Just What The Hell Have I Gotten Myself Into?

The past month of my life has been…intense.

How so? Well, here’s what I’ve eaten so far:

• 65 pounds of meat
• 54 bananas
• 84 scoops of protein powder
• 72 pieces of bread
• 36 sweet potatoes
• 7 jars of almond butter
• 5 jars of fruit jam
• 8 jars of sauerkraut
• 144 cups of vegetables
• 36 pieces of fruit
• 72 squares of dark chocolate
• 8 bags of frozen fruit
• 7 cans of coconut milk
• 4 cartons of heavy whipping cream

But eating enough to populate a small farm is only part of my intense month.

I’ve done hellish workouts in crowded gyms and become so exhausted I once had to take a 5-minute nap next to the treadmill. (The belt whirred on at 12 miles per hour before someone stepped over my body and turned it off.)

At one point, I pretty much stopped drinking water altogether and completely eliminated salt, sugar, and starchy carbohydrates from my diet. I spent hours in saunas and hot baths trying to sweat out precious pounds of water while not passing out, just like a college wrestler or UFC fighter.

I used strategic intermittent fasting — literally not eating for 24 hours at a time — to gain weight.

Throughout the month I’ve lifted heavy weights, flipped tires, swung sledge hammers, and climbed ropes. I’ve been poked and prodded four different times to check my girth measurements and my body fat percentage.

I’ve done a battery of performance tests to see if my strength and endurance had improved — or, depending on the phase of my experiment — completely plummeted to little-girl levels.

Now, here’s the cool part: In the past month, I’ve gained 20 pounds in 28 days, lost 20 pounds in 5 days, and gained 17 pounds back in 24 hours.

How did I do it? Well, that’s what we’re here for. In this book, I’ll lay out the specific nutrition and workout program I followed, along with my day-to-day journal of what I was feeling when it was happening.

From my experiment you’ll learn how to gain muscle at an alarmingly fast rate by using both tested and unconventional methods. You’ll also discover the secrets of extreme weight manipulation used by professional MMA fighters, wrestlers, and other people whose job is to punch each other in the face.

Of course, while the whole “gaining muscle” concept may be cool, I understand that you probably don’t want to gain 20 pounds in 28 days. Or lose 20 pounds in 5 days. Or gain 17 pounds in 24 hours. (It’s like taking a years’ worth of progress and condensing it down into one super-charged month.)

That’s OK. I certainly don’t expect you to want to do it. After the first day, I didn’t want to do it any longer, either. That shit was hard.

But through my experiment I learned a lot about rapid muscle gain, rapid weight loss, mental fortitude, and resilience, and I’m excited to share those with you. That way you can go out and do a (less intense) version of this experiment to build a muscular, athletic, healthy body.

Now, the more important question: Why did I do it?

I explain my reasons in detail in the Summary (and I encourage you to read that section next) but the simple answer is this:

I wanted to see how quickly my body could gain weight, take it off, and rebuild back up. I wanted to see how much muscle I could build while still being athletic.

And, if I’m being honest, I just wanted something new to do.

My life was becoming too predictable: Get up, work, hang out, go to sleep, repeat.

I needed to shake things up.

The way I see it, life’s too short to sit around doing the same shit every day. I’m not sure about you, but I want to live a bigger, more successful life than the average guy.

To me, that means:

• building a body I can be proud of
• doing meaningful work at a job I love
• surrounding myself with cool people
• going on cool adventures

And sometimes it means doing crazy experiments. Like this one.

So let’s cut the chit-chat and get started.

Here’s what happened.