The GOMAD Diet
Twitter
Facebook
Digg
Stumble
Reddit
Starting Strength creator Mark Rippetoe made the GOMAD diet popular in workout circles and especially advises beginners to follow it. But does the GOMAD method really work?
What Is GOMAD?
GOMAD stands for “Gallon Of Milk A Day” and wants you to drink a gallon (~3.8 L) of whole milk per day on top of what you usually eat. Implied is that this will increase your “mass” and workout results.
Yet for anyone having their nutrition halfway under control the additional protein from one gallon of milk does nothing. You can have too much of a good thing and the “mass” will most likely be fat mass:
Where do my 0.5 – 1 g of protein per lb of body weight come from? One of my sources is the respected International Society for Sports Nutrition, that in its 2007 stand on protein and nutrition wrote:
Strength/power exercise is thought to increase protein requirements even more than endurance exercise, particularly during the initial stages of training and/or sharp increases in volume. Recommendations for strength/power exercise typically range from 1.6 to 2.0 g/kg/day, although some research suggests that protein requirements may actually decrease during training due to biological adaptations that improve net protein retention.
GOMAD Is Like Steroids?
Let’s elaborate the video a bit further. Mr. Rippetoe’s basic claim about the GOMAD diet is that especially for beginners it will work wonders:
(…) people who drink lots of milk during their novice phase get bigger and stronger than people who don’t.
Mehdi Hadim, who runs the popular Stronglifts program and adopted the GOMAD method from Mark Rippetoe, claims that especially “hardgainers” will find it beneficial:
To gain weight you must eat more than you’re doing now. But if you’re skinny and struggle to gain weight, you know that eating more can be hard. You may feel like throwing up every time you try to eat more.
Luckily there’s an easy, fast & cheap way to gain weight naturally: GOMAD. Any “hard gainer” will gain weight drinking 1 US Gallon Of Milk A Day.
Hadim even goes as far as saying that these excess amounts of calories and protein actually work like steroids, of all things:
Some say that GOMAD works even better than steroids with beginners who want to gain weight fast.
Especially For Beginners?
Reread those quotes and note how Hadim always stresses “weight”, not muscle mass. That goes through his entire article – we are simply invited to make the assumption that the gained weight he is talking about is muscle.
This distinction is especially important for the novices Rippetoe addresses, as all that protein won’t make a difference on their gains in strength or muscle mass:
- The majority of strength gains beginners make do not come from increases in muscle mass, but from the brain learning to do the movements better and recruiting more muscle fibers into them
- In beginners the body also spends some time learning to use the available protein better – any increase in protein intake will therefore mostly be wasted
But It Worked, You Fool!
Of course, there are people claiming that GOMAD worked for them. They got stronger, increased in muscle mass, have a bigger biceps – you name it. But is this really due to GOMAD? Consider these:
- A beginner starting to work out will usually make quick increases in strength, even if his nutrition doesn’t fulfill a single of the requirements advanced trainees have to follow – this is due to the increasing brain – muscle connection above
- Measurable increases in biceps / upper arm circumference after four weeks are very likely due to a thicker fat layer on the arm from gaining 15 – 20 lbs of weight at the same time
- In intermediate / advanced trainees GOMAD will have a measurable effect on strength gains if before starting the program protein requirements were not fulfilled
- An increase in body weight does not necessarily mean the increase is due to more muscle mass
Does GOMAD Make Sense At All?
To gain 1 lb of body mass you need a surplus of about 3,500 kcal (or 7,000 for a kg). An excess 2,344 kcal per day from a gallon of milk will therefore make you gain an extra two pounds (or 1 kg) of weight about every three days (2,344 * 3 = 7,032).
Is that muscle mass? No. I can’t stress this enough: increased body weight does not equal increased muscle mass. If you think increases in your muscle mass can be measured by increases in the number the bathroom scale shows you, then very obese people could tell themselves they are the strongest in the world.
As I said in the video, if you are dangerously underweight (BMI < 19), the GOMAD diet can be an option to get out of the immediate danger zone. For anyone else and with enough protein from their regular nutrition, GOMAD will most likely only result in increased fat mass and less muscle definition.
Picture courtesy of “www.bluewaikiki.com“.
19 Comments
Time to tackle the beast:
When looking at GOMAD, a few things must be considered:
1) Who it’s for/isn’t for
2) Why it’s recommended for them/aims
3) How long should it be done for
Also, as a side note, we should leave Mehdi out of this since he spews BS and taints Mark’s methods.
So here we go:
1) GOMAD is for people who are underweight, weak, generally thin, OR those who simply want to gain mass. As a caveat, this mass is not specified to be muscle.
From page 306 of SSBT2nd Ed.:
“A gallon of milk per day, added to the
regular diet at intervals throughout the day, will put weight on any skinny kid. Really. The
problem is getting them to do it. It is currently a fad, at this writing, for boys to think they need a
“six pack”, although most of them don’t have an ice chest to put it in. The psychology of this
particular historical phenomenon is best left to others to investigate and explain. Aesthetics aside,
heavier is eventually necessary if stronger is to occur, and once most people see that weight gain
actually makes them look better (amazingly enough), they become less resistant to the idea.
Milk works because it is easy, it is available, it doesn’t need any preparation, and it has all
the components necessary for growing mammals, which your trainees most definitely are. There
also seems to be something special about milk that the equivalent amount of calories, protein, fat,
and carbs can’t duplicate in terms of growth enhancement. It may be the fact that milk has been
shown to have very high levels of insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1), a peptide hormone that has
been shown to have some tenuous relationship to accelerated growth in mammals. But that
research is far from conclusive; suffice it to say that people who drink lots of milk during their
novice phase get bigger and stronger than people who don’t.”
Furthermore, from his article “A Clarification”
“The goal of the program is not to make you fat. The program is for
increasing strength and muscle mass. The idea is that you must gain some bodyfat in the process if
your bodyfat is low, and that you should lose some bodyfat if it is high. I don’t want you fat, but I
don’t care about seeing your abs. If you want to see your abs, fine – worry about that later. I want you
to get big by getting stronger, and to do this it may be necessary for your bodyfat percentage to go up
in the process. Later, if necessary, the process of losing it can be more easily accomplished when you
have more muscle mass. But right now, just worry about getting strong, and big will be a side-effect, as
will improved body composition. And if you don’t stop misinterpreting this, I will have you all killed.”
More from this article:
“Eating correctly may
mean 6000 calories/day with a gallon of whole milk, or it may mean 3500 calories/day on a paleo-type
lower carb no-dairy diet, depending on your initial body composition”
You see, GOMAD is not for everybody. To solidify that further:
“After the first three or four months, a change will be necessary for most guys that started off skinny.
If you have done the program correctly, you will have gained quite a bit of weight, about 60% of it
being lean body mass – muscle, tendon, and bone. This means that your bodyfat may have also gone
from ~10% to 18-19%. This is fine; it was necessary to produce the LBM increase. But now it’s time
to modify the diet to reflect your body’s approach to its limit of fast LBM growth. It obviously can’t
go on forever, but it must occur at first to get our goal accomplished. Now, we need to drop the milk
down to a half gallon a day for a while, and then perhaps less than that. At the same time, daily caloric
intake should drop to about 4000/day, accomplished by cleaning up the carb intake and focusing on
dietary quality instead of quantity like you did at first. This will allow your bodyfat levels to drop back
to where they need to be, in the range of 15-17%, normal for athletic males in our demographic.”
Ah, so here we have the modification of GOMAD that few take into account. This answers question 2. This also answers question 3.
In sum:
GOMAD is for skinny people who should gain weight for a period, then drop some when their strength has increased. It’s not for overweight people, and it’s not a permanent dietary strategy.
Also, here’s another article on milk that Rip has nothing to do with:
http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=2011%20rfwcm%20presentation%20nsca&source=web&cd=1&ved=0CCQQFjAA&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.xlathlete.com%2Fxl%2Fevents%2F2011%2520RFWCM%2520Presentation%2520-%2520NSCA%2520Las%2520Vegas%2520FINAL.pdf&ei=4tJOT5KQCoXY0QG0gtHgAg&usg=AFQjCNFocUfqD86WBkiD0DSNhn5LTggfEA&sig2=PcWYDw9yXJ_8YKXnSjy87w&cad=rja
(sorry for long link)
Scroll to page 36 and read the next few slides. Take a look at page 47 for the special benefits of milk as a post workout beverage. Not quite like steroids, but definitely chock full of good things.
Sorry for the long post.
TL;DR
Thanks for this detailed response, John. However, I differ on his claim that “you will have gained quite a bit of weight, about 60% of it
being lean body mass – muscle, tendon, and bone”.
Where do the 60% come from? In other words: how does he arrive at that number? What does a hypercaloric diet based on milk do to LBM that a balanced, non-deficient diet with enough protein doesn’t?
His figures are based on what he’s observed at WFAC, his gym in Texas. Not positive on the methods that he’s using to arrive at this number–caliper, eyeballing it, etc.
However, even if it were 40%, it’s still a significant increase in muscle. This is sort of like the bulk/cut approach of pro bodybuilders. Eat at a caloric excess to maintain an anabolic environment to ensure muscle growth and strength increases, then cut back later. The milk is a fast way to get the extra calories that is loaded with proteins, calcium, vitamin D, etc. Sure you can drink OJ and get the calories, but that’s not as good as milk nutrition wise.
I think that’s the problem: we don’t know how he got those numbers. I’m a nerd, so I like to see some something I can logically follow 🙂
Is the change brought by GOMAD is permanent or temporary? My waist has increased from 28 to 30.
As temporary or permanent as it takes you to lose the fat 😉
now I am starting to get MAD!. -;)
OMG, if I drink a gallon of milk a day I will probably collapse within a week not to mention I will get fat. So now imagine me getting fat and then collapsing with a twitching eye, LOL
The only way I would ever touch milk is when I take my weekly milk bath – good for the skin! :).
All this weird diet stuff people keep coming up with, maybe I will come up with my own, hmm let’s see, oh I got one:
Eat 50 bananas a day, and drink 3 gallons of water. On Fridays you can have a mango :), and on weekends you can treat your self to smell a steak. If you follow this diet you will loose weight soon :), hopefully you can keep your mind as well and not lose it before the weight.
Copycat! -> http://www.30bananasaday.com/
*evil giggle*
Apparently there is nothing weird enough that somebody out there didn’t dream up before 😀
Yes, bananas supposedly contains some tenuous growth hormone for primates, which accelerates synthesis in upper body back tissue. This relates to our particular evolutionary lineage as apes. As observed in monkeys, chimps, and other close ancestors, the level of this hormone required is quite abundant in bananas, which many scientists are now concluding strengthens the ability for particularly “climbing and pulling” movements – climbing and swinging from trees, as a result of increased upper back strength. Observers have noticed a gradual increased performance in especially pull-up reps, all variables controlled.
Man, I just at this moment ate a banana! 😀
This stuff worked for many people for decades.Now if you want to see some really over the top stuff read these three links.
http://chaosandpain.blogspot.com/2011/08/cant-gain-weight-guess-what-youre-doing.html
http://chaosandpain.blogspot.com/2011/08/cant-gain-weight-guess-what-youre-doing_12.html
http://chaosandpain.blogspot.com/2011/08/cant-gain-weight-guess-what-youre-doing_18.html
Pay attention to J.M. Blakely.
These guys were one of the strongest human beings to live. After reading that I became more relaxed about my diet (and stayed at the same BF + it became easier to reach my calorie demands because I do FBW routine 3 days a week with hill sprints, gymnastic moves and other stuff with manual labor for the weekends).
But yeah, no need to drink so much milk if you’re looking to keep your abs.
GOMAD is certainly more catchy than 4,546.09mlOMAD.
LMAO! 😀
GOMAD rules!
If you’ve ever read Rips interviews you will understand why there is no peer reviewed data with a bunch of statistical tests that can be manipulated to state whatever want them to. He has said it before: just because it’s anecdotal doesn’t mean it doesn’t work! Example being that we all know anabolic steroids increase muscle mass at substantial rates yet there’s no peer reviewed literature to support this! Theory provides a good starting point but when something works u don’t need p values to verify this.
Quite to the contrary, anabolic steroids have been researched since the 19th century:
http://rphr.endojournals.org/cgi/content/full/57/1/411
Mr Rippetoe should also keep in mind that just because it’s anecdotal, doesn’t mean it works.