested foods trapped in the
intestine). All of these problems improved markedly during his year on the
all-meat regimen.
The only adverse effect attributable to the all-meat diet occurred at the
beginning of the experiment. In his book, My Life with the Eskimo,
Stefansson had reported that he and his Eskimo hosts had become very ill
when they had been forced to live for several weeks on lean meat with little or
no fat, a condition that is called “rabbit sickness” in the North. They became
better when they were able to add fat to their diet. The physicians in charge of
the Russell Sage study were intrigued by this account, and decided to begin
Stefansson’s all-meat diet with the leanest possible cuts of meat, with all
visible fat removed before serving. With great foreboding, he reluctantly
agreed to go along with the test. He was right to have had his reservations.
The lean meat, low-fat diet quickly gave poor Stefansson a severe case of
diarrhea. The doctors allowed him to start eating fattier cuts of meat and to fry
his steaks in bacon fat, and in two or three days the problem was cured.
Stefansson’s third experience with an all-meat diet began in autumn of 1955,
when he was 76 years old. An account of this, written by his wife, Evelyn
Stefansson, appears in the preface she wrote to the 1958 edition of Dr.
Richard Mackarness’ wonderful little book, Eat Fat and Grow Slim. In her
preface, Mrs. Stefansson recounted how her husband had reverted to a
standard diet after his exploring days had ended, suffered a mild stroke in
1953, and tried repeatedly but unsuccessfully to lose ten stubborn pounds of
excess baggage. These problems weighed on Stefansson. He was becoming,
she reported, unhappy and irritable.
At breakfast one morning Stefansson asked his wife if he could return to the
“stone-age” diet (her term) that he had followed during his time with the
Eskimo. She immediately thought of dozens of reasons why this would be
impossible – but kept her misgivings to herself and began serving him allmeat
meals. To make their food shopping, meal planning and cooking easier,
Mrs. Stefansson also began following the “stone age” diet, and found to her
surprise that she quite enjoyed it.
The Stefanssons both liked mutton, which was unfashionable and so
inexpensive that their total food bill actually went down after switching to the
all-meat diet. They also enjoyed beef (which they typically bought by the hind
quarter because it was cheaper per pound that way), fish, chicken, kidneys
and bone marrow. A typical breakfast consisted of eggs (two for Stefansson

and one for his wife) with butter. A typical dinner featured a rare or medium
sirloin steak and fresh ground coffee. If the steak had enough fat, they took
their coffee black; if not, they took it with cream. Sometimes they enjoyed a
bottle of red wine with their dinner. They had no bread, starchy vegetables or
deserts, but they often enjoyed half a grapefruit at the end of their meals.
On this diet, Stefansson lost seventeen pounds easily, while enjoying his
meals and eating as much as he wanted at breakfast, lunch and dinner. His
weight stabilized at the new, lower number, and he maintained it without
effort. His outlook improved, and he became his former outgoing and
optimistic self. As Mrs. Stefansson memorably noted, by eating mutton he
became a lamb. Mrs. Stefansson also reported that the “stone age” diet
appeared to have helped Stefansson’s arthritis, which had bothered him for
many years. One of his knees was particularly troublesome. It was so stiff that
he had to go up stairs one step at a time, favoring his bad leg. When they went
to the theater, Stefansson always took an aisle seat so he could sit with his leg
extended. His hip and shoulder bothered him at night, and the pain would
wake him if he slept too long on one side. But after switching to the all-meat
diet, Stefansson’s arthritis began to improve. One day he realized that he was
walking up a flight of stairs using both legs equally. To his astonishment, he
could not even remember which knee had given him so much difficulty!
Thus, for the third time in his life, Stefansson followed an all-meat diet, and
once again, found it to be enjoyable, nutritious and healthful. Stefansson’s
experiences with the “stone age” diet have had an enormous impact on many
who have studied and written about diet and nutrition. Many books on low
carbohydrate diets, and virtually all books about the “paleo” diet, reference
his work. The man who prided himself on being able to live off the land in the
Arctic would have been astonished to find how great an effect he has had on
so many others around the world.

Q. Did Stefansson’s work influence bodybuilders and weightlifters?
A. It DID influenced bodybuilders tremendously, and the influence began as
early as the 1950’s (meaning that “paleo” diets for strength athletes have been
around a very long time). The famous West Coast gym owner, Vince
Gironda, was quite familiar with Stefansson’s work. Gironda frequently
referenced Stefansson’s book, Not By Bread Alone, which details his
experiences with all-meat diets while living with the Eskimo, and also
provides a detailed account of the Russell Sage study. (The book was later
republished in an expanded form under the title, The Fat of the Land.)
Gironda used an all-meat diet to develop extreme muscular definition for
bodybuilding contests. His diet was so effective that the bodybuilding judges
of the 1950’s would deduct points from his score because of “excessive”
muscularity and definition!
Gironda’s definition diet became very popular with West Coast
bodybuilders, and many successful bodybuilders followed it in the 1960’s
and 1970’s. They probably would have been surprised to learn that their precontest
definition diet came to them courtesy of an anthropology professor
from New England who learned about it while living in an Eskimo longhouse
at the Mackenzie River delta.

Q. Do bodybuilders and weightlifters live on nothing but protein?
A. Bodybuilders and weightlifters typically consume large amounts of
protein, but they don’t live on a diet of pure protein! As noted above, there are
no naturally occurring foods that are 100% pure protein – nor should there be.
A pure protein diet would make anyone extremely ill. (Remember
Stefansson’s experience when the Russell Sage physicians tested him on a
diet consisting of the leanest possible meat.) A bodybuilder or weightlifter
following an all-meat or meat and egg diet is not following a high protein diet
– he’s following a high fat diet. On such a diet, approximately 75 to 80% of
one’s daily calories come from fat rather than protein.
The confusion arises when people describe low carbohydrate diets as “high
protein” diets, or when someone is following a low carbohydrate diet and tells
people he is following a “high protein” or even an “all protein” diet. The
problem is compounded because many people confuse meat with protein, and
assume that an all-meat diet is the same as an all-protein diet. Thus, if
someone reads that a particular bodybuilding champion is living on a diet of
meat and green salads, he might conclude that the bodybuilder is living on a
diet consisting almost entirely of protein. In fact, protein would make up no
more than 20 or 25% of the bodybuilder’s diet.
This brings us to another interesting point. It has become standard advice for
bodybuilders to eat skinless chicken breasts in order to consume large
amounts of protein with minimal amounts of fat. However, if you eat too
much protein and not enough fat, you begin to develop the “rabbit sickness”
that Stefansson experienced at the beginning of the Russell Sage study. It’s
much better to eat beef and pork, so that you have more fat in your diet. If you
prefer chicken, eat the skin, and eat dark meat along with the chicken breasts
in order to make sure that you are consuming enough fat for optimal health.
In a somewhat related note, many protein supplements are marketed as being
90% or more protein. If you mix the protein supplement with water, you can
live on a diet of almost pure protein – and some who sell the products have
actually urged purchasers to do so. However, a diet of pure protein is not a
natural diet. As noted above, there are no naturally occurring foods that are
pure protein. And as we now know, a diet of pure protein causes illness. If
you choose to use protein supplements, don’t use them as your exclusive food
source, and be careful to consume enough extra fat to avoid the digestive
problems that can be caused by a diet that is too high in protein and too low in
fat.

Q. Is eating meat healthy? Meat has lots of saturated fat and cholesterol…
A. The idea that saturated fat and cholesterol theory is bad for us was a theory
that originated way back in the 1940’s. It was the brainchild of Dr. Ancel
Keys, a professor of physiology at the University of Minnesota. In the 1950’s,
1960’s and 1970’s, many scientists, researchers and physicians strongly
disagreed with Dr. Keys’ saturated fat and cholesterol theory, while others
believed that the evidence on the issue was unresolved and to some degree
conflicting.
A competing theory placed the blame for heart disease and other illnesses on
sugar and other refined carbohydrates (such as bread, pasta and rice), and a
great deal of research, data and clinical observation supported this theory.
Virtually every primitive culture has flourished on a stone-age diet of
unrefined foods, including many cultures that lived on all-meat diets, which
are high in fat. Every primitive culture that switched from its traditional diet
to a European diet high in refined carbohydrates developed “the diseases of
civilization” within about 20 years. This alone would suggest – some would
say, “prove” – that refined carbohydrates are the cause of many modern
diseases.
Dr. Keys’ theory ultimately prevailed and became the orthodox view not
because it was supported by research studies (which have actually disproved
it on multiple occasions), but because of political gamesmanship. In recent
years, much more advanced research tools have come into existence that were
not available when the saturated fat and cholesterol theory of heart disease
was being formulated and debated, and the research using these tools has
proven that Dr. Keys’ theory was wrong.
Similar points apply to any concerns about eating eggs, milk, cheese and
other dairy products because they are high in fat. However, dairy products are
potent allergens, and present digestive problems for many. This is one reason
why most paleo diets exclude them.

Q. Is it possible to follow a vegetarian diet and get enough protein to build
strength and muscle mass?
A. It’s possible for some people – but not everyone – to consume enough
protein to build strength and muscle mass while following a vegetarian diet.
Over the past 25 years, I’ve received reports from many Dinos who switched
from a vegetarian or vegan diet to a diet that included meat and animal foods,
and all of them reported big gains in strength and muscle mass after making
the change. One reader gained ten pounds of muscle in two weeks when he
started eating meat again.
But I also have received a surprising number of reports from hard-training,
vegetarian Dinos over the years. Some have gained as much as 40, 50 or 60
pounds of muscle as a result of their training. There also have been a number
of Iron Game champions who followed vegetarian diets, including Jack
LaLanne, the seemingly ageless athlete who thrilled the world with
extraordinary feats of strength and endurance for so many years, and recently
passed away at the ripe old age of 97. And let’s not forget the great Joe
Rollino, the former boxer and strongman who was going strong at age 104
when he was hit by a car while taking the five-mile walk he enjoyed every
morning.
However, it’s not easy to be a strength athlete while following a vegetarian or
vegan diet. It requires intelligent food choices and sensible menu planning. In
most cases, successful vegetarian trainees have used plenty of milk, cheese,
and eggs to meet their protein needs. And many of them have supplemented
their meat-free diet with high-quality whey protein powders.
A small number of Dinos have been able to build strength and muscle while
following a more restrictive vegan diet, in which they avoid all animal
products, including milk, butter, cheese and eggs. A vegan diet makes it much
more difficult to get adequate protein to support your strength training and
muscle-building workouts, and requires very careful attention to diet and
meals. Vegetarian and vegan diets also tend to be high in carbohydrates, and
as we’ll see later, this can lead to a whole host of health problems, especially
for older Dinos. Finally, it’s difficult to get enough omega-3 fatty acids on a
vegetarian diet, and almost impossible to do so on a vegan diet. That’s not
good, because diets that are low in omega-3 fatty acids tend to be highly
inflammatory.
Another little discussed but potentially enormous problem posed by

vegetarian and vegan diets is the problem of food allergies, food intolerances
and digestive problems. If you’re even mildly allergic or intolerant to milk or
eggs, as many people are, a vegetarian diet that includes eggs and dairy
products will be very difficult for you. In addition, many staples of a
vegetarian or vegan diet, such as beans, peas, legumes, soybeans and grains,
are very hard for many people to digest, and some people are actually allergic
to them. Other people are allergic to peanuts, peanut butter, tree nuts or tree
nut butters. Thus, for some people, a vegetarian or vegan diet is virtually
impossible to follow without severe adverse effects on your health and wellbeing.
I can speak from personal experience, because I’ve tried both vegetarian and
vegan diets, and had a terrible time with them. I was gassy, bloated, suffered
from stomach cramps and diarrhea, and spent most of my time on the lookout
for the nearest bathroom. I tried to “tough it out” to see if things got better,
but they didn’t. I was always hungry, particularly for protein. I had trouble
concentrating at work, and I was tense, anxious and irritable. I finally hit the
point where my strength and bodyweight started to go into free fall, and at
that point I stopped the experiment.
At the time, I thought that I wasn’t getting enough protein, or that my diet was
deficient in B vitamins (or both). That was probably true, but later, while
doing research for this book, I realized that the problem was much more than
that. I had been trying to live on a diet of highly allergenic foods – and I have
a lifetime history of severe allergies. I was making myself sick by eating
foods that triggered and worsened my allergy symptoms, such as whole wheat
and other whole grains, dairy products, beans and soybeans. And, of course,
they were virtually impossible for me to digest and assimilate. When I felt
like I was starving on a vegan diet, it was literally true because I was unable
to digest these highly allergenic foods.
I may be an extreme example of someone who needs to avoid vegetarian or
vegan diets, but I know for a fact that there are other Dinos who have
discovered the same thing. I was actually talking to one of them just a couple
of weeks ago. Like me, he has a history of severe allergies, and like me, he
tried a vegetarian diet and did extremely poorly on it. One day, someone
suggested that he try eliminating milk and milk products from his diet. He
did, and experienced almost immediate improvement. Today, he eats meat
three times a day. He’s carrying 20 or 25 pounds more muscle than he used to
carry, and he’s enormously stronger and healthier.
“Be sure to cover food allergies,” he said. “It’s really important.”

I agree, and we’ll cover the issue in much greater detail later on. For now, I’ll
simply say that if you are going to give vegetarian or vegan diets a try, give
careful consideration to your food choices and take any food allergies or food
intolerances into consideration.

CHAPTER 3:
The Best Sources of High-Quality Protein
Now that you know how much protein you need, the question becomes what
to eat. That’s an important question, so without further ado, let’s get to it!
Q. What are the best protein sources?
A. The best sources of protein depend on a variety of factors, the most
important of which is personal preference and what you find easy to digest
and assimilate. There’s no one best food for everyone. Find protein sources
that you enjoy eating, and that you tolerate well. Don’t force yourself to eat
something that you can’t stand just because you read that it’s nutritious or
because someone you respect and admire eats a lot of it. What works fine for
others may not work at all well for you.
Take liver, for example. It’s a very good source of protein and a variety of
other nutrients. The B-vitamin content is off the charts. When I was younger,
many nutritionists and physical culture writers suggested that you eat liver
two or three times a week – or even every day! It was supposed to be one of
those “super-foods” that could turn the scrawniest of weight-training rookies
into a massive mountain of muscle more or less overnight.
I took the advice to heart once when I was 19 years old. I was working an outof-town
summer job in northern Ohio. I was stone-broke, so I tried to eat as
cheaply as possible and save as much money as I could for college. Any other
kind of meat, even hamburger, was too expensive, so I lived on beef liver the
entire summer. I’ve never been able to look at it since, and I don’t care if it
was the super-food they said it was. The stuff makes me nauseous. You
probably have something that gives you a similar reaction.
So when considering “the best” sources of protein, be sure to focus on what’s
best for you. It doesn’t matter how nutritious something may be – if you don’t
like the taste, don’t enjoy it or can’t stand to eat it, it’s not a good choice for
you. You’ll feel better and do better if you eat things that you enjoy. (But
remember, I’m talking about protein foods. I’m not giving you license to live
on chocolate cake and ice cream because you think they taste good!)

Q. Do some protein foods work better for some people than for others?
A. That’s an excellent question. The answer is an unqualified and resounding
“Yes!” This is a very important point for all of us to remember, and it’s one of
the reasons why it’s impossible to outline a specific “eat this and don’t eat
that” diet for everyone. When it comes to building strength and health, some
people do better on certain foods than on others. It’s that simple. And this is
not a simple matter of preferring one food to another, or liking the taste of
some foods more than others. I’m talking about how foods that you enjoy
eating affect your strength and health.
For me, chicken is such a food. I remember one of my favorite Iron Game
authors, Bradley J. Steiner, describing chicken as a “nutritional goldmine”
(or words to that effect). I read that when I was in my teens, I took Steiner’s
words to heart, and always ate chicken once or twice a week. I continued to
do so into my twenties. But as I did more and more heavy training, and
logged my workouts more carefully than when I was younger, I began to
notice that certain foods seemed to affect my workouts differently. Chicken
was one such food. I realized that I felt stronger, healthier and more alert
when I ate beef than when I ate chicken. I also noticed that when I trained the
day after eating beef for dinner, I almost always had a better workout and
lifted more weight than if I trained the day after having chicken for dinner.
At the time, I thought this was because beef was higher in some particular
nutrient that my body needed, and that may have been true. But there also
may be another reason. At that time, I was buying my food at the local
grocery store, but I was buying a brand of beef that was hormone-free,
steroid-free and antibiotic-free (although it was grain-fed rather than grassfed).
In contrast, the chicken I bought at the grocery store was loaded with
antibiotics and other chemicals. It may not have been the chicken that made
me weaker the next day. It may have been the chemicals in the chicken.
Today, we sometimes buy organic chicken at the local farmer’s market, and I
do pretty well on it. Of course, the organic chicken is chemical-free. This is
additional proof that the problem was the chemicals, not the chicken.
The point is, if you’re following a regular training program, and keeping good
records of your workouts (as you should be), then you can keep track of your
response to different foods. This allows you to quickly identify those that
work for you, and those that don’t. This is extremely valuable information
when it comes to developing a personalized diet and nutrition plan for

optimum strength and health.

Q. How do I know if I’m purchasing healthy, high quality foods?
A. It starts by becoming a smart shopper. When you buy meat, buy only the
freshest cuts. Read the freshness date. Look at the color. Beef should be red,
delicious-looking and tempting. Fresh foods look better, cook better, taste
better and digest better. Remember, it’s not what you eat, it’s what you digest
and assimilate that matters.
Here’s another tip that doesn’t cost a penny but makes a big difference. Make
friends with the people who work at the meat and fish counters where you
shop, and ask them what’s good, what’s fresh and what they’d recommend. If
you like something, tell them, and thank them for their recommendations. It’s
surprising how a little friendliness and courtesy can help improve the quality
of your food purchases.
In that regard, here’s a true story that happened just last week. Trudi has a
friend who is on a first name basis with the guys who work in the produce
department at one of the local grocery stores. It turns out they had more
produce delivered than they could use, and nowhere to store it. Rather than
toss it, they gave it to her. So she went home with ten bags of free, fresh
veggies. Her family couldn’t eat it all, so she gave two bags of veggies to
Trudi. We’ve been enjoying them at lunch and dinner for the past several
days.

Q. What are the benefits of eating grass-fed beef?
A. From a nutritional point of view, there are two primary benefits to eating
grass-fed, grass-finished beef. The first is that grass-fed, grass-finished beef is
higher in omega-3 fatty acids and lower in omega-6 fatty acids than grain-fed
beef. We’ll discuss this issue in greater detail later on, but for now, just
remember that (1) omega-3 fatty acids fight inflammation, and (2) omega-6
fatty acids cause inflammation. Humans evolved on diets high in omega-3
fatty acids and low in omega-6 fatty acids, but modern diets typically provide
far more omega-6 fatty acids than omega-3 fatty acids. That’s not good for
anyone, and it’s particularly not good for someone who’s trying to recover
from a hard session of heavy squats or deadlifts.
The second benefit of eating grass-fed, grass-finished beef is that the animals
typically are raised without growth hormones, anabolic steroids, and regular
doses of antibiotics, and the grass they feed on is usually pesticide free, so the
beef you eat is as close to chemical free as beef can be in our modern world.
For some of us – and I’m one of the people who fall in this category –
chemical free eating may be one of the most important parts of our personal
diet and nutrition plan.
These are important considerations for everyone who eats meat, but they are
particularly important for hard training strength athletes because we tend to
eat much more meat than the average, non-training person. It’s also very
important for those who follow a paleo diet or a low carb diet, because you
typically eat more meat on these diets. If you eat significantly more meat than
the average person, the quality of the meat you eat – and the presence or
absence of hormones, steroids and chemicals in your meat – becomes a much
more important factor for you.

Q. What’s the difference between grass-fed beef and grass-fed, grassfinished
beef?
A. Grass-fed beef is often raised on grass and “finished” on corn or grain to
allow the animal to gain more fat, so the resulting meat will be more heavily
marbled. Most Americans prefer fatty cuts of meat, and grain-fed beef is
much more heavily marbled with fat than is grass-fed beef. Because of this
taste preference, some people don’t enjoy grass-fed beef. For this reason,
many farmers and ranchers choose to finish their animals on corn or grain for
a short period of time before slaughtering them.
The problem with finishing animals on corn or grain is that it affects the
omega-6 and omega-3 ratios in the beef. Even a short period of “finishing”
the animal on corn or grain may be enough to lower the omega-3 levels and
increase the omega-6 levels. That starts to defeat part of the reason for
choosing grass fed beef. In addition, anyone who is allergic to corn or grain
may have problems with grass-fed beef that is corn-finished or grain-finished.
And if you try to avoid GMO foods, as we do, you need to avoid corn and
grain – and that includes corn and grain residues in the meat you consume.
Grass-fed, grass-finished beef is exactly what the name implies. It is beef
from animals that were both raised and finished on grass. This preserves the
favorable omega-3 and omega-6 ratio. Trudi and I always buy beef that is
both grass fed and grass-finished. We feel that we wouldn’t be getting our
money’s worth if we did otherwise.

Q. What if I can’t find or afford grass-fed beef?
A. If you can’t find or afford grass-fed beef, then stick to grain-fed beef. It’s
much healthier to eat beef than to load up on refined carbohydrates. However,
if at all possible, look for beef that is hormone-free and antibiotic-free. Grassfed
beef might be the healthiest possible choice, but making the simple
change to hormone-free and antibiotic-free beef would be an enormous
benefit for you – particularly if you eat a lot of beef.
How much of a benefit? Well, a farm in Kentucky began selling hormonefree,
antibiotic-free beef in Louisville in the mid-1980s. I began eating it
around 1986 or 1987. One of the butchers at the local grocery store
recommended it to me. He was a former weightlifter who had placed third in
the United States Senior National weightlifting championships, and we
sometimes talked lifting when I was buying meat. So when hormone-free,
antibiotic-free beef became available, he made sure I knew about it.
That’s when things began to get interesting. At about the same time that I
switched to hormone-free, antibiotic-free beef, I made the greatest gains of
my entire life. I went from 180 pounds to 225 pounds in bodyweight. My
squat (to parallel, powerlifting style) jumped from a measly 350 pounds to
605 pounds. My bench press climbed from a touch and go with 355 pounds to
a strict competition lift (with a pause at the chest) with 407 pounds, and a
bottom position bench press with a three-inch diameter thick-handled bar with
435 or 440 pounds. (Safety note: if you perform bottom position bench
presses with a thick handled barbell, do them in the power rack, with the pins
set to catch the bar at the bottom in case the bar slips out of your hands. If the
weight is heavy, a spotter might not be able to catch a thick handled bar.)
Coincidence? I don’t think so. I was eating a pound of beef for dinner every
night back then, and switching to hormone-free, antibiotic-free beef meant
that I was no longer consuming the estrogenic chemicals in the conventional
beef. (And yes, if you’re familiar with my other books, that was also the
period of time when I began to do abbreviated workouts, heavy singles and
power rack training – as detailed in Dinosaur Training, Strength, Muscle
and Power, andDinosaur Training Secrets, Vol. 1– but switching to
hormone-free, antibiotic–free beef undoubtedly helped to support the hard
work I was putting in at the gym.)

Q. How is protein content measured in the foods we eat?
A. Protein is measured in grams per serving. It’s a good idea to learn the
protein content of your favorite foods – as well as some foods you don’t eat
right now, but may wish to try. When you study the protein content of
different foods, you’ll note that there’s very little difference in the amount of
protein contained in a four-ounce serving of virtually any type of meat, fowl,
fish or other seafood, so if you purchase something that’s more expensive,
you’re paying for taste (or other factors) rather than protein content.

Q. Is it better to eat raw meat, or at least, to eat rare meat?
A. You should always cook your meat, and you should not eat rare pork,
chicken or other fowl, or wild game. Eating raw meat or under-cooked meat
can expose you to some very nasty food-borne illnesses, including trichinosis
and salmonella. These can make you extremely sick, and it can take months
or possibly years to fully recover from the effects of a severe food-borne
illness.
I’ll give you a real-life example. In February, 2002 I contracted a severe case
of food poisoning. I’m not sure if it was from the strip steak I grilled for
dinner that night or from something else, but it hit me incredibly hard. If
memory serves correctly, I lost something like 17 pounds in less than 24
hours, and ended up in a hospital emergency room, hooked up to a couple of
IV’s for five or six hours.
Afterward, I found that there were several things I could no longer eat or
drink without suffering immediate abdominal pain. It was six months before I
could have a cup of coffee, and I developed a problem with ordinary aspirin
tablets that remains to this day. If I take even one aspirin, I get sick almost
immediately. I’m much more sensitive to certain foods, and I need to be very
careful with what I eat.
That’s what a food-borne illness can do to you. And that’s why I suggest that
you cook your meat. This applies to all meat, but it is particularly important if
you eat pork, poultry or wild game. Any slight loss of enzymes or amino
acids is more than offset by avoiding the risk of a severe illness.
The United States Center for Disease Control (CDC) recommends the
following guidelines for safe cooking when you prepare meat:
a. For whole cuts of meat (excluding poultry and wild game) – Cook to
at least 145 degrees F (63 degrees C) as measured with a food
thermometer placed in the thickest part of the meat, then allow the meat
to rest* for three minutes before carving or consuming.
b. For ground meat (excluding poultry and wild game) – Cook to at least
160 degrees F (71 degrees C) as measured with a food thermometer
placed in the thickest part of the meat. Ground meats do not need a rest*
time.
c. For wild game (whole cuts and ground) – Cook to at least 160 degrees
as measured with a food thermometer placed in the thickest part of the

meat. Include a three minute rest time* for whole cuts of meat before
carving or consuming.
d. For all poultry (whole cuts and ground) – Cook to at least 165 degrees
F (74 degrees C) as measured with a food thermometer placed in the
thickest part of the meat. Include a three minute rest* time for whole
poultry before carving or consuming.
* The USDA defines a “rest time” as “the amount of time the product remains
at the final temperature, after it has been removed from a grill, oven or other
heat source. During the three minutes after meat is removed from the heat
source, its temperature remains constant or continues to rise, which destroys
pathogens.”

Q. What cuts of beef provide the most protein and all-around nutrition?
A. When we think of beef, we tend to think of a thick, grilled, juicy steak. It’s
the strongman’s favorite food, and with good reason. But there are many other
cuts of beef that taste great and supply plenty of high-quality protein and
other nutrients, and they’re a lot less expensive than steak! In fact, they may
be more filling and more satisfying than a steak. Using a variety of different
cuts of beef, some more expensive and some less expensive, keeps your meals
interesting and helps lower the over-all cost of your meat, which allows you
to buy higher quality beef. As I’ve mentioned before, we buy organic, grassfed,
grass-finished beef at our local farmer’s market, but we use a wide
variety of cuts to keep the expense manageable. In any given week, we’ll
have steak, ground beef, brisket, and chuck roast at different meals. One of
the best things you can do for your strength and health (as well as your
pocketbook) is take the time to educate yourself about different cuts of beef
and learn the basics of how to prepare them in simple but tasty recipes. It pays
big dividends.
By the way, beef is not just a good source of protein. It’s also high in B-
vitamins (particularly vitamin B6 and vitamin B12), iron, phosphorus and
zinc. Beef has always been regarded as a real strength and muscle builder, and
the B vitamins – especially vitamin B12 – have always been considered to be
key factors in building strength and muscle. And don’t underestimate the
importance of those minerals. Zinc is extremely important for strength and
muscle building, as well as to help maintain healthy levels of testosterone.
Moreover, Vince Gironda believed that the high phosphorus content in steak
was one of the factors that made it a true strongman’s meal. View your beef as
what it is – a great source of protein and a great source of other important
nutrients. Beef is as important to your diet as squats are to your training.
I also like beef because it is one of the few protein sources that is not a
common source of food allergies. The eight foods responsible for 90% of all
food allergies are milk and dairy products, eggs, fish, shellfish, soy, wheat,
peanuts, and tree nuts. Beef allergies are rare, and in cases where they do
occur, it may be that the true allergy is to the corn, grain, antibiotics,
hormones or other chemicals given to the cattle. Dr. Blake Donaldson
operated a thriving medical practice in New York City for many years, where
he prescribed an all-beef or nearly all-beef diet for patients suffering from
obesity, high blood pressure, cardiovascular problems, diabetes, rheumatoid
arthritis, and allergies, and he achieved thousands of successful outcomes. In
his memoir, Strong Medicine, Donaldson notes that one of the advantages of

his “stone-age” diet was that very few people are allergic to beef.

Q. Do you ever use meat marinades or meat tenderizers?
A. We never use commercial meat marinades because they are usually made
with corn or soybean oil, and because they typically contain sugar or high
fructose corn syrup, yeast, monosodium glutamate (MSG) and lots of
chemicals. Meat tenderizers are typically made with MSG, yeast, soy powder,
and a variety of chemicals. These are potent allergens for many people, and
with my history of severe allergies, I choose to stay far away from them.
We sometimes make our own marinades to help tenderize tougher cuts of
grass-fed beef or wild game, but we’ve found that it’s simpler and easier to
cook the meat in a crock-pot and include one or two cups of red wine in the
liquid. (Use inexpensive cooking wine, not the more expensive wines!) The
wine helps to tenderize the meat, and the alcohol burns away during the
cooking process. Another option is to marinade a tough cut of beef in red
wine for six to twelve hours, then sear the meat, toss it in the crockpot, and
add the same wine to the liquid in the crock-pot.

Q. Is lamb a good source of protein?
A. Lamb is an excellent source of protein, as well as vitamin B12, vitamin
B3, selenium, zinc and phosphorus. Some people prefer the taste of beef, and
some prefer lamb. Trudi and I both prefer beef and pork, and although there
are several excellent sources of locally raised, organic lamb, we almost
always stick to beef and pork.
The most popular cuts of lamb are lamb shoulder (used for stewing), lamb
shank and lamb breast (used for braising), lamb chops (used for roasting and
broiling), rack of lamb (also used for roasting or broiling), and ground lamb
(which can be fried, broiled or sautéed). Small pieces of meat are often used
for lamb kebobs (which are typically grilled or broiled).

Q. Is mutton an acceptable source of protein?
A. Mutton is meat from an older sheep (over one year old). It was one of the
favorite foods of Vilhjalmur and Evelyn Stefansson when they embarked on
their “stone-age” diet in the 1950’s, in part because they were able to
purchase it very inexpensively at their local butcher shop. It’s tougher and has
a stronger flavor than lamb, and requires long, slow cooking. Here in
Louisville it’s often used in barbecue and in Kentucky Burgoo, a thick, meatfilled
stew that is one of Kentucky’s signature dishes.

Q. Is pork a good source of protein?
A. Pork is another excellent source of protein, and also provides plenty of B
vitamins (particularly thiamine, niacin and vitamin B6), as well as
magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, zinc and selenium.
There is considerable difference between prepared pork products such as
bacon, ham, sausage and bratwurst, and simple cuts of meat such as pork
roasts, pork tenderloins and pork chops. The later contain more protein and
other nutrients on a pound for pound basis, and do not have extra sodium
(salt), sugar or corn syrup, flavorings, additives, preservatives, nitrates or
other chemicals. Thus, your food dollars will buy more nutrition and fewer
chemicals or other unwanted ingredients if you purchase natural pork
products rather than prepared products. Nevertheless, bacon and eggs make a
delicious breakfast, and the fat in bacon is very valuable if you are on a lowcarb
diet and are relying on fat as your primary energy source. I often have
bacon and eggs, sausage and eggs, or ham and eggs for breakfast.
In Louisville, at least, organic pork is cheaper than organic beef. We stretch
our food dollars by eating pork roast or pork chops for dinner several times a
week. We buy locally raised, free-pastured pork products from Stan Gentle,
who also raises the grass-fed, grass-finished beef that we enjoy. His sausage
and bacon are minimally processed, and contain no fillers, sugar, corn syrup
or other sweeteners.
Pork chops can be pan-fried, grilled, baked or roasted. Pork roasts and pork
tenderloins can be baked, broiled or cooked in the crock-pot. We like to sear
pork roasts and tenderloins and cook them in the crock-pot, using water or
vegetable broth, and fresh herbs from the garden for seasoning. Fresh
rosemary and fresh marjoram are particularly good with pork.

Q. I’ve heard that chicken is a good source of protein. Is that true?
A. Chicken is an excellent source of protein and other nutrients, including
niacin, vitamin B-6, phosphorus and selenium. But conventionally raised
chicken is full of chemicals, and this can be a problem for many people.
Personally, I don’t eat any chicken unless it is organic.
We enjoy organic chicken from the local farmer’s market once in a while,
particularly in the autumn and winter, but we don’t eat a great deal of it. It is
more expensive than organic beef or pork, and takes more prep and cooking
time. But on the plus side, it’s hard to beat homemade chicken soup when the
weather is cold!
Organic chicken is less fatty than conventional chicken, so be careful not to
overcook it.

Q. Is turkey a good source of protein?
A. Turkey is high in protein, and it’s also a good source of niacin, vitamin B6,
phosphorus and selenium. However, we eat even less turkey than chicken.
Because it’s a bigger bird, a whole turkey takes much more time to prepare,
and we end up with turkey leftovers for a long time. We only buy locally
sourced, free-range turkey, and it’s fairly expensive. Still, an oven-baked
turkey for Thanksgiving Dinner makes a wonderful treat. Even if it’s not
Thanksgiving, we occasionally splurge and buy a turkey breast or turkey legs
if we see them at the farmer’s market.
Organic turkey is very lean, and you need to be careful not to overcook it.

Q. What about duck? Is it as high in protein as chicken and turkey?
A. Duck is a good source of protein, as well as other important nutrients,
including niacin, riboflavin, iron, phosphorus, zinc, copper and selenium.
Duck is higher in fat than chicken or turkey, and if you collect the fat after
cooking the duck, you’ll find you have a top quality, gourmet cooking fat. We
occasionally buy a duck breast at the farmer’s market, in part to serve as a
source of duck fat.

Q. Is bison (buffalo) meat a good source of protein?
A. Bison meat is very nutritious. Bison graze on grass, so their meat is similar
to grass-fed beef. It’s lean and flavorful, high in protein, high in Omega-3
fatty acids, and provides plenty of niacin, vitamin B12, iron, phosphorus, zinc
and selenium.
Bison meat is leaner than beef, and you need to be careful not to overcook it,
or it will dry out. Many people marinade bison meat before cooking it. We do
this sometimes, although, as noted above, we do not use commercial
marinades.

Q. What do you think about wild game? Is it a good source of protein?
A. Any kind of wild game is high in protein and other nutrients, and for those
of you who do your own hunting, you can’t beat the price! Like bison and
grass-fed beef, wild game is very high in omega-3 fatty acids. It’s also – and
this is very important and very beneficial – 100% natural and organic,
meaning that it’s hormone-free, antibiotic-free and chemical-free.
Wild game is very lean, so you need to be careful not to overcook it.
However, wild game may carry trichinosis or other food-borne diseases, so
you should always cook any wild game according to the CDC standards
outlined earlier. Some people prefer to marinade wild game before cooking it.
See my previous comments about tenderizers and marinades.

Q. What do you think about processed meats, deli meats, lunchmeat, hot
dogs, etc.?
A. Processed meats, lunchmeats, deli meats, hot dogs, etc. may seem like allmeat
“high-protein” foods, but they’re really convenience foods, and you
always pay a big price for convenience. The amount of protein and other vital
nutrients in a pound of processed meat will always be far lower than the same
amount of unprocessed raw meat. For example, one pound of chuck roast
trimmed to ¼” fat will give you about 90 grams of protein. In contrast, a onepound
package of beef hotdogs gives you about 50 grams of protein. The best
choices are minimally processed deli meats such as ham, turkey or roast beef,
which can be sliced to order for you, but even in this case, you’ll pay more
than if you buy a ham, turkey or roast and cook it yourself.
In addition, processed meats typically contain fillers, spices, flavorings,
colorings, preservatives, yeast, MSG or other flavor enhancers, and other
additives, as well as sugar or high fructose corn syrup. They also tend to be
high in salt. For these reasons, my advice is to use them sparingly, if at all.
Stefansson noted in many of his books that one could maintain perfect health
on a diet of wild fish and game, but not on a diet of salt pork or canned or
prepared meats. This suggests that you should exercise caution before relying
on hot-dogs, lunch meat and similar products.

Q. Is fish a good protein food for bodybuilders and weightlifters?
A. Fish has plenty of protein, but that’s only the tip of the iceberg in terms of
health benefits. In recent years, nutritionists have discovered the enormous
health benefits of omega-3 fatty acids. The biggest benefit of eating fish is the
Omega-3 fatty acids, not the protein.
Unfortunately, fish raises several potential concerns, as well. The first is
mercury content. Methyl-mercury may cause severe health effects for
humans, particularly women who are pregnant or who may become pregnant,
infants and children. Studies have linked mercury to cognitive and
neurological disorders, including mental retardation in children. The World
Health Organization considers mercury to be one of the top ten chemicals or
groups of chemicals of major public health concern.
Mercury occurs naturally, but it also is present in many types of industrial
pollution. When pollutants containing mercury are dispersed through the air,
they fall into lakes, rivers and other waterways, where the mercury is
transformed into methyl-mercury. Fish absorb the methyl-mercury. Some fish
absorb greater amounts of methyl-mercury than others, due in part to location,
the amount of industrial pollution, and the size and longevity of the fish.
Larger fish at the top of the food chain tend to have higher concentrations of
methyl-mercury because they absorb methyl-mercury from the smaller fish
that they eat.
The World Health Organization and the United States EPA have issued reports
on mercury in seafood. The EPA currently recommends that women who are
pregnant or who may become pregnant not eat shark, swordfish, king
mackerel or tilefish because they contain high levels of mercury. However,
because of the importance of consuming omega-3 fatty acids, the EPA also
recommends that women who are pregnant or may become pregnant eat up to
twelve ounces (two average servings) of fish or shellfish that are lower in
mercury, such as shrimp, canned light tuna, salmon, pollock, or catfish.
Canned albacore tuna (sometimes called “white” tuna) is higher in mercury
than light tuna, so the EPA suggests that the amount of albacore tuna, if any,
be limited to one six-ounce serving per week. The EPA suggests that children
follow a similar pattern in their fish consumption, but eat smaller portions.
The current EPA recommendations apply only to infants, children and women
who are pregnant or who may become pregnant. Nevertheless, men may
choose to use them as a general guide to help reduce mercury consumption.

The National Resource Defense Council has put this information into an online
calculator that tells you if your weekly mercury intake from seafood
exceeds the recommended level. You can find the link at
http://www.nrdc.org/health/effects/mercury/guide.asp.
It’s an interesting tool. A 205 pound man who eats just one medium-size can
of light tuna each day would consume more than double the recommended
safe level for the week, and if he consumed the same amount of canned
albacore tuna, his weekly mercury intake would be more than six times the
recommended safe level for the week.
On the other hand, if the same 205-pound man were to have two large
servings of fresh salmon in a single week (which would provide plenty of
omega-3 fatty acids), his weekly mercury intake would be only 10% of the
estimated safe level for his bodyweight. Similarly, if he ate five medium
servings of sardines over the course of the week, he would get plenty of
healthy omega-3 fatty acids, but his weekly mercury intake would be only
20% of the recommended limit for his bodyweight.
There are other things to consider when eat fish. One is the difference
between farmed fish and wild fish. Farmed fish is raised in confined areas,
and the fish are fed commercially prepared “fishmeal” made from grains such
as corn or soy (which are obviously not their natural foods), or, in some cases,
smaller fish. That leads to a nutritional catch-22.
If the farmed fish are raised on corn or grains, their omega-3 content drops
significantly, and thus, one of the primary health benefits of eating fresh fish
is greatly diminished. If the farmed fish is fed with fishmeal made from
smaller fish, it may end up significantly higher in mercury than wild fish.
In addition, farmed fish are raised in very close quarters, which can lead to
illness or disease, so the fish are typically given antibiotics – and that means
that when you eat them, you are consuming antibiotic residues. I try to avoid
antibiotics in my food, and for this reason alone I don’t eat farmed fish.
But the biggest concern may be polychlorinated biphenyls (PCB’s) in some
types of farmed fish, including farmed salmon. PCB’s are a chemical that
causes cancer in humans. They were banned in the USA in 1976, but because
they are long lasting and persistent, they are still found in the environment.
Researchers have reported extremely high PCB levels in some farmed
salmon. And much of the salmon available today is farmed. Some Pacific
salmon is wild-caught, and some is farmed, but virtually all Atlantic salmon is

farmed, because the wild fisheries have been over-fished to the point of
depletion.
That brings us to the option of wild salmon. It’s relatively low in mercury and
PCB’s, and it’s very high in omega-3 fatty acids. From a nutritional point of
view, it’s a superstar. But humans are rapidly over-fishing wild salmon,
leading to possible depletion of traditional salmon-fishing grounds and
collapse of existing wild salmon industries, which would be a devastating
loss. Similar concerns exist for a number of other wild fish, including shrimp,
Alaskan cod, Atlantic halibut, monkfish, skate, snapper, grouper, Chilean sea
bass, yellow-fin tuna, marlin, orange roughy, swordfish and Ahi tuna.
All of these issues concern us, and cause us to look elsewhere for the majority
of our protein and omega-3 fatty acids. We enjoy wild-caught salmon once or
twice a week, in part because the neighborhood grocery store carries it at a
reasonable price. But we can’t bring ourselves to eat it more often that that. If
we consider eating other fish, we check first by using the Monterey Bay
Aquarium Seafood Watch Report, which provides periodic updates on health
and environmental concerns for seafood. You can find it at
www.seafoodwatch.org.
Before closing this section, I should mention several points for those of you
who want to include more fish in your diet than we do. First, sardines are an
excellent source of protein and omega-3 fatty acids. A 3.5-ounce can of
sardines supplies 23 grams of protein and 1362 mgs of omega-3 fatty acids
(which is more than the minimum daily amount of omega-3 fatty acids
recommended by many nutritionists). They also supply plenty of vitamin D,
vitamin B12, calcium, phosphorus, and selenium. And because sardines are
small, grow fast, and are typically harvested at a young age, they have much
lower levels of mercury or PCB’s than larger, longer-lived fish. They also are
very abundant, and over-fishing is not a concern at the present time.
However, if you purchase canned sardines (or canned tuna, or any kind of
canned fish), look for a brand that is packed in water rather oil. If sardines are
packed in soybean oil, that 3.5-ounce serving still gives you 1362 mgs of
omega-3 fatty acids, but it also gives you almost three times that amount of
omega-6 fatty acids, which cancels out the benefits of the omega-3 fatty
acids. Similar points apply to any other canned fish. Always look for waterpacked
fish. If you can’t find water-packed fish, look for fish packed in olive
oil, which is much healthier than soybean oil.
Also, be aware that many canned foods are packaged in cans that contain a

vinyl lining. The vinyl lining contains a very nasty chemical called bisphenol-
A (BPA), which migrates from the lining of the can into the food in the can.
That means that when you eat the food, you are ingesting BPA – and that’s a
bad thing. In fact, it’s a very bad thing.
It’s bad because BPA disrupts your endocrine system – meaning that it affects
your hormones. It can raise a man’s estrogen levels so high that he starts
growing breasts (“man-boobs”). If BPA can do that, imagine the devastating
effect it would have on your strength training and muscle-building program
(not to mention your sex life). Luckily, some food companies are now using
BPA-free cans, and some have switched to other types of packaging, such as
envelopes. Always insist on BPA-free packaging for seafood or any other
canned goods, and if you can’t find it, then choose something else for dinner.
Also, be aware that fish and shellfish each rank as one of the eight foods
responsible for 90% of all food allergies (meaning that some people may be
allergic to fish, some to shellfish, and some to both). If you have any degree
of sensitivity to fish or shellfish, you need to look for other sources of protein
and omega-3 fatty acids, such as grass-fed, grass-finished beef and eggs from
free-range chickens. Be aware that food allergies can increase in severity over
time, so something that caused no problems or only minor problems at one
point in your life can cause much more severe problems later on.
If you do choose to include fish or other seafood in your diet, there are many
different ways to prepare them, including baking, broiling, pan-frying, and
sautéing. Get a good book of seafood recipes, and you’ll be off to the races!
But avoid deep-frying your fish. Deep-frying is a very unhealthy way of
cooking.

CHAPTER 4:
Eggs, Milk and Other Dairy Products
Eggs, milk and other dairy products have always been popular sources of
protein for bodybuilders, weightlifters, powerlifters and other trainees. They
are good sources of protein, but raise issues for those who are allergic to them
or have problems digesting milk or other dairy products. Let’s cover these
issues in detail.
Q. Are eggs a good source of protein – or are they too high in fat and
cholesterol?
A. We’ll cover the cholesterol issue in more detail later on (in vol. 3), but if
you’ve been paying attention, you know that I include eggs in my own diet,
so you can guess where I come down on the cholesterol issue. And because
eggs are a quintessential breakfast food, I’ll note that the cholesterol theory is
great for business – if you’re in the cereal business. For the rest of us, it’s not
so good, especially when we load up on refined carbohydrates to replace the
fat in our diet. Refined carbohydrates are the true killers in the modern diet.
Eggs are an excellent source of protein and other nutrients, including plentiful
amounts of riboflavin, vitamin B12, phosphorus and selenium. They are very
high in the essential amino acids, and some nutritionists consider them to be
the highest quality of all protein foods. Eggs also provide omega-3 fatty acids,
particularly if they are organic eggs from free-range, scratch-in-the-dirt
chickens. There’s a growing body of research confirming that eggs from true
free-range chickens are higher in a variety of nutrients, and may provide twice
the omega-3 fatty acids of conventional eggs from caged hens. The amount
varies from one flock to another based on the type of chickens, the fertility of
the pastures where the chickens are kept, and whether their diet is
supplemented with flax seed. Mother Earth News has some interesting
articles on this issue. You can find them at the “Chicken and Egg Page” at
www.motherearthnews.com.
The protein content depends on the size of the egg, which ranges from small
to jumbo depending on their weight. Small eggs give you a little under 5
grams of protein, medium eggs give you 5.5 grams of protein, large eggs give
you a slightly over six grams of protein, extra-large eggs give you 7 grams of
protein and jumbo eggs give you 8 grams of protein.
Eggs are relatively inexpensive, even if you purchase eggs from free-range,

scratch in the dirt chickens. At the local farmer’s market, we pay $4.50 for
one dozen jumbo eggs from free-range, scratch in the dirt birds. Many of the
eggs are jumbo-plus, and in every dozen, two or three have double yolks. In
addition to a healthy amount of omega-3 fatty acids, we’re getting about eight
grams of high-quality protein per egg, so a dozen eggs gives us 96 grams of
protein for $4.50. In contrast, a pound of grass-fed, grass-finished ground beef
(which provides the same amount of protein) costs $6.00, and a one-pound,
grass-fed, grass-finished rib-eye steak (which also supplies the same amount
of protein) runs $15.95. Prices for super-market eggs and super-market meat
would be lower, but the eggs will be cheaper than the meat. That means that
the carnivores out there can save money by using eggs as a primary protein
source in one meal each day, or by having two or three eggs with four ounces
of meat at a meal instead of eating a larger portion of meat.
Eggs have many other favorable points. They store well, and are fast and easy
to cook. You can serve them poached, hard-boiled, soft-boiled, fried,
scrambled, in an omelet, in a quiche or frittata, in stir-fries, as Scotch eggs, or
in egg-drop soup made with homemade vegetable, beef or chicken broth.
Quiches, frittatas and omelets can be the main course at lunch or dinner, or at
breakfast. Eggs are also great served poached or fried over a salad, taking the
place of salad dressing. If you replace a salad dressing made with soybean oil
– which is very high in omega-6 fatty acids – with a poached or fried egg that
is high in omega-3 fatty acids, you’ve done your body a big favor.
As noted before, so many Iron Game authors have recommended using raw
eggs in protein shakes that it’s apparently accepted as “the thing to do.” It’s
not. If you eat raw eggs, you run the risk of contracting salmonella or other
food-borne illnesses. There are plenty of other things to put in your protein
shakes, so why take the chance of a serious illness?
One downside of eating eggs is that they are one of the eight most common
food allergens. In that regard, it’s important to remember that eating large
amounts of any single food day after day may be enough to cause some
people to develop an allergy or intolerance to that food. This is particularly
true if you have food allergies or food intolerances to other foods, or if you
have chemical allergies or other allergies (e.g., if you’re allergic to mold, dust,
ragweed, pollen, etc.). So you might want to consider eating eggs some days,
but not others, and you shouldn’t go overboard on them just because they are
a good and relatively inexpensive source of protein. You also should only
have them once a day if at all possible. Vince Gironda famously urged
bodybuilders to eat “an egg an hour” to maintain “positive nitrogen balance,”
and some people have reported great results by doing this. But for some of us,

that would be playing with fire. And remember, if you go overboard on eggs
and develop an allergy to them, you’ve eliminated an excellent and
inexpensive source of protein from your diet, perhaps forever.

Q. I’ve heard that you need to drink lots of milk every day to build strength
and muscle mass. Is that true?
A. That’s not at all true, and it ignores the fact that some people cannot digest
milk or are allergic to it – or cannot stand the taste of it. It also ignores the
fact that many people lose the ability to digest milk in their early or midtwenties.
Thus, they might have done very well drinking milk when they were
in their teens, but after that, they can’t go near the stuff.
The foregoing statements are undeniably true, but they fly in the face of
conventional bodybuilding wisdom. Indeed, they are so contrary to
conventional bodybuilding advice that some of you are probably jumping up
and down in rage as you read these words. So let me go into the topic in a
little more detail – and please bear with me while I do so.
Beginning back as the 1930’s, milk achieved near-mythic status among
weightlifters and bodybuilders because it was one half of the standard weightgaining
formula of the era – the other being the 20-rep breathing squat. The
mantra “squats and milk” has been the rallying cry of strength and bulk
seekers ever since. I just did a quick on-line search for “squats and milk” and
got 1,320,000 hits. People have been recommending squats and milk for over
80 years, and they’ll probably be recommending squats and milk for next
80,000 years. It’s become a part of the DNA of the strength training and
muscle-building world.
But let me offer a counter-opinion – and it comes from John Grimek, the man
who may have been the greatest all-natural bodybuilder of all time. Contrary
to popular opinion, John Grimek did not build the greatest physique of the era
on squats and milk. Rather, he followed an all-around program during his
formative years, and refined his physique with many years of weightlifting
workouts at the York Barbell Club gym. He never drank large amounts of
milk. He didn’t believe in it.
In his articles and his long-running question and answer column in Strength
and Health, Grimek urged trainees not to try to gain weight by drinking
gallons and gallons of milk. He believed that doing so would upset your
digestive system, particularly if you were a high-strung, nervous, human
hairpin sort of a beginner. Grimek believed that such fellows needed to slow
down, calm down and not burn up all of their energy by worrying about
things. Worry, he believed, was the thin man’s number one problem. In this
regard, Grimek bluntly noted the unpleasant truth that you tend to worry more

when your belly is bloated and gassy and uncomfortable, and you have to
keep checking to make sure there’s a nearby bathroom, just in case you need
to make a run for it.
Grimek suggested limiting your intake of milk to something along the lines of
a pint a day (two 8-oz. glasses), and only if you enjoyed the taste of it. If not,
he suggested that you stick to something else, and get your protein the same
way Grimek did – by eating meat. If more people had listened to Grimek, the
“squats and milk” formula might just as easily have been the “squats and
meat” formula.
But that’s not how the legend developed, and generation after generation of
weight trainers quickly learned that the rule: “If you want to get big and
strong, you need to drink lots and lots of milk.” Even when protein powders
came into the picture in the early 1950’s, everyone mixed them with milk.
The companies that sold the protein powder were happy to have you do that,
because they could advertise the number of grams of protein contained in a
serving of their protein powder mixed in a glass of milk – with the milk
adding a hefty eight grams of protein to the total. And if they were selling one
of those “Quick Gain Weight” protein powders, where they wanted to
advertise massive amounts of protein and an enormous number of calories,
they gave you the total for 8-ounces of protein powder mixed in a quart of
whole milk (1800 calories and 115 grams of protein for Hoffman’s Quick
Gain Weight High Proteen). (Note: that’s not a typo – it was spelled “High
Proteen” – which probably should have been a clue.)
To really impress us, they also gave the total when you mixed 8-ounces of
protein powder with two quarts of whole milk (2466 calories and 150 grams
of protein). Wow, get ready to gain a pound of muscle a day! (At least, that’s
what we thought would happen.)
In the 1960’s and 1970’s, gym owner Vince Gironda pushed back against the
whole “squats and milk” idea. He believed that squats ruined a man’s
physique by widening the hips, and also believed that milk was too high in
carbohydrates and caused a bodybuilder to become “smooth.” He advocated
“sissy-squats” and squats on the hack-slide in place of regular squats, and was
so adamant on this point that he didn’t even have a set of squat stands in his
gym. Of course, Gironda was first, last and always a bodybuilder, and was
primarily interested in helping his trainees develop an “aesthetic” physique,
with wide shoulders, a small waist and narrow hips. Thus, it should come as
no surprise that weightlifters and powerlifters rarely followed his advice, and
many (perhaps most) bodybuilders and gym owners either ignored or

challenged his ideas. That’s a shame, because it caused many to ignore the
possibility that massive amounts of milk might not be the ideal diet for a
budding muscleman – or to consider that for some of us, it’s better to avoid
milk completely.
But Gironda was not entirely anti-dairy. He was a big fan of Blair’s Milk and
Egg protein powder, which he mixed with cream or half and half. This gave
you a high-protein, high-fat, low-carb protein shake, which Gironda believed
would help a bodybuilder build muscle without any unwanted body-fat. It
also mixed well and tasted okay, which was in sharp contrast to the cesspool
taste of the virtually unmixable soy-based protein powders of the period. That
made following this part of Gironda’s advice relatively painless.
Today, the followers of the “squats and milk” formula no longer do battle with
Gironda. They have new and equally formidable opponents: the advocates of
the popular “paleo” diets. Advocates of the paleo diets advise us to avoid
cow’s milk and other dairy products because stone-age man did not use them,
our bodies and digestive systems have not evolved to handle them, and they
harm our bodies by introducing foreign proteins that lead to severe digestive
problems, such as leaky gut syndrome. In other words, many or most people
are allergic to cow’s milk or at least intolerant of it to some degree – and since
primitive humans did not require cow’s milk in their diet, the same is
necessarily true of modern man.
To which the “squats and milk” devotees throw up their hands in disgust,
gnash their teeth and look for a nice rock to throw. The question of whether to
drink or avoid milk has deeply divided the Iron Game and the health and
fitness community in general. And so, at the risk of offending everyone, let
me offer a couple of observations.
First, milk and dairy products are a good and relatively inexpensive source of
protein. An eight-ounce glass of milk provides eight grams of protein, and
many trainees (particularly those in their teens or early twenties) find it easy
to drink 4 – 8 glasses of milk per day. Milk and dairy products also provide
other important nutrients, including vitamin D, riboflavin, vitamin B12,
calcium, phosphorus, potassium, and selenium. Note the excellent dental
health of Stefansson’s medieval Icelanders, who lived on a diet of fish, meat,
milk, cheese and butter.
Moreover, it’s true that many trainees over the years have consumed a quart
or more of milk every day during the period when they were making the best
gains of their lives in terms of strength and muscle – although, to be fair, if

they were teenage beginners or newbies in their twenties, you would expect
them to make great gains on almost any diet that included plenty of protein
and calories, as long as they were training the right way.
Finally, if you’re committed to following a vegetarian diet, you’ll find it’s
difficult to build strength and add muscle mass without including milk and
dairy products in your daily diet. That’s not to say that it would be impossible,
but it would be very difficult. All of these factors favor the inclusion of milk
and dairy products in your diet.
On the other hand, many people simply cannot digest milk. A high percentage
of adults over the age of 25 are lactose intolerant. Lactose intolerance has a
genetic component, and is much more common among those of Native
American, Asian, African, or South American descent than among those of
European descent. If you are lactose intolerant, you need to avoid milk or
drink milk with added lactate.
I’m of European descent, but I’m also one of the many who are lactose
intolerant. At about age 24 or 25, I found it impossible to digest milk without
suffering serious discomfort. At the same time, I lost my taste for it, so I
never tried to use lactate or any similar product to help me digest milk. Today,
it’s been over 30 years since I drank my last glass of milk, and I don’t miss it
at all.
There’s also the question of the high carbohydrate content in milk. An eightounce
glass of whole or reduced fat (2% fat) milk gives you 13 grams of
carbohydrates from milk sugar. If you drink a quart of milk a day, you’re
getting 32 grams of protein and 52 grams of carbohydrates – meaning that
you’re consuming 208 calories of milk sugar, or the equivalent of 13
teaspoons of sugar. If you drink two quarts of milk a day, as many Iron
Gamers do, you’re getting a total of 416 calories from milk sugar, which is
the equivalent of 26 teaspoons of sugar. That’s just about as much sugar as
you’d consume if you drank three 12-ounce soft drinks. So when Vince
Gironda said that drinking milk causes bodybuilders to become “smooth,” he
had a valid point. (Dr. Walter L. Voegtlin made the same point in The Stone-
Age Diet, and suggested that you avoid milk because it contained so much
milk sugar.)
Finally, regardless of whether you agree with the paleo diet advocates and
their concern that milk harms the body through the introduction of foreign
proteins that trigger inflammatory responses and other adverse reactions, it’s
undeniable that milk is one of the eight most allergic foods. There are many

people who are allergic to milk, and that can be a very serious problem. In his
book, Not All in the Mind, Dr. Richard Mackarness describes how milk
allergies caused one young woman to develop severe ulcerative colitis. Her
regular physicians recommended that she undergo a re-sectioning of her
intestines – meaning that she would be using a colostomy bag for the rest of
her life. Mackarness was asked to give a second opinion. He suggested trying
a diet that eliminated milk and other common allergens. It cured the problem,
and the surgery was not needed.
Dr. Blake Donaldson shares several similar stories in Strong Medicine. He
also tells the story of a young boy with very severe allergies, eczema, dental
caries and gum disease. When Donaldson first saw him, the boy’s face was
covered with scabs and sores so thick that he could not open his eyes.
Donaldson placed the boy on an all-meat diet, and ordered him not to drink
milk ever again. The lad improved almost immediately. Years later, when he
was in high school, he received an award for having the best dental health of
all the boys in school. Assuming that milk was responsible, the principal
asked him to tell the rest of the students how many glasses of milk he drank
each day. “None,” he replied. “My doctor won’t let me go near the stuff!”
In this regard, it bears repeating that consuming large amounts of any single
food for a long period of time may cause you to develop an allergy to that
food. Weightlifters and bodybuilders have been told for many years to
consume massive amounts of milk in order to gain strength and muscle, and
because their training is so important to them, they almost always go ahead
and do it. Virtually every trainee of my generation did this at one time or
another. But was it the smartest and healthiest thing to do? I don’t think so.
My bottom line is this. If you choose to drink milk, and you can digest it,
follow Grimek’s advice. Drink modest amounts. Don’t try to gain weight by
drinking large amounts of milk. Even if you have no other problems with it,
the milk sugar will cause you to gain too much body-fat. It’s better to gain
muscle at a slower rate, while keeping the fat gains to a minimum. Grimek
gained about 60 pounds of muscle – and no visible fat – during his first three
years of training. That’s a lot of muscle, but it’s an average gain of 20 pounds
a year, which is a much slower rate of gaining than many have reported while
using the squats and milk program. But their gains were “bulk” gains – not
muscle gains – and none of them ever looked anything like Grimek. He
proved that slow and steady is best.
If you cannot digest milk, don’t like the taste, are allergic to it, or are
concerned about the risk of foreign proteins causing an inflammatory

response, then don’t use it, and don’t lose any sleep over the fact that you
don’t drink it. As I mentioned, I haven’t had any milk for more than 30 years,
and I made the best gains of my life after I stopped drinking it. Despite milk’s
almost mythical reputation, it is not a necessary part of the human diet – or a
necessary part of a Dinosaur’s diet. You can do fine without it.

Q. Are there any good alternatives to cow’s milk for those of us who are
allergic to it or are following vegan diets?
A. If you cannot tolerate cow’s milk (or if you have a child who cannot do
so), you may want to look into various milk alternatives. Your options include
soy milk, rice milk, almond milk, coconut milk and hemp seed milk. Many of
these products are made for vegetarians and vegans. These products are not
actually milk, of course; rather, they are made by mixing water and crushed
soybeans, rice, almonds, hemp seeds, or coconut, as the case may be. But
although they are marketed as a milk substitute, and milk is generally
considered to be a protein food, most of these products are not very high in
protein.
Of the currently available milk alternatives, soy milk is highest in protein. An
eight-ounce serving of soy milk contains eight grams of protein – the same as
an eight-ounce glass of cow’s milk. It also contains significant amounts of
vitamin D, riboflavin, vitamin B12, folate, calcium, iron, magnesium and
phosphorus. That’s impressive, but I would never use soy milk (or any other
soy product), and I would not recommend that you do so. Soy is one of the
eight foods most commonly linked to food allergies, and even if you’re not
allergic to it, it’s very hard for many people to digest. (Just ask anyone who
has ever used soy-based protein powder.)
If that weren’t enough, there’s an ongoing debate about whether eating
soybean foods lowers your testosterone levels – and anything that might
lower your testosterone levels should never be part of the strength and health
lifestyle.
There’s also the issue of hexane contamination. Hexane is a neurotoxin used
in manufacturing processes. Many companies that sell soy products use
hexane to process the soybeans, which may leave hexane residues in the
soybeans. That alone is a good reason to skip soy beans and soy bean foods.
Other milk substitutes are very low in protein, and many are high in carbs,
making them little more than sugar water. An eight-ounce glass of rice milk
contains 23 grams of carbohydrate (the equivalent of just under six teaspoons
of sugar), and only one gram of protein. Almond milk contains only one gram
of protein in an eight-ounce serving. (But on the plus side, it has only one
gram of carbohydrates). Coconut milk is even lower in protein. An eightounce
serving has zero grams of protein. Hemp seed milk is a little higher in
protein. It delivers three grams of protein in an eight-ounce glass. However,

some brands are sweetened, and can deliver up to 20 grams of carbohydrate
per eight-pounce glass.
Finally, goat’s milk is slowly gaining in popularity. It contains nine grams of
protein in an eight-ounce glass, compared to eight grams of protein for an
eight-ounce glass of cow’s milk, and it has slightly more calcium than cow’s
milk. Some people believe that it is less allergenic and easier to digest than
cow’s milk. I’ve never tried it, so I can’t speak to the taste or tell you how my
body handles it. If you’re trying to find a cow’s milk alternative for infant or
child, goat’s milk might be a viable option.

Q. Are cheese, cottage cheese and yogurt good sources of protein?
A. Cheese, cottage cheese and yogurt are all good sources of protein and
calcium. Different types of cheese vary slightly in protein content, ranging
from 6 grams of protein for a one-ounce serving of Mozzarella, to 7.5 grams
for a one-ounce serving of Swiss. Cheddar, Colby, Edam, Gouda, Muenster,
Monterey and Provolone all have 7 grams of protein in a one-ounce serving.
They also supply a reasonable amount of omega-3 fatty acids. For these
reasons, cheese is a staple of many vegetarian diets and menu plans.
Cheese contains very little carbohydrate, because the lactose (i.e., milk sugar)
is removed during the cheese-making process. For this reason, many people
who cannot drink milk because they are lactose intolerant are able to eat
cheese. However, many processed cheeses (such as processed American
cheese) include milk solids as an added ingredient, and the milk solids contain
milk sugar. Therefore, processed cheeses contain milk sugar, and may be
difficult to digest for those who are lactose intolerant. Processed cheeses also
contain artificial colors, flavorings, preservatives, and other chemicals, and
for this reason alone I would urge you to avoid them.
Some people who cannot tolerate cow’s milk or cheese made from cow’s milk
will find that goat cheese works well for them.
Of course, most paleo diets are both milk free and cheese free. So before
deciding to include cheese in your daily diet, you need to consider the paleo
advocate’s concern that our bodies did not evolve to digest milk, cheese and
other dairy products, and we’re much better off if we avoid them. Your
decision on this issue may ultimately boil down to a simple experiment.
Eliminate all dairy foods from your diet for four to six weeks, and see how
you feel.
On a somewhat related note, it’s important to remember that cheese contains
mold, and can be a problem for anyone with a yeast allergy or a history of
Candida. The two exceptions are Mozzarella and cream cheese.

Q. One of my friends drinks something called kefir, and swears by it. Is
kefir a good substitute for milk and other dairy products?
A. Kefir originated in the Caucasus Mountains, spread throughout many parts
of Europe, and is becoming a popular item among many health-conscious and
fitness-minded individuals throughout the world. Of course, it helps any food
to hail from the Caucasus Mountains, as there are persistent reports (which
some label as myth, legend or marketing) that the hardy people living in those
rugged mountains are among the healthiest on the planet and live very long
and active lives.
But what is kefir? It’s a slightly sour, fermented milk drink made by
inoculating the milk with kefir “grains” (which are not true grains, and serve
as a starter to get the fermentation process going). It can be made with cow’s
milk, goat’s milk or sheep’s milk. The resulting product is similar to yogurt,
but not as thick. It has the consistency of a smoothie. Kefir is 99% lactatefree,
and many believe that it contains beneficial probiotic organisms that
promote “gut health” and strengthen your digestive system.
Like yogurt, Kefir comes in plain and flavored varieties. The protein content
will vary from one manufacturer to another, but for plain kefir, an eight-ounce
glass will give you about 12 grams of protein and the same number of carb
grams. For flavored kefir, the protein content is about 11 grams per eightounce
glass, but the carb count may be as high as 20 grams.
Kefir’s probiotic benefits may prove to be over-stated, but as with so many
other things in life, the best way to reach a conclusion on the issue is to try it
and see. But I’d suggest that you stick to plain, unflavored kefir, and do any
desired flavoring with fresh fruit of your choice.

CHAPTER FIVE:
Plant-Based Protein Sources
I rely on meat and eggs to provide all of my protein. If you can afford meat
and eggs, and you’re not allergic or intolerant to them, they are your best
sources of protein. But I recognize that some readers follow vegetarian or
vegan diets, and some readers are interested in plant-based protein sources
because they are less expensive than meat and eggs. And some people prefer
a diet that has greater variety than mine, or have children or other family
members who may prefer a wider variety of foods. So I’ll cover plant-based
protein sources in this chapter. The carnivores reading the book can either
skim or skip these pages.

Q. Are beans, lentils and legumes a good source of protein?
A. Beans, lentils and legumes contain more protein than almost any other
vegetables. They’re a traditional staple of many cultures. They’re a mainstay
of many vegetarian and vegan diets. They’re inexpensive, they store well, and
they’re a great survival food to keep on hand if the lights go out. You can use
them to create some truly delicious meals, including black beans and rice,
baked beans, beans and ham, Tuscan white bean soup, lentil soups and stews,
and split pea soup with ham.
And yet, beans, lentils and legumes have generated one of the fiercest of
modern nutritional debates. It started when some of the early proponents of
the paleo diet, such as Ray Audette in Neanderthin, objected to beans, lentils
and legumes because they are an agricultural food, stone-age man didn’t eat
them and you need to “process” beans by cooking them for a long period of
time before you can eat them. (The only exception is fresh green peas, which
you can shell and eat from the pod.)
Others, such as Robb Wolf, the author of The Paleo Solution, noted that
beans, lentils and legumes contain lectins and phytates, which your body
treats as foreign proteins (invaders), thereby triggering an immune system
response to attack them. Unfortunately, the response also attacks your own
cells. In essence, you begin to destroy the lining of your intestines. This
causes “leaky gut” system, where undigested particles of food travel through
the intestine and into other parts of the body. It can cause very serious health
problems.
In response, those in the bean, lentil and legume camp urge us to soak our
beans in water before cooking them. The soaking, they say, will remove the
majority of the lectins and phytates.
That’s where things stand, and now it’s time to get back to get back to the
kitchen and decide whether beans, lentils and legumes are on or off the menu.
In our house, the answer is – both! Yes, we are a house divided when it comes
to the issue of beans, lentils and legumes.
I find beans to be almost impossible to digest. During the time that I
experimented with vegetarian and vegan diets, I was absolutely miserable. It
didn’t matter whether we soaked the beans, and it didn’t matter how long we
cooked them. I simply could not digest them. Lentils and peas were a little bit
easier to handle, but still not very much fun, no matter how good a bowl of

lentil or split-pea soup may have tasted. I tried using digestive aids and
digestive enzymes, but none of them provided any relief. So today, I consider
beans, lentils and legumes to be something that may work for others, but I
know that they don’t work for me.
Trudi is different. Her parents are from Holland, and Trudi grew up eating
plenty of her mom’s traditional Dutch split-pea soup. (Not surprisingly, it’s a
favorite meal of our children, as well.) Trudi also loves black beans, and
sometimes she craves them so much that she tells me the steak or roast for
dinner is all mine – she’s having black beans! And she doesn’t seem to have
any difficulty in digesting beans, lentils or legumes. They all seem to work
fine for her.
So my bottom line is this. Rather than getting bogged down in the debate,
keep things simple and use your common sense. If beans, lentils and legumes
don’t agree with you, don’t eat them. Don’t even try to eat them. The odds are
good that the situation will not improve over time. (It certainly didn’t in my
case. If anything, it got worse.)
However, if you suffer from any kind of autoimmune disease, you probably
should heed the concerns of the paleo proponents and avoid beans, lentils and
legumes completely. In this regard, note that a one-cup serving of black beans
contains only 15 grams of protein, and you’d be hard pressed to eat more than
a cup of beans at one sitting. So if you have any concerns about including
beans in your diet, note that you’re not missing that much protein by
excluding them.
You also need to remember that beans are high in carbs. A one-cup serving
(cooked weight) of black beans contains 15 grams of protein and 41 grams of
carbohydrates. As far as the carbs go, that’s the equivalent of 10.25 teaspoons
of sugar. If you eat black beans and rice, or use the beans in corn tortillas or
similar products, the carbohydrate content increases significantly. So if you’re
watching your carbs, you need to be very careful with beans, lentils and
legumes – especially if you combine them with rice or any other grain.
On the other hand, if you can tolerate them, and you enjoy them, then it’s
probably okay to include them in your diet, at least on an occasional basis.
But be sure to soak them before cooking them! And if you choose to use
canned beans, look for a supplier that uses BPA-free packaging. As we
discussed in connection with canned fish, BPA can cause very serious
problems by disrupting your endocrine and hormonal systems.

Q. I’ve always heard that soybeans were one of the best sources of protein.
Have you heard that? Do you agree?
A. I’ve heard and read that many times, and I absolutely disagree with it.
Soybeans are a type of bean, but they require a section of their own, because
(1) they are widely regarded as an extremely healthy food (or even a “super
food”), (2) soy products have been heavily promoted by manufacturers of
protein supplements and germ oils for many years, (3) soy products are
heavily promoted to vegetarians and vegans, (4) soy is an ingredient in so
many processed foods, and (5) soy is very difficult to digest and very
allergenic.
It’s amazing to see how the lowly soybean, which traditionally served as
animal fodder in North America, became the darling of the health food
industry and so many of those who are trying to build bigger muscles, gain
more strength, and enjoy life-long good health. Part of this was a matter of
good timing. Weight training and bodybuilding experienced a huge rise in
popularity in the United States after World War Two, which helped fuel the
meteoric rise of the previously unknown protein supplement business. Soy
powder made inexpensive protein supplements, and before you knew it, the
muscle magazines began running endless articles and advertisements
extolling the nutritional virtues of the once humble soybean.
My very first issue of Strength and Health featured a recipe for homemade
soybean stew (flavored with – can you believe it – MSG!). The only thing that
stopped me from making the magnificent muscle mash was that I couldn’t
find any fresh soybeans. I actually worried that I wouldn’t be able to build
strength and muscle without eating my soybean stew, and I probably wasn’t
the only one who felt that way. We all read the articles, we all believed that
soybeans were a miracle food, and we all bought the soy-based protein
powder, protein tablets, and the mysterious blends of wheat germ, rice germ
and soy germ oil.
Meanwhile, the so-called “counter-culture” movement came into being, and
many of its members quickly embraced vegetarian diets (usually for ethical,
moral or religious reasons, but sometimes for health reasons). The soybean
became a symbol of the rebellion against “the Man.” Many in the counterculture
embraced Asian religions and traditions, and they enjoyed their
soybeans all the more because they were a traditional food in many Asian
countries. They might have been less happy about it if they had known that
industrialist Henry Ford was one of the first in North America to promote

commercial uses for the soybean. Those in the counter-culture did not view
Henry Ford as a hero.
At the same time, Dr. Ancel Keyes was pushing his cholesterol theory of
heart attacks, and the idea that we should eat less meat and eggs, and replace
the butter and lard in our diets with vegetable oils and margarine. Soybeans
were both a meat substitute and a cheap source of vegetable oil (which could
be used in margarine), and before you knew it, the food companies got on the
bandwagon and there was a huge push to market “heart-healthy” soybeans,
soybean foods and soybean oil. Today, virtually all processed foods in the
United States are made with soybean oil, soybean powder, lecithin and other
soybean derivatives. It’s possibly the greatest rags to riches story in the
history of vegetables. Henry Ford would have been proud.
That brings me to a couple of important issues. First, I’m a strong believer in
purchasing or growing fresh, natural, whole foods – unprocessed foods – and
preparing your meals from scratch rather than buying pre-packaged processed
foods. That’s the only way to avoid all of the artificial flavors, colors,
seasonings, MSG, preservatives and other chemicals that are so common in
processed foods. This applies with equal force to those who eat meat and to
those who follow vegetarian or vegan diets. One of the primary benefits of a
vegetarian or vegan diet is that you avoid many chemicals, pesticides and
hormones by eating “lower on the food chain.” So if you follow a vegetarian
or vegan diet and include lots of processed foods – even if they are labeled as
“vegetarian and vegan” processed foods – you’re defeating the whole
purpose of your meat-free diet, at least from a health and fitness perspective.
Second, all of the points related to beans, lentils and legumes also relate to
soybeans. Go back and review that section, consider how much benefit you’re
going to get from including soybeans or soybean-based foods in your diet,
and weigh that against the downside, including the risk of digestive problems
or much more serious health issues triggered by lectins and phytates in the
soybeans. I think soybeans clearly lose in that risk-benefit analysis.
Third, there’s an open and very troubling question about the effect of
soybeans on the endocrine system of those who eat them. Soybeans contain a
form of plant estrogen, and can be used to make synthetic estrogen (HRT) for
post-menopausal women. This has led to research to try to determine the
effect of eating soybeans as opposed to HRT, which shows you just how much
estrogen soybeans contain. And that leads to an obvious question: do
soybeans raise estrogen levels and lower testosterone levels? That’s a very
important concern for anyone who might decide to include soybeans and soy-

based foods in his or her diet. If eating soybeans elevates your estrogen levels
and reduces your testosterone levels, you’ll find it difficult or impossible to
do any sort of serious strength training – and if you do find the energy and the
fortitude to train, you won’t gain very much in the way of strength and
muscle. And it won’t do much for your sex life, either. Fifty shades of
“nothing much happening” is no fun.
Fourth, there’s the allergy issue. Soybeans are one of the eight most common
causes of food allergies, and the widespread use of GMO soybeans may be
worsening the problem. That’s something to consider, particularly if you
combine multiple sources of soy, such as veggie burgers for lunch, a tofu stirfry
for dinner and several glasses of a soy-based protein supplement
throughout the day. And in that regard, if you stuffed yourself with large
amounts of soy-based protein powder when you were younger, as many of us
did, you may have triggered a soy allergy or intolerance many years ago.
Fifth, there’s the undeniable fact that many of us have great difficulty
digesting and assimilating soybeans and soybean products. As I’ve noted
before, anything that makes you gassy and bloated is going to be bad for your
training. That’s a simple fact of life. So it follows that one of the ways to
improve your training, and thus, increase your strength and muscle mass, is to
avoid foods that are difficult to digest.
Finally, many companies process soybeans with a chemical called hexane,
which is a neurotoxin. Your brain cells are important. Avoiding anything that
may have hexane residues is a good idea.
My bottom line is this. Skip the soybeans and skip any foods that contain
soybeans, soybean powder or soybean oil. If you are a carnivore, you can get
all the protein you need from meat and fish. If you are a vegetarian, you can
get your protein from milk, cheese and eggs. Even if you are a vegan, you are
better off skipping the soybeans and relying on other, unprocessed vegetables,
as well as whole grains, for your protein needs.

Q. Are peanuts and peanut butter a good source of protein?
A. A one-ounce serving of raw or oil-roasted peanuts has about seven grams
of protein. Two tablespoons of peanut butter (chunky or smooth) contains
about eight grams of protein. So let’s all load up on plenty of peanuts and
peanut butter, right? Well, maybe not. Unfortunately, there’s more to the story.
Most of us grew up on peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I know I did. And
as soon as I started reading the muscle magazines, I learned that I was smart
to be eating so much peanut butter. According to the magazines, peanut butter
was one of the very best foods for strength and muscle building. According to
an article in one of the magazines, a medical doctor lived on nothing but
peanuts and apples for two years, and was in excellent health the entire time!
Duly noted. I’d keep on eating those peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
I also learned that peanut butter was supposed to help you gain weight. I
remember reading a passage in Bob Hoffman’s book, How to Gain Weight,
in which he mentioned that when he was a young man, he would eat a big
lunch, buy a pound of peanuts and a pound of chocolate-covered peanut butter
candies on the way back to work, eat both as an afternoon snack, and be
hungry again by dinner-time. That convinced me to eat plenty of Hoffman’s
High Proteen bars, which were made with peanut butter, and which were one
of the few high-protein products that actually tasted good. I also made plenty
of “high protein fudge” by mixing equal portions of Hoffman’s Quick Gain
Weight High-Proteen, honey and peanut butter, and letting the mud-like
mixture harden in the refrigerator. After it was hard, I would cut it into pieces
about the size of a chocolate brownie. I look back at that today and shake my
head in disbelief. But I was following the standard advice of the day.
There was a period when un-hydrogenated peanut butter was a bit of a craze.
You could grind your own peanut butter at the local health food store, and I
remember doing that for a while. The problem with the un-hydrogenated
peanut butter was that the peanut oil rose to the top of the jar, so you had half
an inch or more of thick, brownish-yellow oil on top of the peanut butter. You
had to mix it back into the peanut butter with a fork. It was a good reminder
of just how much naturally occurring fat there is in so-called “protein” foods.
But you don’t see as many children eating peanuts or peanut butter today.
That’s because there are so many children (and adults) with peanut allergies.
Peanuts are one of the eight foods responsible for 90% of all food allergies. If
you have children, they might well be allergic to peanuts, and if they are not,

the odds are good that at least one of their classmates at school has a peanut
allergy. And even people who are not allergic to peanuts or peanut butter may
be somewhat intolerant of them. I’m one of them. I don’t experience an
immediate adverse reaction if I eat peanuts or peanut butter – or a food
cooked in peanut oil – but I feel it an hour or two later. As I’ve grown older,
the problem has grown worse, as food allergies or intolerances tend to do.
Today I avoid peanuts, peanut butter and peanut oil completely.
And there’s another issue – and it’s a biggie. Peanuts are a legume rather than
an actual nut, so all the concerns we’ve covered about lectins and phytates in
beans, lentils and legumes apply with equal force to peanuts and peanut
butter. In other words, peanuts and peanut butter may cause leaky gut
syndrome and related health problems.
Finally, there’s the issue of aflatoxin, which I don’t remember reading about
when I was learning how to whip up that High-Proteen fudge. Aflatoxin is an
ugly black fungus that can grow on certain crops, including corn and peanuts.
If aflatoxin-contaminated corn is fed to dairy cattle, the cattle may produce
aflatoxin-contaminated milk. This in turn can lead to aflatoxin-contaminated
non-fat dried milk, cheese or yogurt. That’s a very serious concern, because
aflatoxin can cause severe and possibly fatal reactions in human beings. In
2003, an outbreak of aflatoxin-related illness killed 120 or more people in
Kenya. Lower levels of aflatoxin have been associated with liver cancer in
laboratory animals, and aflatoxin B1 has been classified as a known human
carcinogen.
The risk of aflatoxin contamination has led some to suggest that we avoid
peanuts and peanut butter entirely. Others believe it is acceptable to consume
moderate amounts of peanuts and peanut butter purchased from national
brands that are subject to government testing programs. If you purchase
peanuts in bulk, you should store them in a dry location, and you should
throw away any nuts that are small, shriveled or otherwise appear blighted.
In assessing the aflatoxin issue, you should consider both your current use of
peanuts and peanut butter, and your use of these products (or other possible
aflatoxin-contaminated products, such as corn or corn tortillas) over the
course of your lifetime. If you ate a lot of peanuts and peanut butter when you
were younger, you may be better off dropping them now to avoid any possible
issues related to the gradual build-up of aflatoxin in your body over the years.
This is particularly true for anyone who purchased peanuts in bulk from those
big barrels at the back of the local health food store, and ground them up into
peanut butter without ever thinking to examine them first and throw away the

bad ones. And it certainly applies to anyone who has ever tried to make
peanuts or peanut butter a regular part of a weight-gaining program or used
them as a major source of protein or calories. That probably includes Bob
Hoffman, with his pound of peanuts and pound of chocolate peanut candies
for an afternoon snack, and it definitely includes the physician who lived “in
perfect health” on apples and peanuts for two years.

Q. Are other nuts and nut butters a good source of protein?
A. Tree nuts are another common source of protein for many strength and
health seekers. They’re one of the few foods that are approved by low-carb
diet fans, those on paleo diets, vegetarians, vegans and Iron Game authors
outlining fast weight-gain diets. That’s some pretty unusual and wide-ranging
support for any food. And most people also agree that nuts and nut butters are
delicious! In addition, many gluten-free recipes call for nut-flour in place of
wheat flour. In short, it seems as if everyone is nuts about nuts. Unfortunately,
that doesn’t make them a perfect food, although they’re probably fine in small
or modest amounts for most readers.
Tree nuts and tree nut butters are subject to the same concerns that we
discussed in connection with peanuts and peanut butter. The first problem is
that many people are allergic to one or more types of tree nuts, which are
another of the eight foods responsible for 90% of all food allergies. And some
people who are not allergic to tree nuts are nevertheless intolerant of them to
at least some degree. (Raising my hand as I type this – which makes typing
difficult.)
In this regard, be aware that if you make drastic changes in your diet – for
example, by trying a vegetarian or vegan diet, adopting a paleo diet, or testing
a gluten-free diet, you may begin to eat far more nuts than ever before. This is
particularly true if you begin drinking almond milk or using nut flours to
make pancakes or gluten-free baked goods. If you have an undetected nut
allergy or are even slightly intolerant to nuts, adding a large amount of them
to your diet is going to create all kinds of problems for you.
This is something to consider carefully, particularly if you are switching to a
particular diet because of other food allergies, food intolerances or immune
system disorders. Anyone who is allergic or intolerant to one particular food
has a greater chance of being allergic or intolerant to other foods. For
example, if you are trying a gluten-free diet because you are allergic to gluten,
there is a heightened chance that you may be allergic or intolerant to other
allergenic foods – such as the nut flours that are so often used in gluten-free
cooking or baking. Similarly, if you are allergic to milk, and replace it with
almond milk, be very aware of potential nut allergy issues.
Also, always remember that age is a factor in food allergies and food
intolerances. Just because you could eat something when you were younger
does not mean that you can eat it safely at a later age. In my own case, I used

to be fine with tree nuts – and then I found that sometimes they disagreed
with me – and eventually I realized that every time I ate them they caused
problems for me. Now I avoid them.
Tree nuts and nut butters also carry a risk of aflatoxin, so don’t make them
your primary source of protein or calories. If you buy nuts in bulk, store them
in a dry place, and always toss any that are unusually small or shriveled.
Source any nut butter you buy from a person or company you trust, or make it
yourself.
If you do decide to include nuts in your diet, stick to raw nuts rather than
roasted nuts. Most nuts are roasted in soy-oil, and soy-oil is one of the least
healthy of oils.

THE WRAP-UP
That ends Book One of our four-volume series. Books Two to Four in the
series will be available very soon. We’ll keep you updated on them via my
daily emails at www.brookskubik.com (be sure to sign up for them), and the
Dinosaur Training Blog at http://www.dinosaurtraining.blogspot.com/. In
addition, you should receive an email notification from Amazon when the
next book in the series is ready.
In the meantime, you now have a comprehensive guide to protein
requirements for strength training, muscle building and optimal health. I hope
you’ve enjoyed it, and I hope that it helps you make the coming year the best
ever for strength and health.
Yours in strength,
Brooks Kubik

WHAT READERS ARE SAYING ABOUT THIS BOOK
“The book is huge and full of information. As always, the quality of your work
is just awesome.”
Ian Duckett
“Knife, Fork, Muscle is something else. I doubt there is another book like it
anywhere. It is chock full of practical, usable information that really cuts to
the chase. I know I will be going over it again, and again. You really hit a
home run on this one. Thank You!”
Carl Windle
“I’m about halfway through Knife, Fork, Muscle. I’m really intrigued by your
findings thus far and it is making me re-think my own dietary habits, which is
far more than any other diet/nutrition book has ever been able to do.
Nothing I’ve read before offers the level of analysis and explanation that
you’re providing (while still being easily understandable), which is a credit to
your research and the effort you invested into writing the book (and it really
shows).
Most books I’ve seen on nutrition are either too shallow because the author
only half understands what they are talking about or doesn’t want to confuse
the audience with technicalities, or it gets too bound up in technicalities and
becomes very challenging to follow (or spends so much time going over
things on a microscopic level that it ends up becoming unusable).
Bottom line: this is a real winner of a book!”
Kevin Dillon
“I just received my copy of Knife, Fork, Muscle today – it looks great!”
Kevin Solomon
“Really liking Knife, Fork, Muscle. I’ll note that since the summer I have
been following similar dietary principles to what you’ve discussed in the text
(though not as good as your diet), and I’m looking better and feeling stronger
at my current 194 lbs. bodyweight than I ever did at my 215 lbs. bodyweight.

Now to see if I can get back to 215 lbs. of pure muscle!”
Bobby Rich
“Got Knife, Fork, Muscle yesterday – have not had a chance to start it yet but
had a quick skim and it looks great.”
Anthony Finnegan
“Within the first few pages of Knife, Fork, Muscle I was well aware that I was
reading the best researched and best written book on nutrition for anyone
involved in any aspect of the Iron Game. As with all of your books, it is
engaging and difficult to put down.”
Peter Yates
“Just to let you know, Knife, Fork, Muscle is great. Thanks for all you do.”
Scott Sipes
“Just wanted to drop you a quick note and let you know that Knife, Fork,
Muscle arrived today. It looks great, and every page I flip to has something of
interest. I can’t wait to dedicate more time to read it from cover to cover. It
looks like just the motivation I need to tighten up the quality of my meals.”
Leeann Adkins
“Just got Knife, Fork, Muscle in the mail. You have a gift for keeping people
motivated. Keep up the good work. I truly appreciate it.”
Tom Klonowski
“I started reading Knife, Fork, Muscle last night and I can see how much time
you have spent on it. I can’t wait to get going with your ideas. Thank you.”
Rob Burbridge.
“I received Knife, Fork, Muscle today. Very impressive – I can’t put it down!
Great work!”
Barry Muller

“With your physical culture books and your nutrition book (Knife, Fork,
Muscle), I now have the complete package needed for successful training and
the ability to make gains well into old age, when only the Dinos are still able
to lift and lift heavy.”
Tim Anderson
“Good stuff, Brooks.”
Scott Silva
“Congratulations on Knife, Fork, Muscle. This truly is a groundbreaking
book, down-to- earth and HONEST!”
Dave Jarvis

FURTHER READING
If you’re a fan of sane, sensible strength training, Dinosaur Training workouts
and old-school training methods, here are some great resources for further
reading.
Other Books and Training Courses by Brooks Kubik
I’ve written a number of books and courses, which are available in hard-copy
format at my website, www.brookskubik.com. Go on over and check them
out – and sign up for my daily email tips. If you enjoyed this course, you’ll
enjoy the daily email tips.
I post my daily email tips on The Dinosaur training Blog at
http://www.dinosaurtraining.blogspot.com/. If you prefer reading the Blog
to receiving emails, that’s a great way to keep up with everything that’s going
on at Dinosaur Headquarters – and a great way to be sure you don’t miss any
of my training tips.
We currently have two courses available on Kindle as well as in hard-copy
format. We’ll be adding other Kindle books over the course of the coming
year, including some brand new books and courses, and some from our
existing catalog of hard-copy books and courses. Be watching for them.
If you’d like a shipping quote on one or more hard-copy books, shoot me an
email at info@brookskubik.com.
If you’d like me to autograph a hard-copy book or course for you, please ask
for an autograph in the “Special Instructions” section of the on-line order
form. (And let me know how to personalize the message – for example,
whether to sign it to “Jim” or “James.”) There’s no charge for an autograph –
it’s an honor to be asked for one.
Strength Training Instruction
Dinosaur Training: Lost Secrets of Strength and Development
The book that started the Dinosaur Revolution – an international bestseller
since 1996 – and the book they call “the Bible of Strength Training.”
Emphasizes the all-important mental aspects of strength training and muscle
building. Must reading for all serious trainees.

Dinosaur Training Secrets, Vol. 1: Exercises, Workouts and Training
Programs
Volume 1 in a series of training courses giving you a detailed overview of
effective training for maximum gains in minimum time. Available in your
choice of hard-copy from my website or e-book at Amazon’s Kindle
bookstore. The Kindle edition made the Top 10 list in its category in less than
three weeks. More courses in the series will be coming throughout the year.
Gray Hair and Black Iron: Secrets of Successful Strength Training for
Older Lifters
One of my most popular books, Gray Hair and Black Iron addresses the
unique needs of older trainees. If you want to continue to train into your 40’s,
50’s 60’s, 70’s and beyond, you need this book. A must read for all older
trainees – and for anyone who trains or coaches them, or who plans on being
an older trainee someday. Contains over 50 workouts specifically designed for
older trainees.
Strength, Muscle and Power
Over 30 of my most popular articles from different strength training
magazines, covering a wide variety of training topics. I revised, updated and
expanded the articles, and I introduce each of them with a short preface
placing the article in its proper perspective. Informative, motivating, and
inspiring.
Chalk and Sweat: Dinosaur Training Workouts for Beginners,
Intermediates and Advanced Trainees
Fifty Dinosaur Training workouts for beginners, intermediates, and advanced
trainees, as well as advanced trainees seeking to build maximum strength and
muscle mass.
Dinosaur Bodyweight Training
Collects the best of old-school bodyweight training, and repackages it into
high-powered, Dinosaur-style workouts for a great combination of strength
training, muscle building and conditioning. Illustrated with numerous photos.
Features over 50 different workouts.

Dinosaur Dumbbell Training
Detailed instruction on the best of the old-school dumbbell exercises.
Featuring numerous photos, and over 50 Dinosaur Dumbbell workouts.
The Dinosaur Training Military Press and Shoulder Power Course
The course you hold in your hands (or on your device). Originally published
in hard-copy format, and released on Kindle in 2015.
Dinosaur Arm Training
A unique arm specialization course with three progressively more difficult
workouts to build a perfect blend of size, shape and strength into your arms.
Each workout doubles as an arm specialization program and a total body
workout. Contains numerous photos of old school champions.
History’s Strongest Men and How They Trained, Vol. 1, Doug Hepburn
A detailed course covering the life and lifting of Canada’s Doug Hepburn, one
of the most inspiring athletes of all time, and one of the strongest men who
ever lived. Includes 10 different workouts based on Doug Hepburn’s actual
training programs. Illustrated with rare photographs of Doug Hepburn.
Volume no. 1 in a continuing series of courses covering old-school
champions.
History’s Strongest Men and How They Trained, Vol. 2, John Grimek
The life, lifting and training secrets of John Grimek, the legendary Monarch
of Muscledom. Extensively researched, with many unique insights into John
Grimek’s own training – and his advice to others. Learn the training secrets of
the man that many believe to be the greatest all-natural bodybuilder of all
time.
The Dinosaur Files Quarterly
A unique quarterly journal devoted to Dinosaur Training, garage gorillas,
cellar dwellers, Iron game history, lifting heavy stuff, mental toughness, and
everything else that Dinos love. Featuring original articles by Brooks Kubik
and articles from Dinosaurs around the world.
Iron Game History and Biography

Black Iron: The John Davis Story
A BIG book – almost 500 total pages – that covers the career of weightlifting
champion John Davis, a six-time World Champion and two-time Olympic
Gold Medal winner. At one time, John Davis was the strongest man in the
world and the greatest weightlifter in the world – but today, he is almost
forgotten. A remarkable story of a remarkable man. Includes previously
unpublished photographs, and John Davis’ actual training program – as shared
with me by his training partner from the early 1940’s.
Legacy of Iron Novels
I’ve written five novels covering weightlifting and bodybuilding in the United
States in the late 1930’s and early 1940’s. The novels contain a unique mix of
Iron Game history, training advice, and candid insights into the lives of our
greatest champions. They are fast-paced, action-packed, and fun – and they’re
the closest thing there is to a Time Machine that can take you right back to the
Golden Age of Muscle and Might.
There are currently five novels in the Legacy of Iron series, with more to
come. Please let me know if you’d like to see them available on Kindle:
1. Legacy of Iron
2. Clouds of War
3. The 1000 Pound Total
4. York Goes to War!
5. Barbells in the Pacific
Bill Hinbern’s Strength Training and Muscle Building Books and
Courses
My good friend, Bill Hinbern, has the largest stock of strength-related
publications available in the world! Titles you never knew existed. Many not
advertised anywhere. New and out-of-print books, courses, rare collector’s
items, etc. Information on functional strength, strongmen, bodybuilding,
powerlifting, feats of strength, biographies, muscle control, nutrition,
specialization, muscular bulk, definition,m etc.
You’ll find classic instruction by all the recognized world authorities: Otto
Arco, Paul Anderson, Edward Aston, Mark Berry, Alan Calvert, Anthony
Ditillo, Hermann Goerner, John Grimek, George Hackenschmidt, Thomas

Inch, John Jesse, George F. Jowett, Ed Jubinville, Charles MacMahon.
Maxick, Reg Park, Harry Paschall, Bob Peoples, William Pullum, Peary
Rader, Michael J. Salvati, Arthur Saxon, David P. Willoughby, etc.
Hailed by Dinosaurs, cellar dwellers, garage gorillas and back yard lifters as
the number one single source for the highest quality, result producing physical
training information available today! So, don’t delay – head on over and
check out everything Bill Hinbern has to offer:
www.superstrengthtraining.com
John Wood’s Strength Training and Muscle Building Books and Courses
www.functionalhandstrength.com
www.oldtimestrongman.com
www.trapbartraining.com

DEDICATION
To all who are seeking – or who have found – strength and health through
sensible exercise, diet and nutrition.
As always, to Trudi.
COPYRIGHT
Copyright © 2015 by Brooks D. Kubik and Brooks Kubik Enterprises, Inc.
All rights reserved. This book may not be copied, transmitted or reproduced
in whole or in part without the express written consent of Brooks D. Kubik
and Brooks Kubik Enterprises, Inc.
DISCLAIMER
This book is for educational purposes. The author is not a physician, and this
book is not and should not be construed as medical advice or as a substitute
for medical advice. Always consult your personal physician before
implementing major dietary changes, or before beginning any type of exercise
program, and always follow your physician’s advice. In no way should this
book be used to replace the advice from your personal physician.
The above comments apply to all persons. If you are over the age of 35,
significantly overweight or have any medical condition or history of disease
or illness, it is especially important for you to consult with your personal
physician concerning any issues related to diet, nutrition, or exercise.
Neither the author, publisher nor copyright holder will assume any
responsibility for any accident, injury, illness, loss, damage or other adverse
effect that may arise, directly or in directly, as a result of the information
contained in this book.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Brooks Kubik is a five-time national bench press champion who is known to
weight training and weightlifting enthusiasts around the world as the author of
Dinosaur Training: Lost Secrets of Strength and Development, an
international best seller that has been called “the bible of strength training.”
He also has authored Strength, Muscle and Power, a book that teaches how to
develop exactly what it says in the title; Gray Hair and Black Iron, the
world’s first book about serious training for older lifters; Dinosaur
Bodyweight Training, Dinosaur Dumbbell Training, and Chalk and Sweat:
Dinosaur Training Workouts for Beginners, Intermediates, and Advanced
Lifters. He also has written Knife, Fork, Muscle, a book that covers sensible
diet and nutrition for life-long strength and health.
In January 2015 Brooks released Dinosaur Training Secrets, Vol. 1, Exercises,
Workouts and Training Programs. This is the first in a series of courses that
will be released in 2015. The course is available in your choice of hard-copy
or e-book format at Amazon’s Kindle bookstore. The e-book format has been
very popular with readers around the world, and the book broke into
Amazon’s Top 10 list in its category in less than three weeks.
In addition to writing books and training courses, Brooks also publishes The
Dinosaur Files, a quarterly journal covering strength training, muscle
building, weight training, physical culture, diet and nutrition, and Iron Game
history.
In addition to his “how to do it” books, Brooks has written a series of novels
covering the legendary champions of the York Barbell Club, and weightlifting
and bodybuilding in the United States in the 1930’s and 1940’s. To date, the
series includes five novels: Legacy of Iron; Legacy of Iron 2: Clouds of War;
Legacy of Iron 3: The 1,000 Pound Total; Legacy of Iron 4: York Goes to
War!: and Legacy of Iron 5: Barbells in the Pacific.
Brooks also has written Black Iron: The John Davis Story, a biography of
weightlifting champion John Davis, a two-time Olympic gold medal winner
and six-time World champion, who was quite literally the strongest man in the
world during his championship years – and who today is almost forgotten,
even by his countrymen.
Brooks lives in Louisville, Kentucky with his wife, Trudi. At close to 60-

years old, he still trains hard and heavy on Olympic weightlifting in his
garage gym. When he’s not working on new Dinosaur Training projects, or
hitting the iron out in the garage, he likes to squeeze in some work on his
backyard vegetable garden. Be sure to visit Brooks’ website at
www.brookskubik.com and sign up for his daily email messages, training
tips, and updates on new books and other projects.