Hey guys, been awhile. In my last post I mentioned that I was taking a break before starting something back on March 28th. I did my research, thought long and hard about the problems I've been having, and decided on Lyle McDonald's Ultimate Diet 2.0. It's a CKD that is supposed to shred fat while maintaining or possibly gaining muscle. Strange choice perhaps for a 155lb guy, but here's why:
1) Nutrient partitioning - I've always felt better on a low-carb diet, and UD2.0 is low-carb for 4 days of the week. Was also always curious how my body would react to a carb refeed.
2) Improve workout capacity - My gym sessions had been 35-40 minutes. And honestly that was exhausting to me. I was gaining, don't get me wrong, but there was still more fat piling on than muscle. My choice was to either increase the workout time or decrease the calories. I decided to go with a more packaged approach.
3) Desire to follow a system focused on lean gains - I love structure, and this is the most structured thing I've done up to this point.
In a nutshell, this plan has you at about 50% maintenance calories Monday through Thursday evening with a carb-load starting Thursday evening through Friday, then maintenance eating Saturday and Sunday.
Monday and Tuesday have depletion workouts. These take me 2 hours each day - brutal. About 10 exercises, 6x15 each day. So, 12x15 over 2 days, 8 exercises = 96 sets, 1440 reps. Sounds worse than it is, I guess. On Thursday evening before the carb load starts, there is an hour long hypertrophy set/rep range workout. This consists of about 10 exercises, 2x6-12. Saturday is a strength workout - 8 exercises, I do 3x5 each. This takes me another 2 hours. It's very tough, but after ingesting 1000g carbs over 30 hours, it feels great.
Overall, that's 7 hours of gym time every week. Much much more than I was doing previously. My calories breakdown was 1200 M/T/W, 900 Th during the day, 5200 Th-Fri, 2200 Sat/Sun.
Results over 5 weeks have been very impressive. I dropped about 5 pounds of fat and my lifts have increased. My waist has come down nearly 2 inches, and my arms have maintained size, maybe some slight growth. Chest measurement has remained the same. Some notable lifts from my strength workout this morning:
Deadlift - 215lbs 3x5 (this is most impressive to me)
One-arm row - 82.5 lbs 3x5
Steep Inc. Bench - 52lb dumbbells 3x5
Slight incline bench - 55lbs dumbbells 3x5
I've given up on barbell benching right now. Just doesn't work for me. With dumbbells I find that I can muscle through reps after fatigue sets in. When using barbells as soon as I struggle with one rep, that's it - bar isn't going up again.
I've worked in Romanian deadlifts during the M/T/Th workout and this has helped condition my lower back such that I have absolutely no tightness, discomfort, pain, etc., during the heavy deadlifts on Saturday. I've also incorporated split squats to accomplish both hip flexor stretching and leg strength - this has helped my squat tremendously. I have not heavy squatted during these 5 weeks, but I was able to do 150x9,8,6 with great form, speed, and comfort on Thursday.
My left bicep issue seems to be addressing itself. The pain has decreased week over week.
My goal was 5 weeks and I got through it. I have bachelor parties the next 2 weekends so my Fridays through Sundays will be shot. Going to go off this diet and eat maintenance this week with some hour-long hypertrophy set/rep range full-body workouts. The following week I will not workout and eat maintenance. Then starting May 16th, I will do an 6-week cycle of Ultimate Diet 2.0 mass-gain variety and see how that works out.
I will log that here.
