A few things:
- Water is lipolytic (fat burning), regardless of temperature (the studies suggest that temperature only accounts for ~3% of the calorie burn effect, the rest being from osmotic pressure. What that means I don’t know). I drink ~5L of water a day when I’m cutting and from my calculations it seems to burn roughly 50 kcal per liter.
- If you’re going to run ephedrine, it seems to work best as part of an ECA stack (ephedrine, caffeine, aspirin), because the 3 ingredients work in synergy.
- Green tea is great, powdered extract tends to work more quickly than drinking cups of the stuff. I saw a study on its use in treating obesity that suggested the active compound EGCG resulted in greater excretion of fat. If that’s true, that’s awesome, because it means I can eat more delicious foods without my body absorbing the very calorie dense parts.
- No need to reduce unsaturated/saturated fat intake if your cholesterol is fine, low-fat diets reduce androgen levels. Everyone’s afraid of fat, but sometimes it’s good for you!
- Someone mentioned clenbuterol, if something that extreme is on the cards it’s worth taking a look at the newer beta2-adrenergic receptor agonists like albuterol.
- The amino acid l-leucine has a large amount of clinical evidence for its ability to retain lean muscle mass while on a calorie deficit, and it’s pretty cheap.
- I think vinegar was mentioned, there are a few good japanese studies showing how it up-regulates the expression of the genes that code for enzymes responsible for reducing fat. I love drinking it anyway.
The combo of green tea, water, vinegar & caffeine have worked pretty well for me, gotten ripped in the last 3 weeks with no loss in muscle strength, and they’re things that are really easy to add to daily routine. The one thing I’ll add is that I won’t be continuing with caffeine when I’m back at college, since it really interferes with my erectile/sexual capacity.
All of these things can be backed up by studies on pubmed. I have exhausted myself researching this crap to get my six-pack abs :(
edit: if you want to try something really crazy, http://www.ajcn .org/cgi/conten … tract/77/6/1442
Quote
One milligram of nicotine has a pronounced thermogenic effect, which can be increased by {approx}100% by adding 100 mg caffeine. Increasing the nicotine dose to 2 mg does not increase the thermogenic effect but produces side effects in most subjects. Caffeine may be useful in preventing weight gain after smoking cessation if its thermogenic effect can be used to enhance nicotine’s effect on long-term energy balance.
Side-note: I’ve been wondering how addictive nicotine is without the other compounds in tobacco smoke. Cigarette smoke contains a compound that inhibits the MAO-B enzyme from breaking down dopamine, leading to a rise in levels (which may explain why smokers have a much lower rate of parkinsons disease). There’s talk that nicotine might not be nearly as addictive without MAO-B inhibition, since in animal studies they won’t normally self-administer nicotine in an addictive fashion, but they will if they take an MAO inhibitor. I may try a few days of nicotine gum and see how it goes, aside from potential addiction I’m wary of how nicotine might affect erectile function on its own.
