Optimum Anabolics Muscle building program is written by Jeff Anderson “The Muscle Nerd”, a well known author of other bodybuilding books. He claims to always been genetically a hardgainer, who struggled to pack on muscle mass. Jeff Anderson believes not only strongly in the role of genetics in muscle building, but that you must force your bodies resistance against gaining muscle. Unlike other authors, Jeff doesn’t claim muscle building comes easy, but instead you have to work smart to fool your bodies elaborate system to gain muscle.

This is how Jeff Anderson (Muscle Nerd) looks now:

Program Overview

The premise of Jeff Anderson program is forcing the body how to resist its normal tendency to not gain muscle. The main book The Optimum Anabolics Guide is 120 pages long. Jeff uses what he coins “8 Anabolic factors”, that someone must use simultaneously for maximum muscle building. Some of the factors include; how to cycle your diet and workouts, excercise selection and excercise frequency.

The most important Anabolic factor is what Jeff calls Hyper-Adaptive Cycling. Jeff believes that the reason people plateau is really because the body overadapts as a defense mechanism. He uses the theory of people re-bounding from weight loss to gain even more fat back than before, after they get off the diet. He then applies this principle for muscle building instead of fat loss. He will show you exactly how to trick the body into wanting to gain muscle after you have plateaued “Overadapted”.

The workout routines are 5 days a week for about an hour each. He goes into very good detail and its not like other bodybuilding programs, that just simply change your workout routine to get through a plateau. You will have to read the book to fully understand how it works. Jeff also includes a thick 110 page workout routine workbook, with 24 weeks of routines you can follow. This is one of the largest workout books I have ever seen given in a program. There are some other valuable bonuses too, including one month to his online university where you can watch videos and online consultations.

Conclusion

I highly recommend this program, at it’s current price of $39.95. Jeff Anderson has a unique sound system, that could help you finally get past plateaus and avoid them for good. What I like about Jeff Anderson, is that he isn’t simply regurgitating the same old stuff from other bodybuilding authors. You can tell he researched things and developed his own system. It’s not a bunch of pseduo science either, it makes perfect sense and he backs it up with supporting science. Jeff Anderson personally guarantees you will be satisfied, that he gives a full money back 12 week guarantee, supported by clickbank.com. Jeff Anderson’s program is one of the cheaper muscle building programs, but the unique system and content in his book alone is worth the price, not counting all the workout book and the extra program bonuses he gives you.

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Combat the Fat is a fat loss program developed by Jeff Anderson (A.K.A The “Muscle Nerd”) at Combatthefat.com . The premise of his program is that he is an Ex-Soldier and “Master Fitness Trainer”, who had access to classified research studies on fat loss. These studies helped the military help people of all ages and fitness levels get into shape the fastest way possible. Jeff Anderson says he isn’t allowed to give all that information out, but he is allowed to develop his own program on those principles he learned in the military. Jeff has a photo that looks like him in the military, so it sounds plausible.

Jeff Anderson claims to be a natural genetic skinny hardgainer when he was young. At the age of 40, he started to gain weight and with a busy schedule, he never did anything about it. At the age of 40, he went from flabby to a pretty good physique in 12 weeks.

Jeff Anderson before & After pictures

These are his before and after pictures he took, after supposedly 12 weeks of his program.

Combat The Fat Program Overview

The Combat the Fat book is over 160 pages. It’s longer than most books and it is an extremely easy read. Jeff Anderson has a unique style that makes it easy for someone to comprehend. The program covers 8 CFT factors to help you learn how to lose fat. Jeff Anderson includes many facts and information, I have not heard anywhere else, but he he backs it up with supporting science.

His workout routine is unfortunately all centered around body weight excercises. Those OK for a beginner, but once you lose your fat you are going to want to build up a solid muscle base to look better. This can only be done with gradual increases in heavy weight to prevent muscle building plateaus. You can’t increase weights with bodyweight excercises, so they only build a small amount of muscle.

Jeff’s diet is different from other programs I’ve come across because he doesn’t believe in counting calories or following a strict diet regimen. He even believes eating more calories can help you you burn more fat! He does have some merit to that, it’s called calorie cycling in some other bodybuilding programs. Eating a lot of calories once in a while, helps your body from thinking it’s “starving” and holding onto fat. Unfortunately, it only works if you do it once in a while and not all the time or you won’t lose fat.

Conclusion

Combat The Fat is a unique program for a good price of $39 currently. If you want something that is simple to understand, good price for a lot of stuff, let’s you workout at home without weights, doesn’t require calorie counting, and you don’t want to be a bodybuilder, then this program could be for you. The lack of heavy lifting excercises and a sound calorie counting plan, makes this program not ideal for people who want to become more serious in their muscle building or fat loss efforts, so I don’t recommend this program to bodybuilders. This is more for the average joe (or jane) who just wants to drop fat in a quick effective way. If you want to build muscle then I recommend Jeff Anderson’s other program OptimumAnabolics.com. Combat the Fat has a 8 week guarantee backed by Clickbank.com, so there is no risk to buying it.

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The thyroid is one of the most important regulators of your metabolism. It has a role in not only how many calories and fat you burn, but over regulating the rate of protein synthesis. When your thyroid slows down during dieting, it is one cause behind the fat loss plateau.

Thyroid boosting supplements

Here are some common supplements found that can help boost your thyroid levels. These would be especially ideal to take to get through a fat loss plateau.

Ephedra / Ephedrine Ephedrine or it’s natural herbal supplement form Ephedra, are stimulants and increase your metabolism by stimulating the thyroid. It also plays a important additional role in fat burning, through it’s action on beta receptors on fat cells. It does this by increasing adrenaline and nor-adrenaline (called beta agonists because they bind to beta receptors on the fat cells.). Ephedrine also can act like a beta agonist itself. This action on the beta agonists cells leads to increased cAMP production, which increases enzymes that directly cause fat breakdown.

Gugglesterones: This natural extract found from an Indian Tree, shows in studies that it may help increase the conversion of T4 to T3 in the liver and kidneys. T3 is much more potent and is the main form of circulating thyroid.

Forskolin: Derived from the plant Coleus forskohlii, it has been used medicinally for centuries. This supplement isn’t talked too much in the bodybuilding community, but it is severely underrated. Studies have shown it plays a direct role in stimulating cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP). cAMP as said earlier, is produced after ephedrine stimulates the beta receptors. Stimulating cAMP increases thyroid levels, insuline levels, and fat breakdown in the cell.

Synephrine Similiar to structure as Ephedra, but a weaker stimulant, it can also boost your thyroid and fat breakdown through stimulating the beta receptors.

Caffeine Caffeine is a stimulant and also slows the breakdown of cAMP. By keeping cAMP at high levels, it leads to more direct fat loss and increased thyroid function. It is also breaks down in the liver into a compound that increases the increases the amount of circulating fatty acids in the blood, allowing more fat to be burned for energy. Caffeine by itself according to studies, doesn’t seem to be too potent a fat burner for those who ingest it regularly already. It is commonly stacked with Ephedra or Synhephrine, to make the stack more potent because of caffeine’s role on cAMP levels.

Clenbuterol (nicknamed Clen) is sold commercially as brand name Spiropent. Clenbuterol is a beta-2 agonist/antagonist and a bronchodilator. Like ephedrine, they both stimulate beta-2 receptors to cause direct fat loss. Unlike Ephedrine, clen does not stimulate the alpha-2 receptors and the have slighlty different mechanisms of how they act on those receptors and other parts of the body to induce fat loss.

Bodybuilders usually need a “source” to find Clenbuterol as it is not sold in stores or U.S pharmacies. Even though Ephedrine has many similiarities and is quite a good fat burner on itself, there is a couple reasons why Clenbuterol is considered better. The most important reason for bodybuilders using Clenbuterol is you can get more fat burning potential with Clenbuterol with less stimulant side effects. Clenbuterol seems to be more potent, while causing less jitteriness and stimulation of the heart for the same effects compared to ephedrine. The downside to this is the beta-2 receptors in the body also builds a tolerance much quicker with Clenbuterol than with Ephedrine.

Clenbuterol also has a very good nutrient partiotioning effect. In other words while you lose fat, you will maintain more muscle and lose more fat, than if you didn’t use Clenbuterol. All the animal studies I have come across have shown Clenbuterol lowering fat and increasing muscle mass just by giving Clenbuterol to feed cattle, horses, and other animals. A study published in Vet Res Commun. 1993;17(6):459-68 showed that cattle gained 4% muscle mass and lost 40% fat, however 70 days after withdrawal of clenbuterol they had gained the fat back.

Clenbuterol has this potent fat burning and anabolic ability, due to how it causes the body to better utilize fat for energy instead of muscle. Ephedrine probably has similiar benefits, but there is not many studies on it. There is not any human studies on Clenbuterol use in humans, but ancedotal evidence from users supports the idea it has the same benfit in humans.

You see this question constantly by bodybuilders asking if alcohol effect my muscle gains. Yes, it will effect your gains dramatically.

Negative effects of alcohol on muscle building

The biggest reason why alcohol is one of the worst things you can do for muscle building is because it directly slows down protein synthesis. If protein isn’t being snythesized you can’t build muscle. To make matters worse, protein is always being broken down, its the balance between anabolism(protein sythesis) and catabolism (protein breakdown). New proteins have to be created (synthesized) to replace those destroyed in what is called protein turnover. When there is more protein synthesis than catabolism, you gain muscle. So by slowing down alcohol stopping protein synthesis, it is actually causing muscle loss because proteins are being broken down, but less are replacing them.

According to studies I’ve seen, the protein synthesis drops about 20%. Protein synthesis doesn’t return to normal until the body eliminates alcohol from the blood. Alcohol also is shown in studies to lower testosterone levels. This will also have a significant impact on your ability to gain muscle.

Negative effects of alcohol on fat loss and bulking

Not only is alcohol bad for muscle building, but its bad for losing fat and bulking. Normally your body burns a steady amount of fat in the kreb’s cycle. However, when alcohol is present, your body will prefer to use alcohol instead of fat, which is 7 calories per gram! Alcohol is almost as calorie dense as if you were drinking pure fat. Even during bulking alcohol will lead to excess fat gain. You will gain a lot of excess fat because your body can’t burn any fat. You’re already at a surplus for calories during bulking making you susceptible to some fat gain. Throw alcohol and it’s effect on testosterone and fat burning and you’ll look fat and bloated instead of muscular at the end of your bulk.

A common question among smokers who get into bodybuilding is wondering if smoking has any effect on muscle building. Smokers want to have their cake and eat it too, so they are hoping it doesn’t affect their gains.

I used to smoke and when I first started bodybuilding, so it’s hard for me to know how much of an impact it had since my gains were because I was new to working out. I felt it had a negligible effect. Smoking increases your metabolism making it harder to gain weight for hardgainers, but it doesn’t increase your metabolism that much. You could easily just compensate by eating slightly more calories. If anything, smoking suppresses your appetite a bit. This makes it harder to bulk, and get enough calories to gain weight.

Smoking also effects your blood flow. Blood flow is important for sending nutrients to your muscles and could theoretically effect muscle gains. It also effects your lung capacity, so your more likely to get worn out before a heavy workout set is finished or not be as focused on your form during a set as your gasping for breath. Affecting your workout intensity this way, could also lead to less muscle gains, at least in theory.

Even though smoking does all these negative things, I think it’s impact overall will not be real significant. If you want the best muscle gains possible though, you have to quit smoking. You should quit smoking anyways for your health’s sake.

The idea of steroids having direct fat burning properties is a commonly held belief among steroid users. This is why bodybuilders use steroids for also dieting, so they can maintain more muscle and lose more fat. How does anabolic steroids help burn fat, is it direct or indirect and what type of fat. I’ll help try to answer these questions.

Steroid fat loss studies

Unfortunately, most of the studies on fat loss and steroids is done on cattle. It’s a pretty scientific way of looking at it since it’s a controlled environment and they don’t do anything unique that might alter results.

In a study published in J Anim Sci. 2007 Feb;85(2):430-40 they measured carcasses of steers and cattle after they had been implanted with Synovex-Plus (SP), which is testosterone. This study shows that anabolic implants do not appear to have direct effects on itra-muscular lipid deposition. In other words implanting did not change the bodyfat percentage of visceral fat, the fat inside or around the muscles.Another study J Anim Sci. 1999 May;77(5):1100-4 used implanted steroids trenbolone acetate plus estradiol benzoate ot progesterone at various times and dosages over 2 months. They found no significant differences on intramuscular lipid content.

Notice in those studies that they are talking about intramuscular fat. Its been theorized by many that steroids do a bad job of stopping intramuscular or “visceral fat”. However, they do seem to help promote fat loss overall. This is done by losing fat subcutaneously, which is the fat under the skin, which you can visually see.

A study published in J Anim Sci. 1996 Aug;74(8):1770-6. compared control cattle to three other groups; those implanted with trenbalone acetate, implanted with testosterone propionate +20 mg of estradiol benzoate, or both implants. This study found that groups all gained weight and lost fat(were leaner cows). Interesting enough they found the cows that had been implanted with 200 mg trenbolone acetate only, were the leanest.

Another study published in J Anim Sci. 1987 May;64(5):1428-33 showed that suggest that trenbolone acetate is able to depress lipogenesis only when not competing with the effects of circulating estradiol. This means that it stops fat from forming directly, when estrogen isn’t circulating. This supports the previous study, that when trenabolone is taken by itself it has better fat burning properties. We know from the other studies it doesn’t change visceral fat around the organs or inside the muscles. Steroids seem to have the ability to instead burn the subcutaneous fat and not the internal fat.

Steroids fat loss action on the AR receptor

All androgenic steroids bind to the AR receptor at different levels, not only in muscles but fat cells too. When steroids bind to the AR receptor in the fat cells stronger they probably cause more subcutaneous fat loss. Trenabolone binds very strongly, much stronger than testosterone (3.5 times more). The fact that tren binds strongly to the AR and it doesn’t aromotize to estrogen may be one reason why it seems to be better at preventing fat gain during bulking compared to testosterone. As in the last study cited on cattle, only when estradiol (an estrogen) was not circulating, did tren stop fat from forming directly. Taking testosterone while dieting will help you burn fat too, just not as much as tren because of the estrogen circulating due to aromization. Testosterone also doesn’t bind as strongly to the AR receptor. Another reason why steroids might help with fat loss is by decreasing the levels of an enzyme called lipasel. This forms lipids in fat cells and may be upregulated by how strongly a steroid attaches to a AR receptor in the fat cells.

Steroids fat loss action on the glucocortisoid receptor

All steroids upregulate the glucocortisoid receptor. By blocking this receptor they control coristol and is this is how people on steroids can workout more often, without as much worry about overtraining. Controlling cortisol should lead to fat loss because cortisol promotes fat gain and muscle loss. When you prevent cortisol from attaching to the glucocorticoid receptor, you lower lipasel. This is the same enzyme we mentioned earlier, that helps form lipid.

Special Cutting steroids

Winstrol and tren are a couple steroids touted to be popular for using during cutting. One major reason is because they don’t convert to estrogen. This reduces water bloat and makes it easier to see your fat loss. They should especially help fat burning, if taken by themselves because of no circulating estrogen. Estrogen is not completely evil for fat burning, there is some fat burning properties of estrogen according to studies. The fat burning power of anabolic steroids is probably stronger for burning fat than estrogen. Therefore, the benefits of non-aromatizing steroid only cycles benefits those stacked with aromatizing steroids for cutting.

Many bodybuilders have used hydroxycut hardcore as an alternative to ephedra based fat burning stacks. To find out if hydroxycut works you have to look at each individual compound and the research supporting it.

Hydroxycut Hardcore Ingredients:

Ingredients include Green tea extract, caffeine, Methyl 17 alpha-hydroxy-yohimban-16 alpha-carboxylate hydrochloride, Black Pepper Extract, white willow extract, among many other compounds.

You may be wondering what exactly Methyl 17 alpha-hydroxy-yohimban-16 alpha-carboxylate hydrochloride is, it’s just a fancy name for one form of Yohimbe. Yohimbe is a well known stimulant herb. It was used pharmaceutically for treating means ED (erectile dysfunction). It turns out, it is also a very good fat burner. It works through the same metabolic pathway as ephedrine, to cause fat loss, just at a different way. It blocks the negative pathway insteading of directly stimulating the adrenaline receptors, like ephedra. Yohimbe doesn’t seem to be as strong a fat burner ancedotally, and thats probably because because of it’s indirect action. There is plenty of research studies showing the way yohimbe acts on the cells and people losing fat from it’s use.

Caffeine in hydroxycut can play an important synergistic role with the Yohimbe in hydroxycut. Many bodybuilders used to stack Ephedrine and caffeine because caffeine has a special role in making ephedrine more potent. Caffeine and Yohimbe has the same effect and is often stacked together, to increase fat burning.

White willow extract is a source of aspirin. They can’t use aspirin because that is regulated as a drug, so they have to use the bark where aspirin is derived. Aspirin is thought to help aid in fat loss, by increasing blood flow to areas deep in the fat. The problem about aspirin is it has been proven to stop protein synthesis. As a bodybuilder, you don’t want to lose your hard earned muscle, while you lose fat. To me this addition is not good.

Green Tea extract is derived from Green tea and studies show it has a dramatic increase in raising metabolism more than 30%. Green tea also is good for regulating insulin levels and maintaining low glucose levels, which means it increases insulin sensitivity. Insulin sensitivity increases the fat you lose and increases the amount of muscle you retain while cutting because of the nutrient partiotioning effect insulin sensitivity.

Black pepper can aid in fat loss and increase metabolism. This seems to be an effect from most pepper plants.

Conclusion

Hydroxycut Hardcore has a mix of compounds that have a lot of research backing them as raising metabolism or stimulating fat loss through fat loss metabolic pathways. I have a serious problem with them using the aspirin in the supplement. I would not recommend hydroxycut for bodybuilders because the aspirin will interfere with maintaining muscle and increase muscle loss. There are other good fat burning stacks that don’t add it. Many bodybuilders often make their own homemade fat loss stacks out of Yohimbe, ephedrine, etc.

Tribulus Terrestris extract is a herbal supplement that is claimed by supplement companies to boost testosterone, therefore helping to build muscle. It was first used as a chinese medicine for premature ejaculation.

Unfortunately, over the years multiple studies have debunked the idea of testosterone increases from Tribulus Terrestris supplementation. Bodybuilders that have taken it, usually report no boost in muscle building. Over the years, companies have tried to claim that there tribulus terrestris was superior or that it contained the right form of it in the right amounts.

I think one reason why their is a strong belief that Tribulus Terrestris increases testosterone, is because most notice an increase in libido and erections with Tribulus. Most had previously thought this was probably due to an increase in LH stimulating testosterone production, but a study showed the real cause. A rabbit study published in Ann Acad Med Singapore. 2000 Jan;29(1):22-6 showed that tribulus causes a release of nitric oxide in the body. Viagra works on nitrix oxide too. Nitrix oxide causes improved blood flow to the penis and the rest of the body by vasodilation. A study done on rats Life Sci. 2002 Aug 9;71(12):1385-96 showed increased mounting activity from it’s use.

It appears that Tribulus Terrestris may be a good sexual health drug, but for building muscle it is unlikely to help.

Beta-Alanine in recent years caught attention as a popular bodybuilding muscle building supplement, but the research supporting this supplement goes pretty far back. Beta-Alanine is one of the biggest supplement breakthroughs since Creatine. Coincidentally, Beta-Alanine was first researched by , Dr. Roger Harris in the 90’s, who’s research led us also to Creatine.

What is Beta-Alanine?

Beta-Alanine is a non-proteinogenic amino acid, which just means it can’t be converted to protein. Although it is found naturally in certain meats, but it’s only in small amounts. The only way to truly benefit from high doses of beta-alanine, is to buy it in supplement form.

How Beta-Alanine benefits bodybuilders:

Dr. Roger Harris discovered carnisine was in higher concentrations in Type 2 muscle fibers, these fibers are most responsible for getting bigger and producing strength. Inside the muscle, carnisine, seems to regulate the PH levels in muscle fibers. As you know, lactic acid can build up in a persons muscles causing the painful burn and to prematurely end their set. Carnisine in the muscle allows someone to workout longer because of it buffering the PH level and they feel less pain.

The only way carnisine gets into the muscle, is after it has been converted from beta-alanine and histidine in the body. Histidine is already in plenty amounts circulating the body, but beta-alanine is not. The only way to get beta-alanine into the body in the first place, is either to take carnisine (which converts to beta-alanine and histidine during digestion) or to take beta-alanine by itself.

A study by Stout, J., et al., Effects of Beta-Alanine supplementation on the onset of neuromusclular fatigue and ventilatory threshold in women. University of Oklahoma, OK has reaffirmed earlier research, that beta-alanine allows better muscular endurance.

Not only can beta-alanine supplementation help with muscular endurance and power, but with muscle gains. A study by Int J Sport Nutr Exerc Metab. 2006 Aug;16(4):430-46 showed after 10 weeks on 33 football players, showed the beta-alanine plus creatine group gained more muscle and lost more fat, over the creatine only and placebo groups. I suspect this is because they could workout more intensely with beta-alanine and this could lead to better long term muscle gains. Like creatine, beta-alanine allows you to workout longer and more intensely. This better muscular endurance should lead to better long term muscle gains in theory. Another possible theory of mine for the muscle gains, is that lowering the PH level in the muscle fibers during workouts, allows for a better muscle building environment.

Whether you take carnisine or beta-alanine, it doesn’t matter because both will eventually get converted to carnisine back in the muscles. Bodybuilders prefer to take beta-alanine powder because it is cheaper and can also be found in bulk powder. Most bodybuilders stack creatine and beta-alanine together, so they get two powerful muscle builders together at once. You may notice a tingling sensation when you first take beta-alanine, but it goes away after a few weeks. This is caused by some stimulation on the nerves.