Todd Moody wrote:
> >The basic idea is to overfeed for about two weeks,
> then restrict
> >calories for two weeks, thus doing a rapid cycle
> "yo-yo" diet.>

Justin wrote:
> It's one of those ideas that just doesn't work.  It
> sounds great on paper,
> but it rarely works in real life.  The idea to use
> shorter 2 week cycles of
> massing alternated with 2 week cutting cycles has
> been around for a long
> time.  Bill Phillips made it famous by creating his
> own personal variation
> in his b.s. supplement review guide.

Actually, he first introduced it in his magazine. I
read the "series" of 3 articles. He may have later
used it to promote his supplements, but the articles
included none of his hype. The "program" was the
result of some studies done by a (Swedish?)
researcher. He noted that almost all diets work in the
short-term, but lose their effectiveness over the long
term. Therefore, he postulated that it was not
necessarily the diet in fault, but rather the
individual's metabolism adapting to the particular
diet. Later, the researcher added the bodybuilding
"angle" of cycling high and low calories to increase
muscle mass.

>  The people who
> love this sort of diet
> are the supplement manufacturers.  It allows them to
> suggest a 2 week
> massing phase where the trainee would be requirred
> to take whey protein,
> creatine, meal replacement shakes, glutamine,
> androstendione, creatine, etc.

In the original series of magazine articles, very
little was mentioned of supplementation, other than
the usuals - protein supplementation and creatine.

> It doesn't work, and it would spell disaster for
> natural trainees.  If
> anyone says they got results from such an
> unorthodox, unscientific program,
> then they were either doing something seriously
> wrong before or they're a
> liar.

According to the article, the (Swedish?) researcher
was getting some very good results with his test
subjects. I don't know if they were just weight loss
subjects, or if bodybuilders were included.

> Plus it's going
> to be difficult to grow
> accustomed to eating so much food, and then have to
> eat so little for 2
> weeks.  Going back and forth from eating large
> amounts to small amounts of
> food is very hard to do.

Probably quite true. Which may explain why it may work
in a controlled study, but not in "real life". I can't
say, because I have not tried such an approach.

I would recommend reading the entire series of
articles before making judgements.