Below is my review of Renegade Diet. It will give you an idea of what Ferruggia is offering, and an insight into what I’ve been working on. My book includes another 16 DIFFERENT PROGRAMS, giving you a tremendous summary (and analysis) of what’s on the market out there and what it can do for you. My book will be out in another month or so, but in the meantime, PLEASE tell me what you think of Jay’s book and my write-up of it. (Note that this is an ABBREVIATED version of what’s in my e-book.

1. The Renegade Diet Reviewed
I have two big announcements. The first is that my
friend and colleague Jason Ferruggia has just
released his looong awaited Renegade
Diet (which you can pick up HERE). The second is
that I’m very, very close to releasing my next FREE
e-book—a buyer’s guide to the best training and
nutrition programs of the past several years. This
project has been a huge undertaking and a major
labor of love, and I think you’ll find it very helpful in
determining where to take your training and diet
plans in the coming months.
Below is my review of Renegade Diet. It will give
you an idea of what Ferruggia is offering, and an
insight into what I’ve been working on. My book
includes another 16 DIFFERENT PROGRAMS,
giving you a tremendous summary (and analysis) of
what’s on the market out there and what it can do
for you. My book will be out in another month or so,
but in the meantime, PLEASE tell me what you
think of Jay’s book and my write-up of it. (Note
that this is an ABBREVIATED version of
what’s in my e-book.)

2. The Renegade Diet combines philosophies on
digestive health and intermittent fasting in a diet
that you can maintain long-term. It’s mainly for
body re-composition—losing fat while gaining
muscle, healthfully—but can be tweaked for
maximum leanness or muscle gains. In the book,
Ferruggia brings together many of the theories and
strategies espoused by Martin Berkhan, John
Kiefer, and Michael Keck, as well as digestion gurus
like Paul Chek.
About the Author
Ferruggia, “The Renegade Strength Coach”, has
been my fitness adviser at Men’s Fitness for years
and has written a regular column called “The Hard-
Gainer”. He’s trained all kinds of athletes and
regular joes for the past 18 years. Of course,
Ferruggia also designed my transformation

3. program in 2010 that helped me lose 35 pounds
while increasing my squat by 50 pounds.
How To Do It
The Renegade Diet divides your day into three
sections—the fasting phase (16 hours),
theundereating phase (four hours), and the
overeating phase (four hours). It plays out like
this: you’ll have a long fasting period followed by a
few light meals consisting mainly of protein, fat,
and vegetables. At night, you have a four-hour
“feast” where you get most of your carbs for the day.
The fasting phase is designed to give your digestive
system a break and speed fat loss. It can improve
insulin sensitivity and promote greater release of
growth hormone and insulin-like growth factors,
and it lets you maintain steady energy and mental
focus throughout the day. The nightly feast creates a
slight anabolic effect so you can gain muscle, and it
helps you fall into a deeper, more restful sleep.
1. Fast. Counting the time you spent sleeping
the night before, you should go a total of 16
hours without food. So if you had your last meal
of the day at 10 p.m. last night, you won’t eat until 2
p.m. today. Drink lots of water during this time. Not
only will it help you control hunger, but it will keep
you focused and energetic.
2. To break the fast, juice some vegetables or drink a
whey protein shake blended with spinach (mix it up
well and you won’t taste the leaves). Begin the
underrating phase by consuming mainly
easily-digested protein and fat foods, and
vegetables. White fish, eggs, nuts, and yogurt are all

4. options. You can have some carbs, but limit them to
fruit (Ferruggia recommends berries). This goes on
for four hours.
3. Do your weight workout (if you can’t do this in
the afternoon, the morning option is explained
below), and then drink a protein shake and eat
sweet potatoes for a post-workout meal. The
overeating phase has now begun. You may want to
pop some digestive enzymes before you feast to help
you digest everything—most of your calorie intake
for the day comes now. Start the extended feast with
a large salad (you can squeeze some prebiotics in
here, too), and then eat a big protein dinner. Grass-
fed beef, chicken, fish, etc. Follow that with some
big servings of carbs—sweet potatoes are
Ferruggia’s preference. This sequence of
prebiotics/probiotics and vegetables, followed by
meat and then carbs is the prescribed order, and
can be repeated until you’ve had your fill.
This is the basic plan for losing your gut while
gradually gaining muscle mass, but it can be
adjusted. If you are very overweight (Ferruggia says
15% body fat or higher), you must concentrate on
getting lean first and improving your body’s
sensitivity to insulin. Otherwise, the carbs you eat
will most likely make you fatter. In this case, you
would eat no carbs save for some berries
and maybe a sweet potato after your
workout. If you are skinny and want to bulk up,
you can shorten the underrating phase by a few
hours in order to consume more food. Also, you
should eat more carbs at night.

5. What I Like About It
It’s healthy. This isn’t a diet but a lifestyle, and
one that is likely to please both the people who
follow it and government organizations that are
typically skeptical of fitness industry nutrition
recommendations. There’s nothing too
controversial here apart from skipping breakfast.
Ferruggia recommends all organic foods, if possible,
shies away from supplements except for simple
probiotics and whey protein, and advocates plenty
of vegetables. There is no nutrient that is
restricted—carb meals are timed and controlled but
not eliminated. But it’s Ferruggia’s attention to
digestive and overall systemic health that really sets
the plan apart.
The book makes several references to cleansing the
liver and easing stress on the gut, which is an aspect
of nutrition—and a healthy lifestyle—that is rarely
discussed by nutritionists. The worst you can say
here is that some of this is unproven
science. Whether lemon can really cleanse the liver
or sea salt in water can improve digestion to any
notable degree is questionable, and hasn’t been
clearly demonstrated in any studies I’m aware of.
But you have to file it under the category of “it can’t
hurt”, and it certainly won’t throw off your diet or
cause any health problems to give it a shot. Try it
and see how you feel.
It fits with most schedules. As with
Kiefer’s Carb Back-loading, The Renegade Diet has
most of your carb as well as calorie intake coming at
night. This means that big, social dinners fit well
within the confines of the plan, and you won’t need

6. to cook, prep, and pack lots of meals ahead before a
busy workday. The long bouts of fasting allow you to
be more productive during the morning.
The fasting phase sharpens your mind. One
of the hardest facets of the intermittent fasting
concept for anyone to swallow is the fact that you
simply won’t be mentally sluggish and starving
when you try it. If you drink water in the morning as
recommended, you’ll feel fine.
The sympathetic nervous system (your
“fight” or “flight” instinct) is on overdrive
during a fast, and that means your mind will be
highly alert. The one thing you can do that will
surely dull your senses is to eat sugar and starches,
which The Renegade Diet forbids at this time. At
worst, you’ll go through an adaptation period that
may last a few days up to two weeks, but your body
will eventually come around.
You’ll sleep better. Carbs are known to have a
sedative effect, as is a big meal in general. Rather
than feeling groggy after a big lunch when you still
have hours of work to do, The Renegade Diet lets
you get that feeling right before bed time. You will
fall asleep more easily and it will be more restful.
You don’t have to worry about overeating at
night. Ferruggia doesn’t ask you to do many
calculations at any point in the day. He prescribes
some ranges for your macronutrients, but you don’t
have to be anal about them. When you overeat at
night, your body is more than ready to take in all
you can give it, and a huge amount of food that
would leave you stuffed and sick at any other time

7. of day will feel normal by this point. You probably
won’t go to bed feeling fat. Furthermore, there’s
no limit on how much protein you can digest at one
time. There’s no research to back up the old idea
that your body could only process 30 or 40 grams in
a sitting, so eat up. On the other hand, if you feel
sluggish and bloated during the afternoon
underrating phase, that’s a sure sign that you
overdid it and should eat less during this phase
going forward.
What To Consider
It may be hard to stick with. While meal
scheduling is made convenient and protein-, fat-
and carb-foods are allowed daily, the actual list of
food choices is fairly short. Furthermore, timing
meals properly throughout the day can be tricky.
Beef is fine to eat but considered too hard to digest
for the underrating phase, so you can’t have it until
dinner. Forget about a big business lunch with your
colleagues because you have to eat sparingly until
the evening. Of course, if you have plans one
evening that keep you away from a kitchen, you may
not be able to pack in all the food you need before
bed. Which brings me to my next point…
It’s not ideal for gaining mass. Skinny guys
(“hard gainers”) have to eat often and abundantly.
While Ferruggia argues that the longer you fast, the
better your body will be able to absorb and
assimilate the food you feed it later, a window of
only four hours to feast may not be enough
to pack the necessary calories in. If this turns
out to be the case, he says you can extend the
feasting window, or skip the underrating phase

8. entirely. (He goes into more detail about this in the
book, so pick it up if you’re interested.)
On A Personal Note
As with most everything Ferruggia has put out over
the years, I tried this plan and got great results. The
fasting phase felt GREAT—I was clear-headed and
productive through the afternoon (no post-lunch
energy crash). Bloating, gas, and other mild albeit
annoying digestive issues cleared up for me within
days, and the digestive enzymes and
probiotics he introduced me to remain a
part of my diet and always will be. For people
looking to lose weight healthfully or re-compose
their bodies with more muscle and less fat, this is a
great plan. Despite all the hype and propaganda
saying that eating after 7 p.m. is fattening, and that
you should eat your carbs in the morning, you’ll see
after a week or two on this program that those
notions are totally false.
In fact, the one problem I encountered with The
Renegade Diet was that it was hard to keep
weight on! I got leaner effortlessly, and when I
wanted to gain more muscle with it, I found that it
just wasn’t possible to get enough calories in. I
extended the feasting time and added grains, which
Ferruggia allows as a last resort, but the only way I
found I could eat enough was by allowing for more
food earlier in the day. Of course, when I did this,
my digestive issues became more prominent. For
most of us, I think that’s going to be an unavoidable
trade-off when over-eating for mass.