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Book Review – The Muscle & Strength Pyramid - Nutrition Second Edition

Wayne du Preez included in Books  Fitness and The Muscle & Strength Pyramid  Nutrition Philosophy
 About 4400 words 21 minutes 

Overview

Finally finished this gem. I meant to wrap it up within a month of starting… but I dropped the ball ⚽.

As mentioned in another post, I’m competing at Aoteroa Strength Alliance Rosetown Posedown on the 6th June 2026, and this book accompanied me through the torture we call cardio 😆.

I have already reviewed its companion book, The Muscle and Strength Pyramid – Training 2. If you haven’t read that review yet, go check it out.

Here’s my summary of The Muscle & Strength Pyramid — Nutrition, Second Edition.

The Muscle and Strength Pyramid - Nutrition

Similarly to its companion book, the authors aim to bring clarity to a field that is often rooted in misconception and oversimplification.

The authors write
I typically can tell if someone has some deep-rooted misconceptions about nutrition based on the questions they ask me. Very commonly in the fitness field, you will be asked questions like, “Should I take the yolks out when I eat eggs?” or “Is bread bad?” Well, that’s kind of missing the whole point. Does it fit with your energy balance? Does it fit in with the fat or carbohydrate intakes that you have available for the day? Such queries may sound perfectly reasonable, but in fact, they imply a fundamental lack of awareness of what is important in the realm of nutrition

As with the Training book, the core ideas can largely be captured in a single image:

If you are serious about managing your weight and improving your physique, you need to start at the bottom of the pyramid. That’s where most of the progress is made.

As you move up, you encounter diminishing returns. The details matter — but only after the fundamentals are in place.

Mindset and Materials

This section covers what I would argue are two of the most important aspects of any weight-loss or physique journey. In some ways, these may be even more important than the objective pyramid itself.

The Mental Side

The authors emphasize the psychological component heavily — and rightly so. Without adherence, the entire pyramid collapses.

To track or not to track?

Throughout the book, the authors consistently distinguish between two groups:

  1. Recreational trainees who want to improve their physique.
  2. Competitive athletes in bodybuilding or weight-class sports.

The level of dietary precision required between these groups is worlds apart.

If you’re not stepping on stage or making weight for competition, you may not need to track calories, macros, and bodyweight obsessively.

Rigid Meal Plans

The authors warn against overly rigid meal plans because they can create binary thinking:

The authors write
Either one thing or the other, zero or one. People see it as, “I’m on the meal plan,” or “I’m off the meal plan.” In our minds, we then gauge success in black or white terms; I’ve either followed the diet and I was good, or I’m off the diet and I was bad.

That said, I do think structured planning can be extremely useful — especially when calories are tight. Personally, I find it difficult to hit targets consistently “on the run.”

Later in the book, they discuss relying more on internal satiety signals — something I’m currently experimenting with.

The “Good Food vs. Bad Food” Approach

This is one of the most common traps in nutrition.

Binary thinking:

  • Don’t eat X.
  • Only eat Y.
The authors write
There are very few, if any, foods that are actively unhealthy for you (assuming you don’t have a clinical condition). Meaning, there are no foods that if eaten once, regardless of quantity, will immediately and measurably harm your body. The only plausible negative connotation associated with say, a Twinkie, a Pop Tart, and other foods commonly labeled as “bad” is that they are relatively devoid of micronutrients, fiber, and protein.

How to Track Body Weight

The authors write
Body weight is one of the most important variables we can track to gauge if we’re actually getting to our goal.

But bodyweight fluctuates.

The authors write
It is totally normal for your body weight to fluctuate 1–2% on a daily basis due to shifts in water (sometimes more for some people). This is caused by day-to-day fluctuations in food intake, sodium intake, alcohol, and stress hormones, or from hormonal shifts during certain phases of a menstrual cycle (among other things).

Single weigh-ins are noisy.

If you’re not averaging your weight over 7 days, you’re basically reacting to water and glycogen, not actual progress.

Level 1: Energy Balance

Everything starts here.

If the bottom of the pyramid isn’t right, nothing above it matters.

Maintenance Calories

Before losing or gaining weight, you first need to know roughly how much food maintains your current body weight.

The popular approach is to plug your stats into an online calculator. That’s fine as a starting point — but it’s highly individual and often inaccurate.

The authors prefer a more practical method: Track your calorie intake and daily bodyweight for two weeks.

At the end of that period, you might see something like this:

Week1Week2
141.7141.8
142.1142.2
142.7143.0
141.7141.7
142.5142.5
141.9142.8
142.1142.0
Average ~142.1Average ~142.3

That small increase tells you something important: You are likely in a slight surplus.

The authors write
Now you see that you are slowly gaining weight. But what does this mean with regards to calories? Well, we know that 1 lb (~0.5 kg) of adipose tissue contains ~3500 calories [1]. Therefore we can estimate how much of a surplus or deficit you are in based on weight change. While the “3500 calorie rule” isn’t perfect since not all weight gained or lost is fat and energy expenditure changes over time [2], this value is still a good way to roughly estimate maintenance calories.

If bodyweight increased by ~0.2 kg over 7 days:

  • 1 kg of fat ≈ 7000 kcal
  • 0.2 kg ≈ 1400 kcal surplus
  • 1400 kcal ÷ 7 days ≈ 200 kcal/day above maintenance

This isn’t perfect science — but it’s good enough to guide decisions.

Gaining or Cutting?

The authors write
My rough guidelines are a maximum of ~15% body fat for men and ~23% body fat for women for beginning a gaining phase. After starting, allow your body fat to climb ~3–5% in the course of a gaining phase before you do a brief ‘mini cut’

This visual illustrates the principle well: Stay within a reasonable body-fat range while progressing.

Appropriate Rates of Weight Loss

The authors write
For weight loss, I’d recommend that you aim to lose weight at a rate of 0.5 to 1.0% of body weight per week to minimize muscle and strength loss [7]. With the 200 lb (90 kg) male example we talked about earlier, this would be 1 to 2 lb (~0.5 to 0.9 kg) per week.

For a 90 kg individual:

  • 0.5–0.9 kg per week

Personally, I respond better to a slower cut. It’s easier to adhere to and I’m not constantly hungry.

The authors also make an important point:

The authors write
As a rule of thumb, your total cardio for the week should take no more than half the time you spend lifting weights.

Appropriate Rates of Weight Gain

The more advanced you are, the slower you should gain weight.

Beginners can gain faster with a higher proportion of muscle. Advanced lifters? Most rapid weight gain becomes fat.

Energy Availability

This is where things get interesting.

The authors write
The term ‘energy availability’ refers to whether or not you have adequate energy to maintain not only the energy demands of exercise or sport but also of normal physiological function.

There are rough lower thresholds:

  • Women: ~30 kcal/kg/LBM
  • Men: ~25 kcal/kg/LBM

But the authors emphasize symptoms over strict numbers.

Warning signs of low energy availability include:

  • Loss of menstrual cycle
  • Persistent food focus
  • Frequent illness
  • Poor mood
  • Inability to progress
  • Loss of libido
  • Hormone markers outside reference ranges

Leanness has a cost.

Level 2: Macronutrients

Macros — as they’re commonly called — refer to protein, carbohydrates, and fats.

The authors briefly mention alcohol as a fourth macronutrient (since it contains calories), but realistically, it’s not one you want to rely on often — especially in a physique-focused context.

Fat Loss Phase

Protein Intake

This section is fascinating.

The authors walk through multiple studies to arrive at a practical recommendation for protein intake while dieting — where preserving muscle mass becomes critical.

The authors write
To conclude, based on the above evidence and my experience as a coach, what probably makes the most sense for protein intake while you’re dieting is somewhere between 1.0 to 1.2 grams per pound (2.2– 2.6 g/kg) of body weight.

That is higher than most general-population recommendations — but context matters.

When calories are restricted:

  • Muscle retention becomes harder.
  • Hunger increases.
  • Recovery becomes more fragile.

Higher protein helps buffer those pressures.

Carbs and Fats Intake

The authors prioritize muscle retention in this order:

The authors write
Lifting weights is the number one thing you can do to prevent lean body mass losses during a diet. Number two would be your rate of weight loss, and number three would be your macronutrient intake that we’re figuring out right now.

The following are recommended values for fats and carbs:

The authors write
So with fat intake, I recommend 15–25% of calories while you are dieting for most people, and then the remaining calories are assigned as carbs. Yes, 15% is lower than ideal in most cases, but that’s why diets don’t last forever.

As for minimum values, these minimums act as guardrails.

Below them, hormonal function, performance, and adherence can start to degrade.

The authors write
To prevent this, use the minimum intakes of 0.25 g/lb (~0.5 g/kg) for dietary fat, and 0.5 g/lb (~1 g/kg) for dietary carbohydrate.

Gaining/Loosing Summary

The takeaway is fairly simple:

  • Protein stays relatively high.
  • Fat is kept within functional minimums.
  • Carbohydrates fill the remaining calorie allocation depending on goal.

Level 3: Micronutrient and Water

Micronutrients refer to vitamins and minerals. If you are deficient in them, it can impact things like:

  • Metabolism
  • Strength
  • Bone health

The authors really drive home the point that aggressively excluding food groups — especially while dieting — can backfire. If you live on nothing but chicken and rice 😆, you may very well end up deficient in certain vitamins and minerals over time.

They recommend the following general approach:

So yes… your mom was right about eating your fruits and vegetables 😆.

Supplements

The stack I have been experimenting with tends to include:

  • Vitamin D – I am basically a vampire and avoid the sun as much as possible.
  • Magnesium – Seems to help with sleep, though I am still experimenting here.
  • Fish oil – Based on my reading this appears beneficial, but third-party testing is a must. This is not something to cheap out on.

Hydration

I also couldn’t pass up the opportunity to include the authors’ urine color guide.

  • 1 is what you want to aim for.
  • 8 means: drink water. Immediately.

Level 4: Nutrient Timing and Frequency

Diet breaks

The authors write
The concept of a diet break is essentially just getting your oil changed before your car breaks down.

“Breaking down” in this context usually means the psychological crash — bingeing, excessive hunger, irritability, and adherence falling apart.

Stalling of fat loss is also normal and well described:

The authors write
Additionally, time spent in a deficit can slowly but steadily reduce energy expenditure, thus making further weight loss more difficult as food has to be further reduced and energy expenditure increased.

In simple terms: the longer you diet, the more your body adapts.

How to implement a diet break

Diet breaks are generally recommended during extended cutting phases and typically last 1–2 weeks.

The authors write
The goal here is to eat as much as you can without gaining weight, or with only gaining minimal weight, as this weight will be predominantly water and glycogen. Diet breaks, in general, should last for 1 to 2 weeks. An easy way to implement a diet break is to just make all days refeed days, as refeed days should be at roughly maintenance calories.

Refeeds

Refeeds are shorter-term increases in calories — usually 24 hours, sometimes 48 hours.

Single-day refeeds are typically brought up toward maintenance calories for one day.

The authors write
I would recommend the use of 24-hour refeeds for individuals higher in body fat when beginning a diet. Metabolic adaptations are less of a concern when eating higher calories, doing less cardio, and when higher in body fat.

Multi-day refeeds may make more sense the leaner you get:

The authors write
Although speculative, it makes theoretical sense to implement multiday refeeds when leaner. Once you are below ~12% body fat if you are a male or ~20% body fat if you are a female, it might be a good idea to consider implementing multi-day refeeds.

Of course, calories don’t disappear. If you refeed, you may need to slightly reduce intake on other days to maintain your weekly deficit.

Meal frequency

The authors write
Now there is a decent amount of research on pretty much everything from one meal a day all the way up to 14 meals per day, and surprisingly limited investigation of the more moderate frequencies of four to five meals per day [19]. But collectively, the data suggests if you are eating in the range of a relatively normal number of meals, say three to six, this doesn’t make a huge difference as far as the actual outcome of body composition [19, 20].

Personally, while cutting, I tend to divide my calories into:

  • Breakfast
  • Pre-lunch
  • Lunch
  • Pre-dinner
  • Dinner

I notice I start looking forward to the next meal about an hour before it arrives — which probably says more about dieting psychology than metabolism 😆.

I haven’t experimented much with dropping to three meals per day, but based on the evidence, it likely wouldn’t drastically change body composition outcomes.

Peri-Workout Nutrition

This image summarizes it well: nutrient timing becomes more relevant the leaner you get, but it’s rarely the main driver of progress.

For dieting individuals, the authors recommend:

The authors write
I would recommend eating a normal sized meal containing both carbohydrate and protein 1 to 2 hours before you train, and again 1 to 2 hours after you train.

Chapter Summary

Level 5: Supplementation

The authors write
The majority of products in the bodybuilding industry are propped up by sexy marketing and athletes paid to endorse them. At best, there is usually a bit of pseudoscience mixed in.

That line hits hard — and it’s probably true more often than we’d like to admit.

Third-party testing is the gold standard and should be the aim whenever possible. Unfortunately, that’s not always easy to verify — especially in New Zealand, where access to clearly third-party-tested supplements (particularly vitamins and minerals) can be limited.

In practice, I tend to stick with slightly more reputable and often more expensive brands — but let’s be honest: no company is above scrutiny.

The authors also warn strongly against:

  • Proprietary blends (where you don’t know the actual dose of each ingredient)
  • Newly hyped supplements with limited human data
  • Anything relying more on testimonials than trials

If you don’t know what you’re taking, or how much you’re taking, you’re essentially trusting marketing over measurement.

Chapter Summary

Making Adjustments and Measuring Progress

This chapter dives into how to measure whether you are actually progressing toward your goal — and, just as importantly, the pitfalls of each method.

Body-Fat Testing

DEXA

The authors write
When properly done, a DXA assessment can’t typically get below a ± 2% error rate for repeated body fat percentage assessment within the same individual [1]

Even worse:

The authors write
Meaning, an athlete who solicits an assessment from a tester with limited experience using commercial grade equipment, who doesn’t ensure that subsequent tests are performed at the same time of day, in a similar proximity to training (of a similar volume and intensity), under similar dietary conditions, with a similar hydration status, and at a similar phase of the menstrual cycle for females, could easily be looking at a ± 10% variation [2]!

In other words, unless conditions are tightly controlled, DEXA can give you numbers that look precise but vary widely in practice.

Skinfold

The authors write
A skilled assessor should have an error rate of less than 5% on each skinfold measurement [4]. That means that if your sum of six skinfolds was 80 mm, if you were immediately reassessed by that same assessor, the second sum would be within 76–84 mm. This level of reliability allows an athlete to be assessed semi-frequently (say, monthly) to see if skinfolds changed more than 5% (or less, in the case of highly skilled assessors), which would indicate a true change.

The key takeaway: consistency matters more than the method.

A good skinfold assessor used consistently may be more useful than an inconsistent DEXA scan.

Scale Weight Change

Scale weight should be assessed using rolling averages (for example, a 7-day average), as daily fluctuations are normal due to:

  • Water retention
  • Sodium intake
  • Glycogen levels
  • Inflammation from training

Personally, I’ve noticed I tend to weigh more after a hard leg session the previous day. I also seem to retain more water after higher-carb meals — especially rice.

Visual Assessment

The authors write
However, they are subjective and they are qualitative, so it’s very difficult to know how much of a change and when a change should occur based on visual assessments. For the most part, I recommend these be taken as an adjunct to other assessment measurements as they indicate the quality of the weight loss (i.e. body composition changes), while the scale only measures the quantity.

Recently, after speaking to one of the judges at a show, they mentioned something that stuck with me:

Trophies are not awarded to the person with the lowest body-fat percentage or the lowest number on the scale.

They’re awarded based on how you look on stage.

That alone makes visual assessment an essential tool — especially in physique sports. The scale measures quantity. Visual assessment reflects quality.

That said, there’s a catch.

The leaner I get, the lower my energy tends to drop — and the more my brain seems to play games with me. It becomes very easy to think:

  • “I’m not lean enough.”
  • “I need to push harder.”
  • “Just a little more.”

Be warned — you might be leaner than you think.

That’s why visual assessment works best when:

  • Compared against previous photos
  • Taken under consistent lighting and conditions
  • And ideally evaluated by someone more objective than yourself

Peaking for Competition

Carb Loading

Carb loading is described as:

The authors write
Traditionally, ‘carb loading’ — the act of purposefully increasing carb intake prior to a stage appearance or sport performance — was a tool used by endurance athletes to maximize glycogen storage and thus extend the amount of time they could perform a (relatively) highintensity effort. Since the vast majority of carbohydrate is stored in skeletal muscle, bodybuilders have taken interest in carb loading as a method to acutely increase the appearance of muscle size.

The idea is simple: more glycogen stored in muscle → fuller appearance on stage.

However, the authors warn that “spillover” (appearing smooth or watery) becomes much easier toward the end of prep because glycogen storage capacity adapts downward:

The authors write
Glycogen storage is not like a gas tank. If you run a car with a 10-gallon tank for 6 months with the tank filled between 3–6 gallons at all times, the tank will still be able to hold 10 gallons at the end of that six month period. In a human being, the glycogen “gas tank” storage capacity will effectively decrease in size as enzymes downregulate over the course of prep from being on a reduced carbohydrate diet

In other words: your “tank” shrinks during prolonged dieting.

As such, carb loading should be relative to the carbohydrate intake you were consuming during prep — not some arbitrary large number.

The Ideal Scenario

The authors suggest that the ideal way to peak is not aggressive manipulation, but early preparation:

The authors write
Honestly, it’s easier said than done. You have to start your diet early enough, know your physique well enough, and push hard with a focus on specifically getting ready before your deadline. While it is the ideal scenario to be able to eat up, it is often only pulled off by experienced coaches and competitors. With that said, the way to do this is to get shredded 3–4 weeks out, and then start making ~10% increases in your carb and fat intake each week, while dropping a cardio session each week as well, so long as you notice your physique doesn’t get smoother. If you backslide, then you have to pull back to lower numbers and maintain more cardio.

Carbohydrate Back Loading

This strategy revolves around learning how your physique responds to refeeds:

The authors write
To do this, you need to assess how your appearance responds in relation to refeeds. Once you are reasonably lean (say at 4–8 weeks out for most people), start taking pictures of your physique and making notes in relation to the timing of your refeeds. Some people look the best on the day of the refeed, others look a bit smoother and then harden up and look better one day later, and some people need two days to reach this state. On the other end of the spectrum, some people don’t look their best until after two days of back to back refeeding.

Some people look best:

  • The same day as the refeed
  • One day after
  • Two days after

The goal is to identify your timing and align that with show day.

Carbohydrate Front Loading

Front loading attempts to create two carb peaks:

The authors write
The idea being, that since you have been persistently on low(er) carbohydrates, you will be able to store more if you have two peaks in carbohydrate intake with a small taper between the two. The first peak “stretches” your tank (upregulating enzymes), while the second allows you to get fuller than you could have previously.

This is more advanced and likely best reserved for experienced competitors.

Water and Electrolyte Manipulation

The authors strongly caution against this — especially for natural competitors:

The authors write
I would advise against these practices. I have never personally seen a natural competitor improve their appearance with cutting water, cutting sodium and/or loading potassium. At best, I’ve known competitors who don’t harm their physique by doing this. At worst, I’ve seen competitors make themselves feel terrible and degrade their appearance.

Sodium and water are required for fullness.

Cutting them often:

  • Makes competitors feel terrible
  • Flattens them
  • Or worsens their appearance

Training Considerations for Peak Week

The recommendation is surprisingly conservative:

The authors write
  • Keep training volume (number of sets) the same.
  • Don’t train to failure, leave at least a rep or two in the tank — don’t get caught up thinking you have to do depletion workouts. Unless you’re eating up into your show, trust me, you’re already depleted if you got shredded.
  • Shift your rep ranges to the 8–20 rep range to keep things just a tad more glycolytic.
  • Don’t introduce any new exercises and don’t perform any movements heavily loaded in an eccentric stretched position, as they cause more soreness than others. (For example, avoid Romanian deadlifts, good mornings, or full range heavy dumbbell flyes.)
  • Perform a pump-up session two days out to keep carbs directed towards your muscles, but still allowing active recovery for any lingering muscle soreness or damage.

Peak week is about managing stress and minimizing variables — not introducing heroic new strategies.

Chapter Summary

The Recovery Diet

Coming Out of Contest Prep

The authors also discuss how to transition out of contest prep — which is arguably just as important as the prep itself.

Traditionally, many competitors use a reverse diet. In an ideal world, this involves slowly increasing calorie intake over time so that you end up leaner at higher calories — theoretically setting yourself up to gain muscle with minimal fat gain.

The authors write
In its more extreme iterations, the reverse diet may result in you spending many weeks in an energy deficit, even after your diet, before you are in a surplus.

The problem? In practice, reverse dieting can mean you’re still effectively dieting even after the show is over.

The Recovery Diet Approach

Instead of slowly inching calories up, the authors recommend something they call a recovery diet.

The key ideas:

  • Allow a few untracked meals, but keep them reasonably sized — avoid binge behavior.
  • Aim to gain around 5–10% above contest weight within the next 4–8 weeks.
  • Increase calories more aggressively (roughly +400 to +1000 kcal) while reducing cardio.

The goal here isn’t to stay stage-lean.

My Recommendation

Like its companion book, I ❤️ this one and highly recommend picking it up. What I appreciate most is the extensive referencing — the recommendations are clearly grounded in the best available research. The authors are also careful to remind the reader that these are guidelines, not rigid rules.

What I’ve covered here only scratches the surface. Each topic is discussed in depth, with references to the literature and clear distinctions between those aiming to get stage-lean and those who simply want to be lean, healthy, and sustainable.

If you’re serious about managing your body composition — whether cutting, gaining, or maintaining — this book absolutely deserves a spot on your shelf.

Now put down that burger 🍔… or at least make sure it fits your calories!!

Updated on 2026-05-15 
Eric HelmsNutritionProgrammingDietWeightloss
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