Ever since Vince Gironda, the legendary bodybuilder, told the world about his famous “steak and eggs diet,” millions of men have tried it.
Pounding down on a 12 ounce sirloin steak, and a half-dozen eggs each day sounds good, but what does the research say about this diet?
In this post, we’ll be looking at what the science has to say… and believe me, most of the clinical studies here look extremely promising.
To test it myself, I tried eating only steak and eggs for 30 days straight, and got incredible results. So, without further ado, let’s get to it.
Steak and Eggs Diet 101
The most difficult thing for most of my clients to understand is that there’s no “perfect diet.” Your diet will depend entirely on your situation.
Eating steak and eggs all the time is great for dudes with low testosterone, and guys who want to focus purely on shredding fat.
One thing that this diet is great for is boosting testosterone. As I’ll show you below, studies have shown that eating steak is great for testosterone.
The steak and eggs diet isn’t that great for hardgainers, though. Most hard gainers need carbohydrates, and this diet has literally zero carbs.
Different Diets For Different Needs
Generally speaking, diets high in carbohydrates are good for building muscle and bulking up. You need carbs if you’re a skinny guy.
If you’re trying to lose fat however, or if you’re not a hardgainer, eating just steak and eggs might be exactly what you need to get jacked.
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Only eating steak and eggs has a ton of benefits, but the biggest one is that you stay in ketosis all the time. This is your body’s “fat burning” mode.
Ketosis on The Steak and Eggs Diet
Ketosis is one of the most misunderstood and underrated concepts in all of health and fitness. Very few people fully understand this idea.
See, our bodies have two primary sources of fuel:
- Carbohydrates
- Fat
When your body is in a state of using carbohydrates for energy, it’s called glycolysis. When your body uses fat for energy, it’s called ketosis.
While there’s benefits to each, depending on the circumstances, ketosis is objectively better for losing weight for one major reason: it doesn’t boost insulin nearly as much as glycolysis.
I talk about this more in Body of an Alpha, but the idea is that insulin is a “storage hormone,” and carbohydrates increase it.
So, when you eat a bunch of carbohydrates, what does that do? Well, it means you’ll either store your food as fat or as muscle.
| Ketosis | Carbohydrates |
|---|---|
| Great For Burning Fat | Great for Building Muscle |
| Steady Energy Levels | Energy Peaks & Crashes |
| Not Good For Hardgainers | Necessary for Hardgainers |
This is why eating carbohydrates is mandatory for bulking up. But when you only eat fats and protein, you don’t boost insulin very much…meaning it’s WAY easier to shred fat, but harder to build muscle.
The Steak and Eggs Diet Example
The steak and eggs diet is just what it sounds like. It’s comprised of steak and eggs. That’s all you eat. You don’t have any starches, any fruit, or even any vegetables…just pure steak and eggs. Two meals a day.
The steak and eggs diet is phenomenal for putting you into a state of ketosis, which is why a lot of people use it to get lean. What it is NOT good for, however, is building muscle as a hardgainer.
The diet in and of itself is pretty simple. You don’t eat for the first 8 hours of your day, which is effectively intermittent fasting.
Then, you have half a pound of steak and 5-6 eggs cooked in butter for lunch. You have exact same thing for dinner, and repeat it tomorrow.
The steak and eggs diet is how I built my physique.
-Vince Gironda
That’s it. Those are your only two meals a day—pure steak and eggs. I recommend you use cage-free eggs, grass-fed beef, and grass-fed butter, to minimize the toxins, hormones, and antibiotics in this diet. It’s more expensive, but I still urge you to do so if you value your health.
Benefits of Steak and Eggs
Let’s start with the most obvious benefit of the steak and eggs diet: losing weight. If you follow this diet, and don’t cheat, you can expect to lose roughly a pound of fat a day.
In addition to this, you’ll also boost your testosterone levels by a significant amount. The steak and eggs diet boosts testosterone.
The high saturated fat content of eggs, grass fed butter, and grass fed steak, will be used to create testosterone in your body, giving you more energy and speeding up your weight loss.
Steak, Eggs, and Testosterone
In a research paper published by the Journal of Applied Physiology, researchers found that more fat means more testosterone:
In this study, MUFA (g ⋅ 1,000 kcal−1 ⋅ day−1) and SFA (g ⋅ 1,000 kcal−1 ⋅ day−1) were the strongest predictors of T, accounting for 62 and 59% of the shared variance in T concentrations, respectively. These findings are particularly important for athletes training intensely who may experience a decline in T concentrations due to overtraining.
In other words, men who eat a lot of fat are far more likely to have higher testosterone levels. That’s why I love this diet.
The steak and eggs diet is also great for productivity—being able to fast the first 8 hours of your day is a great way to enhance productivity. No food crash, no interrupting work by cooking food, and no taking snack breaks.
Lastly, the diet is extremely easy to follow. The amount of time you spend cooking each day is a max of 15 minutes per meal, and the food is fucking delicious. I never ONCE got tired of eating my rare-cooked steak and sunny side up eggs. This makes the diet easy to follow.
Steak and Eggs Diet Side Effects
Although the steak and eggs diet is phenomenal for losing weight, there’s still a good amount of drawbacks. Like I said before, there’s no perfect diet.
Every diet is going to affect different people differently. There’s no perfect diet, but there are different diets that are good for different things.
Side Effects of This Diet
The first drawback of the steak and eggs diet is that it’s very difficult to build muscle on, because there’s zero carbohydrates in it.
In order to build muscle you pretty much need carbohydrates. Yes, you can try to build muscle on a ketosis-based diet, but it’s very difficult.
Second, there’s no vegetables. Despite what “hardcore bodybuilders,” tell you, vegetables are incredibly important to your health.
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Vegetables don’t play that much of a role with building muscle, but they are still extremely important for overall health and well being.
A diet high in vegetables is correlated with damn near every positive health effect in the book: lower risk of cardiovascular disease, lower risk of cancer, longer life, and a stronger immune system.
Thirdly, the steak and eggs diet isn’t sustainable. Your body actually needs carbohydrates for certain bodily functions, and without it, you don’t function too well. This is why I don’t view the diet as a permanent lifestyle change, but rather, a temporary change to shred fat.
Lastly, there’s some concerns over the link between dietary cholesterol and blood cholesterol levels. Personally, I don’t think it’s as big a deal as the medical community makes it out to be, but this is still something to monitor (I get blood drawn 4x a year).
How to Do The Steak and Eggs Diet
If you’re trying to lose a lot of weight, then this is probably a good diet for you to follow. You could also try following the Bulletproof Diet, too.
To implement the steak and eggs diet into your life, I recommend you only do it until you get down to your ideal bodyfat percentage, then switch over to a more sustainable diet.
For some men, this may mean following the steak and eggs diet for a few weeks, for others, it may take a few months, or even a year.
Remember to ALWAYS listen to your body, however. If you feel like absolute shit on this diet for more than a week, it probably isn’t for you.
Personally, when I’m on the steak and eggs diet, I feel GREAT. I feel like fucking Zeus—I’m energetic, stronger, and way leaner.
Again though, it’s very difficult to build muscle on. If your priority is building muscle, consider trying a clean bulking diet instead.
Want A Full Bodybuilding Blueprint?
In summary, the steak and eggs diet is great for guys trying to lose fat and build muscle, but dieting is only one part of the equation.
If you’d like a full guide to bodybuilding, nutrition, and supplements, consider checking out my Body of an Alpha program.
In fact, here’s some of what you’ll get with Body of an Alpha:
- The “Fast Track Method” to Get The V-Taper Look That Celebrities, Athletes, and Male Sex Symbols Have
- My “Hybrid Training Protocol” That Helps You Shred Fat Off Like Butter, and Pack on Lean Muscle Mass in Record Time
- My Full Nutrition Layout, Including Customizable Options For Your Specific Body Type and Needs
- …and much, much more!
So, if you’re serious about bodybuilding, training, and getting your dream body in 3 months, consider checking out Body of an Alpha today.
If you guys have any questions or concerns, shoot me a message in the comments section down below. And, as always, I’ll see you next time.
❓ Is The Steak And Eggs Diet Healthy?
In short, it depends. The steak and eggs diet can be a great way to lose some extra fat, because it puts your body into a state of ketosis. This means your body will burn fat very rapidly, so it can be a great diet if you're trying to lose weight.
If you have high cholesterol, you may want to monitor this while on the steak and eggs diet. While studies have shown that this diet is great for losing weight, some evidence suggests it may temporarily increase cholesterol levels.
❓ Does The Steak And Eggs Diet Boost Testosterone?
Absolutely. Saturated fat is one of the major precursors to creating testosterone, and the steak and eggs diet is chock full of saturated fat. This means that, while on this diet, your body will produce far more testosterone, and thus more muscle mass.
❓ Is The Steak And Eggs Diet Good For Bodybuilding?
It depends. If you're a hard gainer, and have a difficult time building muscle, the steak and eggs diet is probably not the best option. Hard gainers need a lot of carbohydrates to bulk up, so trying a more conventional bodybuilding diet is a better idea.
If, however, you're trying to lose weight and get shredded, the steak and eggs diet is a great way to do this. It not only boosts fat burning, but also increases testosterone, so you'll maintain more of your muscle on a cut.
❓ Did Vince Gironda Do The Steak And Eggs Diet?
Yes, he did. Vince Gironda, the famous American bodybuilder and personal trainer, swears by the steak and eggs diet. He accredits this diet to most of his success, claiming that it helped him build muscle and get shredded as fast as possible.
1. Carbs are unnecessary in every aspect of life. Muscle building is no different. Protein spikes insulin just like carbs do.
2. Vegetables are also unnecessary and either detrimental or net neutral to your health.
3. Definitely sustainable. Plenty of carnivores who have been doing this (or even just meat no eggs) for decades and are in perfect health.
I started with the steak and eggs and lifting again, then learned that it’s a thing. Also prodding myself to do more walking, again. I have not been doing the rigid steak and eggs only, though. It often feels like semi fasting as during the day I work in things like raw celery, a whole can of spinach, an apple. Occasionally sardines or tuna. Anyway. I am addicted to the nightly steak and eggs with buttered wheat toast and a glass of whole organic milk. I recently put in my best weight workout in years after weeks of working up to it. Often my mood and energy level are through the roof and I am losing some weight without a lot of aerobic exercise . With some balance I think it’s sustainable. I honestly wonder if I am not genetically predisposed to this way of eating
I could definately see some value in this for a short period of time. Though I would propably cheat a bit and mix in an evening shake of blended veggies or something just to get the vital fibers and vitamins.
Thanks for this! Gonna try it out for the next 3 months. I’m at 30% bf right now, hopefully with this diet + swimming I can lose the fat I want.
bad idea, this diet is strict for you just starting out. instead…eliminate wheat, sugar, and alcohol from your diet, then after 2-3 months transition to a more strict diet like this.