BUILD MUSCLE

A Three-Part Prescription For Building Muscular Size and Strength
While Maintaining (Or Reducing) Fat by Roger Riedinger


“I want you to understand
that what it is you wish to
do is one of the hardest
things to accomplish without
the aid of anabolic steroid
drugs.”

The year was 1970. I had just written a letter to Anthony Ditillo, an author who regularly wrote in Iron Man magazine on the “production of muscular bulk”. Ditillo chronicled the results of his latest experiments on himself and his students. Each month we’d get an update on the best methods he’d found to reduce fat while increasing muscular size and strength at the same time.

I learned a lot from Mr. Ditillo about training that has never been publicized and his book, The Production of Muscular Bulk, is still one of the best ever on the subject. In future issues I will go into more detail about Ditillo’s other training methods but in this article I want to give you his three-part prescription for building muscular size and strength while maintaining (or reducing) fat (as measured by waist size).

And, no Ditillo wasn’t recommending that I use steroids. He went on to write, “These steroids (Dianabol) help bodybuilders to gain muscle size without adding any additional weight to the waist or bodyfat whatsoever. However, steroids can sometimes be quite dangerous and I certainly do not advise anyone to use them for bodybuilding. Do not get the idea that I am trying to convince you to try them for yourself, because I’m thoroughly against their use and I have only made mention of them to show you why the bodybuilding stars look the way they do, and you and I look the way in which we do.”

He went on to say that adding muscular size while reducing fat is almost impossible … but not quite. Here’s how he broke down his advice:

“My humble solution to your
problem is presented here.
Remember that no routine is
good if your intentions aren’t
strong enough.”

The program that Mr. Ditillo outlined was different than any I had seen to that time or since. I followed the program faithfully for eight weeks along with a structured nutrition plan provided by Ditillo with a modified Rheo Blair supplement program. The following details how I applied Anthony Ditillo’s training and nutrition advice.

TRAINING ADVICE
Two training principles I followed throughout were to rest exactly three minutes between each tri-set and to add weight to the bar whenever I could (which was about every week).

DIETARY ADVICE
Protein should be your main food source. You should eat as much protein as you want. Good sources are beef, chicken, turkey, fish, eggs (not just the whites, but also some whole eggs), and cheese (including cottage cheese). You’re not on a weight losing diet but a musclebuilding one. Eat whenever you’re hungry but try to choose things that will help your physical expectations, not hinder them.

You should follow a lower carbohydrate diet. As a rule of thumb try to limit your carbohydrates to 100 grams daily. (For women I’d recommend you limit your carbohydrate intake to 60 grams.) Chart A gives you the carbohydrate content of recommended carb sources. Stay away from sweets and white flour products. It’s also a good idea to limit starch carbs and eat mostly salads and low carb fruits. The main thing is just make sure that anything you put into your mouth is good for you.

You also should eat some fats as you’ll need them for energy. Try to balance saturated fats from meat and dairy with some unsaturated fats from healthy oils like olive oil, flax oil, and safflower oil.

Since you’re limiting your carbohydrate intake you must be sure to get a full array of vitamins, minerals, enzymes and cofactors. In 1970, I took Blair’s A, C, B Complex, E, Iron, Calcium, and HCl tablets. Now I take a Beverly Super Pak and get everything in proper mega-potencies in one pak.

I also took Blair’s liver extract and an essential oil complex called Soy-Bro. These days it’s Beverly’s Ultra 40 liver extact and EFA Gold.

Blair (one of the first true bodybuilding gurus) used liver extract with his clients to increase muscular size, strength, and endurance. Another benefit attributed to liver extract was the “glow of health” look that all of Blair’s students had. Blair students took a minimum of thirty, an average of sixty, and up to one hundred liver per day. Luckily, with new technologies available today, you can get an equal amount of liver factions from 1/4 that number of Ultra 40 tablets.

Carb Content of Recommended Carbohydrate Foods
Food	Amount	Carb Grams
Complex Carbs
Oatmeal Sweet Potato Baked Potato Brown Rice	1/2 cup 4 oz 4 oz 1/2 cup cooked	27 28 28 22
Fruit
Strawberries Blueberries Banana Cantaloupe Orange	1 berry 1/4 cup 1 small (6”) 1/2 medium 1 medium	1 5 23 23 18
Vegetables
Broccoli Green Beans Green Salad Spinach Tomato	1 cup chopped 1 cup 1 cup 1 cup chopped 1 medium	10 6 4 10 5
* Carb count from USDA database.

Blair found that the addition of an essential fatty acids supplement positively affected both bodyfat loss and muscle gain. EFA’s discourage fat storage and encourage the burning of stored fat. Essential fatty acids also have positive benefits to all the major muscle building hormones – testosterone production, insulin regulation, and growth hormone release. Blair recommended thirty Soy-Bro daily (or about nine grams of EFA). You can now get the same dosage of EFA’s from nine Beverly EFA Gold per day.

MY OLD SCHOOL DAILY NUTRITION PLAN
Here’s how I put my nutrition plan together on a daily basis: Breakfast was either a whole food meal consisting of a small lean ham steak, two-four eggs (often with cheese as an omelette), and an orange. If I didn’t have time, I’d make a shake. 2/3 cup Blair’s protein (milk and egg based just like Beverly’s Ultra Size), 2 eggs, 2-4 oz heavy cream, and about 8 oz water (or if my carb intake was low the day before – 8 oz milk in place of water).

Lunch was usually a half-pound of sliced roast beef, a few very thin slices of provolone cheese (which I’d wrap the roast beef in), a salad, and a snack size bag of potato chips. (The key here was to limit the chips to the smallest bag I could buy, a better choice would have been a salad or green vegetable but this was in my learning days and I thought a carb was a carb. The 1-oz bag I’d eat then had 14 grams of carbs.) If I got tired of roast beef I’d buy a rotisserie chicken and eat half.

For supper I’d eat a nice serving of meat. It could be steak, chicken, lean pork loin, or lean ground beef. I’d have a salad with lots of olive oil and vinegar as a dressing, and sometimes a small carb serving (maybe half a baked potato).

For snacks I’d almost always have a couple of cans of tuna (packed in oil but drained) – usually made into tuna salad with chopped up celery, carrots, and Miracle Whip. I’d usually eat a half dozen wheat or rye crackers with it.

I made sure I had one and one-half cups of protein powder each day and usually a few ounces or more of heavy cream. I made up my favorite recipe mix (see below) before I went to bed each night so it’d be ready for the next day. Then I’d either drink two or three shakes during the day, or sip it all day long until the entire amount was finished.

MY FAVORITE PROTEIN RECIPE
1 1/2 cups protein (today that equates to four scoops Beverly Ultra Size or go old school and use measuring cups to portion out your Ultra Size), 4-6 ounces heavy cream, 12-20 ounces of water. Every once and awhile I’d mix the cup and a half of protein with 4 oz cream and 20 oz milk instead of water. I also added 2-4 raw eggs which was an accepted practice ‘back in the day’ but nowadays you should boil them for a minute first or better yet, use pasteurized egg whites and a tablespoon of olive oil instead. If I had a real low carb intake the day before, I often added a whole banana to the mix for the next day. Mix all this up and put it in the fridge overnight (and you can even freeze it and eat it as it melts all day long). For females desiring to follow this program use one cup of protein and reduce the other ingredients accordingly.

NUTRITION SUMMARY
• Meals should consist primarily of
protein, vegetables, salads, and
low-carb fruits (see chart on
previous page).
• Limit total carbs to one hundred
grams or fewer per day.
• No sweets or white flour products.

SUPPLEMENT PROGRAM
• 1-1/2 cups (or 6 scoops)
Ultra Size daily
• 1 Super Pak daily
• 18 Ultra 40 liver extract tablets
per day
• 9 EFA Gold capsules daily

FINAL THOUGHTS
This is how Mr. Ditillo ended his letter to me, “What you are attempting to undertake is the most difficult thing to do in all of bodybuilding. You are going after two things at the same time: more muscle and less fat. The road will be hard and long no doubt, but you must persevere if you are to succeed.” This diet and routine did the trick for me, and if you will do it just as I have outlined it here for you, it will do the same for you.

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