This is something I ran into myself BIG TIME in my second year of training...

It was a brick wall of no gains, no energy, loss of strength and loss of mass.

It was horrible.

And it was all because I was trying to eat "clean."

Seriously.

During my first year of training, I went from a skinny cross-country running and endurance athlete weighing about 145 lbs, building myself up to a solid 217 lbs.

And I did it by eating a TON of food...and not always healthy food (I went to college and discovered the wonders of cafeteria eating). I was putting away 8,500+ calories a day on some days (not kiddding...I did the calculations).

So naturally, I gained a lot of muscle but I gained a LOT of fat, too.

And in my second year of training, I decided to really do something about it.

 

I went on a "clean eating" kick, following the plain rice and chicken breast, cans of tuna, etc. diet thing. I didn't even do any cheat meals at all.

At first, the fat came off really quick...

...then I started noticing my strength was fading away a little. Slowly at first, then faster.

All the gains I had worked (and eaten) so hard to achieve were all disappearing! And the fat loss stalled, too, to top it off.

It was really depressing, as you can imagine.

Being from a family of stubborn Swedes (and stubborn French Canadians), though, I didn't give up on it. After all, this was how the bodybuilders in the magazines ate, right? This was supposed to work.

 

I kept at it for MONTHS, thinking it would turn a corner.

And it didn't.

Finally, probably about six months into this failed experiment, I got desperate and did something I NEVER thought I would do.

...I cooked up my chicken breasts and left the skin ON....and then I ATE the skin...

Holy crap was it good.

After months of deprivation of good-tasting foods, it was like heaven....nice crackling, crispy chicken skin.

I did that every day for a week and I noticed a TREMENDOUS increase in strength...just from that.

That was a revelation to me at the time...like seismic shift.

I thought to myself..."you mean I can eat delicious food like this and SHOULD eat like this to get the results to get bigger and stronger and I still won't gain fat?"

I look back at it now and I have to laugh at myself...I had actually gotten paranoid to the point where I made my roommate reboil water for spaghetti because he added a little salt to make it boil faster.

Facepalm.

Never mind that the sauce had 100X the sodium in it as that pinch of salt. Jeez.

 

The big mental shift for me was this...beneficial, nutritious food CAN and SHOULD taste good.

Now, I'll be honest, I'm still not a great cook, but I know how to make some good dishes that taste good, are healthy and really support the muscle-building process.

(The eggs I make now would have blown the brain of younger me...six whole eggs cooked in butter, covered in sea salt...tastes like having movie theater popcorn for breakfast).

If you want to learn how to make some excellent muscle-building dishes yourself, I'm not going to give you MY recipes...because I don't have any.

What I AM going to do is point you in the direction of a book called Anabolic Cooking.

 

If you want to learn how to cook delicious food for building mass, this book is a must-have.

It's packed with recipes that taste great and that nutritionally support the muscle-building process with complete nutrition.

Building muscle doesn't have to be bland...and it's just not effective to use foods that don't hormonally support you as well as nutritionally support you (like what happened to me in that second year of training).

Have a look at what Anabolic Cooking is all about.

It's not enough to get your training dialed in, you've got to get your eating dialed in as well.

And this book will help you do that.

Nick Nilsson
The "Mad Scientist of Muscle"

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