Bigger Leaner Stronger: The Simple Science of Building the Ultimate Male Body

There are very few books I would call “life changing,” but this is without a doubt one of them. I’m 41 years old and have spent most of my adult life in the gym, not aspiring to be a bodybuilder necessarily but simply striving to stay strong and lean, to feel good and to be healthy. My goal has always been to maintain an athletic look without excessively long and complicated workouts or bizarre and restrictive diets. I own or have read stacks and stacks of fitness books, from Arnold’s Encyclopedia to obscure spiral bound books from self-published authors, on every topic from the paleo diet to barefoot running to bodyweight exercises to genuine bodybuilding. I’ve wasted more money and paper than I care to think about over the years on magazines such as Men’s Fitness, Men’s Health, and various bodybuilding mags to little or no avail. I’ve tried every conceivable workout method and fad from crossfit to circuit training to bodypump to good old fashioned iron pumping with supersets, drop sets and more. While I picked up some valuable information and skills along the way, my sheer dedication to fitness is what pulled me through and gave me results, mediocre though they were.But then I stumbled upon Bigger Leaner Stronger (BLS) on Amazon. Always open to reading new material, but jaded from a couple of decades of reading poor to mediocre books, I bought it with no great expectations. The first chapter or two is pretty much what you’d expect in a book on this topic -- big promises. But unlike any other book I’ve ever read on the topic, BLS delivers on those promises, and how! Of course I couldn’t know that until I had finished the book and actually tried the program for awhile, so here is a summary of my experience.As of this writing, I’m 11 weeks into the program. I started off at 175 pounds and 17.5% body fat. Today I’m 166 pounds and 11.5% body fat. If you run the numbers, I’ve lost 9 pounds, BUT I’ve also put on a few pounds of muscle at the same time, so the results are far more dramatic than simply losing 9 pounds. I’m on what’s called a “cutting diet” (outlined in the book) which is designed primarily to make you lose fat while maintaining or slightly gaining muscle. After the cutting diet, you follow with a bulking diet which does the opposite -- primarily designed to build muscle quickly while minimizing fat gain. A few cycles of cutting and bulking (with your workouts, of course) and you can have a body like Mike (the author of BLS.) I say this as a skeptic who was blown away by the results that this is without a doubt the easiest, most efficient, most effective, simplest and most comprehensible way to get the body you want. The real kicker here is that there’s almost nothing new in this book. There are no revolutionary secrets or cutting-edge fads, no complicated workouts or strange exercises, and no diet “tricks,” miracle pills or evil foods to fear. It’s all just basic sensible eating and good old fashioned sweat, and yet it works magic. So if there’s nothing new in it, why is this book so good? First, because Mike did what none of the rest of us took the time to do: he did his homework. I don’t mean he read Muscle and Fitness Magazine. I mean he read primary clinical research in peer reviewed journals, and then he tested it on himself. Second, and this is where he really shines, because Mike has an ability that apparently other authors of fitness books lack: the skill to take what he learned and put it in a clear, concise, highly organized, highly digestible format that anyone can understand without getting lost in the weeds or bored to tears. Mike has exhaustively researched and put into practice every principle in his book, and he includes references to all of the clinical trials he read so you can read the primary research for yourself if you’re so inclined. In addition to that, his website, muscleforlife.com, is brimming with FREE, interesting articles that go in greater depth about many topics and answer questions that newbies to the program will invariably have (as I myself did.) And as if that weren’t enough, Mike’s really good about personally responding to questions posted on the website. He also does live Q&A’s online which are helpful, as well as video podcasts which are also helpful.Here’s a bullet list of the major points I got from the book:*a few sets of heavy reps of basic lifts is all you need to build a ton of muscle*a few sets of heavy reps of basic lifts burns more fat that cardio*a few sets of heavy reps of basic lifts keeps your gym time surprisingly short*eating the right ratio of fats/carbs/protein is absolutely essential for success*eating the right ratio of fats/carbs/protein need not be an exhaustive chore*eating the right ratio of fats/carbs/protein need not be absurdly restrictive*eating the right ratio of fats/carbs/protein is not a starvation diet*doing cardio is important, but not as important as you think*doing cardio isn’t nearly as miserable or long as you think if you do it right*tracking your progress is absolutely essential to success and is hugely motivating too*tracking your progress need not be an exhaustive chore -- in fact I find it fun*your genetics, age, perceived bad luck, lack of experience, past failures and current state of couch-potatoness will not define your success on this program*your commitment to this program will define your success on this program*its not a program, it’s a lifestyle change just like a hobby, having kids, having pets, having a career or cooking at home instead of eating out every nightHere’s how I think the book could be improved:There are a few details missing from the book that you won’t even realize are missing until you have a question as a result of actually being on the program. For example, your weight loss is unlikely to be linear, and it may even stop weeks or months into the program if you’re trying to cut fat. But that’s no reason to despair. There are simple ways to get it moving again, which are discussed in exact detail in various articles on the website. One important, very simple, very effective method is the reverse diet which isn’t discussed in BLS. It is discussed in the book’s sequel, Beyond Bigger Leaner Stronger, which is for advanced lifters who’ve already gone through BLS and have been lifting at least 1-2 years. It is also discussed, as I already mentioned, in articles on the website for free. I also found his treatment of supplements a bit confusing. He’s extremely critical of supplements in the BLS book, but if you go to his website you’ll find that he’s got his own line of supplements which at first seems extremely hypocritical. I’ve since come to understand that he’s critical of the supplement industry as a whole for their various frauds (and rightly so) but that there are a number of mostly natural supplements that have been clinically proven to be effective, and his supplements are just that: clinically effective dosages of clinically proven substances, and nothing more. He also has made it clear that while supplements (even his own) can be helpful in getting faster results, they are by no means necessary and are absolutely no substitute for proper diet and exercise.Here are some tips/advice for anyone new to the program:The number one issue I feared with this program is the one thing I vowed never in my life to do: count calories or exclude entire food groups from my diet. If you share that fear, read on. I’m a prolific home cook. Cooking is one of my greatest joys in life and I hold the joys of food -- from growing it and hunting it, to cooking it and eating it, to sharing it with friends and family -- in reverence above nearly all else in life. I love dairy. I love breads. I love pork. I love dessert. And I will not give these things up. Ever. I have a small farm and raise pork and dairy goats, poultry and eggs, honey and red meat. I also hunt and fish. And I eat it all, every bit. So with great trepidation I read Mike’s stance on food, and I thought, well, at least I don’t have to give up any foods. I figured that maybe I could try tracking my calories, fat, etc IF it’s not a lot of trouble and doesn’t detract from my joy of food in any way. And you know what? After I thought about it, and then tried it, I realized I had been missing a tactic of awesome proportions. Let me explain. Even before BLS, I planned meals. I have to, but also I like to. I cook every meal. Literally, every meal. In order to feed my household and use the exceptional foods I grow on the farm and hunt in the mountains, I have to plan for what’s coming out of the garden each week, or what I’ll need to take out of the freezer to thaw in time, or what incidentals like baking powder I’ll need to pick up at the grocery store. I already had seasonally and weekly recurring meals and treats such as lasagna, beef stew, pumpkin bread, pancakes, etc. on the menu, and typically set aside Sunday to do the bulk of my weekly cooking so that weekday meals are a no-brainer. The only thing I wasn’t doing was tracking the nutrient ratios. But Mike proposed an ingenious solution: the spreadsheet. Instead of writing down my weekly meal planning on the chalkboard as I had previously done, I just moved it to a simple spreadsheet. The spreadsheet had the advantage of both making my planning faster and easier AND keeping track of my nutrient ratios automatically so I scarcely had to think about it. Mike shows examples of how to build and use a spreadsheet in his book but it’s really simple. I took it one step further. Admittedly my spreadsheet savvy is slightly more advanced than the average Joe, but nothing I did can’t be learned on Google in a few minutes. Nothing. Here’s what I did:For my favorite lasagna recipe, I put all the ingredients and their amounts in the spreadsheet, along with their total sodium, fiber, protein, fat, carbs and calories. Nutrient ratios can be gotten from boxes of food, manufacturer websites and from calorieking.com. It was a one time task that takes less than 10 minutes per recipe. Then, I just summed each column and divided by the number of servings in that recipe. In my weekly planner, I created separate tabs for each day of the week, and on each tab I created dropdown boxes where I could pick from the list of recipes I’d entered into my spreadsheet. So for example, on the Monday tab I simply click the dropdown box for lunch and choose any food or recipe I’d previously entered into my spreadsheet. Let’s say I choose lasagna. Well, the sodium, fiber, protein, carbs, fat and calories for 1 serving of lasagna automatically populate the fields for lunch and add them to the daily total. If I want 2 servings of lasagna, I just change the quantity to 2 and all the numbers are updated. Repeat for breakfast, dinner, post-workout, snacks, whatever, and you can instantly build your day and, subsequently, your entire week and never have to manually add a single number in your head. The only requirements are that you take the time upfront to build the spreadsheet and spend a few minutes per recipe to enter them into the spreadsheet. After that, you just have to commit to using it as an extremely fast and effective meal planner. I just added 2-4 recipes per week in the beginning until I had a large number of my favorite recipes in the spreadsheet, and now all I have to do is sit down and chose from the list what I’m going to cook that week. Adding something new is literally and figuratively a piece of cake.Another tip for the newbie is to track the physical changes in your body. I also use a spreadsheet for this. It’s very simple: weigh yourself every day (on the same scale, at the same time, like first thing in the morning) and enter that into your spreadsheet. I added a chart on a separate tab and I can see how my weight has changed over the weeks. It tends to go up and down daily, but the overall trend is down and it’s extremely encouraging to look at, especially on days where you “feel” like you aren’t making progress. One look at your little chart and all doubts are quashed. I find it extremely motivating. In a few clicks you can also add a regression line (I know, it sounds scary, but it’s not.) It’s just a line that shows the trend in your data points (your weight.) Basically it’s your average weight loss shown in a straight line that runs across your chart. You can use it to very effectively predict when you’ll hit a target weight. I also use the spreadsheet to track my body fat percentage, waist and other body measurements, calculate my lean body mass (LBM), my total daily energy expenditure (TDEE), basal metabolic rate (BMR) and other things Mike explains in BLS. These terms may sound complicated but I assure you, if you can learn to drive a car you can very easily learn how to keep a simple spreadsheet and calculate these numbers and understand what they mean. The beauty of the spreadsheet is that once it’s all set up, you just add your daily weight and everything else is updated for you.A third tip is to use the website, muscleforlife.com. It’s absolutely brimming with fabulous, plain-English, no-nonsense articles that will answer most, if not all, of your additional questions. Failing that, just post a comment online and Mike will respond. Failing even that, you can call Legion legionathletics.com (Mike’s supplement company) and you can ask a live person your question. They’re very friendly and helpful.My final tip: take advantage of Mike’s suggestions. He doesn’t suggest stuff willy-nilly. His supplements are truly effective. The lifting shoes and body fat calipers he recommends really work. His exercises and diet advice are like magic. Again on his website you’ll find so many tidbits of helpful advice, but don’t feel like you have to know it all or have all the “stuff” before you can start. A lifestyle change like this isn’t something you achieve overnight. You don’t have to be an expert on day 1. Indeed you can’t be. It’s the journey that makes you the expert. As Lao Tzu said, the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, but you’re lucky to have BLS because it lays out such a clear map.

I purchased this book several years ago, having seen it on Amazon. I got it at my local library and leafed through it, and found it good and comprehensible but "too much work."Fast forward to 2024: I did make, and actually stick to, a New Year's Resolution to "be healthy" and lose weight. I started the year at 216 pounds (6'2" male). I had been exercising daily for 3 years at that point (tried Crossfit, various workout programs, kettlebells) but was still gaining weight consistently year-on-year (3-5 pounds per year).I re-read the nutrition section of "BLS" and decided to put it into action. It was awkward at first. I'm married with children, and I can't ask my family to eat according to this lifestyle. Mike's system is very intense: he recommends planning out your meals to the calorie and macronutrient day-by-day and week-by-week, and reserving Sunday as a meal preparation day. I just didn't have the time or interest to do this. So I downloaded and used the "MyFitnessPal" app to track my calories and macros, and simply attempt to eat daily at a calorie restriction.Over a few weeks, I got used to tracking calories and macros, and was able to make healthy food choices more easily. I learned what foods have a high protein-to-100-calorie ratio and aim for those; I choose lower-fat meats and eat lots of fish. For religious reasons I eat a vegan diet several weeks a year, and that part is always difficult, but Mike does provide advice for vegan nutrition (and offers some sample meal plans in the freebie package that you can download with the book).I lost the first 10 pounds rather easily, within 2 months. I reached 190 pounds (26 pounds lighter than when I started) in June, and now (October 2024) I'm hovering around 183 pounds--over 30 pounds lost. I've had to adjust my calories and macros along the way.I have purchased a few other "bodybuilding meal prep" and meal plan cookbooks, and that has been a big help. At this point, my wife and I can plan our meals for the week, reach an agreement, and shop and prep for the meals in advance. I usually eat my own breakfast (most commonly, fat-free yogurt with whey protein); my wife prefers fattier ground beef (80%/20%), which means I will simply eat less of it. So, it is possible.As for the workout plan in the book: it's very good. I've had lower back injuries over the years, and again tweaked my back as I was approaching heavier weights according to Mike's plan (especially getting over 200# squat and deadlift). I've modified to suit what I can do and feel comfortable with. I've been doing barbell front squat instead of back squat (less pressure on my back), and adding in Kettlebell swings to strengthen my lower back for deadlift. I do "lift heavy," but I don't follow Mike's plan precisely, because I don't feel the need to add 10 pounds every lift and set a new PR. Sometimes I'll stay at the same squat weight for a few weeks, just to "own the weight" and get used to it.That said, I think the nutrition portion of this book is the most important. I am nowhere near the "strength standards" Mike proposes in the book (I believe he recommends being able to deadlift 2x your bodyweight?), but my body has been changing. My muscles are visible, and I even have the outline of abs appearing. If I'm judging from photos, I've probably gone from 25% bodyfat to somewhere in the 15-20% bodyfat range (I have not gotten a DEXA scan, so these are just visual estimates). Of course, now being at 183 pounds, I think it will be increasingly difficult to approach and maintain lower bodyfat percentages, because so much of that is diet.I will recommend two tools that have really helped me follow the book's plan. One is an Apple watch (or any fitness tracker), primarily because it provides a "calories burned" estimate day by day. Of course, it's an estimate, and people on the internet say it can be off 10-20% per day, so who knows; but it's a good aid in trying to establish what my baseline of calories-in vs calories-out should be. The second tool is MyFitnessPal (premium version), or any good calorie tracker. I don't like Mike's system of planning out your meals to the calorie, day by day; that's just not how I live or want to live. But if I can make meal-by-meal decisions and track those in MyFitnessPal, things seem simpler.

Excellent book! I read Physique Secrets first by Schlager and the systems are quite a lot alike. I'm using Schlager's 'rules' right now (not 'his' workouts) and I'm quite happy with my increases in strength, and the size is showing up slowly but surely! I'll switch to Matthews 'rules' after a few months (little more than rep changes) and see how I respond to the lower reps. Great book but the nutrition info in both books is a LOT to read (I skipped those until after I read all the training info). I've been training for fifty years and these books could have been a big help decades ago!