For decades, bulking and cutting has been the norm for guys and gals who want to put on lean mass and lower their body fat percentage. The concept is pretty simple, you eat a lot and workout hard so you can gain muscle. Along the way though, you also wind up with plenty of extra, unwanted body fat. So to counter that, you jump into the "cutting phase," which means that you do lots of cardio.

The end results; at least in theory, anyway, is that you are where you want to be. You've put on the muscle you wanted to add, and youre as lean as you want to be. So there you have the basic concept. It sounds pretty simple and straightforward, right? Think again, because it's not.

The truth is that it is only the rarest of the rare guys out there who can pull this off successfully. They're also the ones you tend to see on the covers of and read about in the fitness magazines, too. For the rest of us, about 99.5% of the guys out there, this is a strategy that is essentially doomed to fail.

I'll tell you why this happens. First of all, when most guys start a bulking phase they usually eat everything in sight. And it's true that at least a few years ago the "experts" would advocate eating whatever you felt like, with little regard to its nutrition content. Stuff like fat, carbs, sugars and protein weren't considered.

As a result, yes, you gain muscle but you also put on a heck of a lot of fat and you've just sent your metabolism on a hellacious roller coaster ride.

But even if you don't gorge yourself with foods like pizza, fried chicken and double stuffed potatoes, you still put on unwanted fatj, it's just the nature of the human body. Even though intellectually we've evolved over the past 10,000 years or so, our bodies are still living in the Stone Age.

In other words, your body has no idea about what you're trying to do. It thinks that you're eating a lot because of the upcoming winter or some other situation where food is scarce. Its natural reaction to "more food" is to store at least some of that energy as fat-putting it away for a rainy day so to speak. Except for those genetically-gifted few, thats just the bottom line.

So you've put on all this 'muscle' and fat, now it's time to move into the cutting phase. Again, good luck with that one because just like the bulking phase, you're fighting an uphill battle with the human genetic makeup. The cutting phase includes two parts-lots of cardio and a sudden, radical change in your diet.

The problem is that our bodies are hardwired to fight extremes. As an example, say you suddenly drop your daily caloric intake from 3,000 to 1,500 calories. At first you lose weight rapidly but then the body kicks into survival mode and responds to the sudden drop by slowing its metabolism. Of course you can put speed up the metabolism by doing cardio but like we just said, you're going to be burning muscle along with the fat.

And fad diets don't help eitherat least not in the long-run. Over and over again it's the same story-you start out with great results but then the body adapts and then suddenly our progress slows to a crawl or comes to a halt entirely. We know its the same thing with training so why should it be any different with diet? Our bodies' adaptability is a great strength but sometimes it can be a pain in the ass too. But its not about to change anytime soon so we need to learn to work with it instead of trying to fight it.

And that my friends, is the single biggest reason that bulking and cutting just wont work-it's fighting against our bodies' natural systems. If we want real success we need to work with our bodies not against them. And that's what were going to talk about next-a system that works with our bodies, not against them, while bringing about sustainable results.

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