to a minimum, you have to make changes gradually.
Calorie Purge vs. Activity Surge
As far as our preferences go, Jonathan uses only one or two
calorie cuts during our entire ripping phase (about 12 weeks).
He prefers to gradually ramp up his cardio work. He has an
exercise bike in his living room, and he’s pretty diligent about
doing it daily as our target date for our final photo shoot
approaches. He begins by riding his exercise bike about twice
a week in April and increases his time and frequency fro m
there. When the shoot is about a month away, he will be riding
his bike twice a day for 30-minute stints. New re s e a rc h ,
h o w e v e r, shows that walking a treadmill burns more calories
than an exercise bike because walking is a weight-bearing
activity—you have to move your bodyweight as opposed to
sitting on your duff and pedaling. That research has Jonathan
considering outdoor walking or treadmill walking along with
e x e rcise-bike work to speed up his fat bur ning. (Bonus:
Walking also helps improve calf development, as discussed in
The Ultimate Mass Workoute-book.)
Steve, on the other hand, has a faster metabolism—he has a
l e a n e r, ectomorphic stru c t u re—so he likes to rely more on
calorie decreases. For him, cardio tends to burn muscle tissue.
He uses four or five calorie cuts throughout his 12-week ripping
phase, and he usually doesn’t start cardio until mid May—and
even then it’s only two or three times a week. At 45 years old,
h o w e v e r, he’s realizing that burning off the last bit of fat is
getting harder and hard e r. The older you get, the slower your
metabolism becomes, so that may mean more cardio for Steve
if he wants to get into X-treme Lean shape on schedule. He will
continue to use gradual calorie reductions as well. There are
examples of how he does that on pages 30 and 31.
Notice that most of Steve’s calorie cuts usually come from
carbs or slight reductions in overall portions of a meal. For
example, at breakfast he will drink a half glass of orange juice
instead of a full glass, and at night he will reduce his wine