So I’ve been at this “healthy living” thing for 13 weeks now. Week 14 is a picture week and I’m a bit pissed at the last of visual progress since week 10. I started with heavy cardio workouts in the beginning 6 weeks, switched to heavy lifting (granted by machine. I’m slowly making the transition to free weights) from week 7 to present with a 10 minute cardio warmup.
The lifting I’m doing is usually in sets of two exercises with no appreciable rest in between. (For example I’ll use two machines, bicep curl and tricep extension, and hop back and forth after each set of 10 without resting. Keeps the heart rate up and from what I’ve heard turns the weight lifting session into a bit of a cardio routine).
Anyway, my knowledge level has gone way up and things are going good, except for the whole slowing progress thing. So I’ve been looking at the V-Diet which I want to do for 4 weeks. My problem is this. I’m in Edmonton, AB Canada and nobody sells HOT-ROX here. We’ve got GNC and Popeyes for suppliments. So I’d be ok on Metabolic Drive and Surge.
Any recommendations for comparable products would be much appreciated (PMs are fine, I know at least one manufacturer doesn’t wish to be named here) or whether the V-Diet would be effective even without a thermogenic.
I know it’s possible to order it online in Canada, but I lack the plastic card with which to do that. So I’m stuck with retail and having been in both GNC and Popeyes here I know they don’t carry HOT-ROX, thus the question.
Don’t waste your money on anything in Canada. They regulate the supplements so much that the ones on the shelf now are just expensive caffeine in a bottle.
Long gone are the days of decent thermogenics here.
Do you have anyone that could order from T-Nation for you? I think that Shugart is pretty clear about what supplements you are supposed to be using on the diet.
Scratch that. I just noticed that you’ve only been working out for three months. I really doubt that the V-Diet would be a good idea for you at this time.
Well, in all the research I’ve been doing I’ve sorted out the nutrition pretty well so far. I’m running approximately 1900 cal a day (4 protein shakes, whole wheat roast beef sandwich and variety of stirfrys in the evening. 4:3:3 protein:carb:fat ratio
And I’ve had a rather vicious stall of +/- 2-3lbs each week for the last 4 weeks straight. The idea was that I wanted to really shake things up and make some decent diet changes along with workout changes to try to break the plateau.
The only reason why I suggest you put off any sort of “diet” for a while is that if you don’t know what you’re doing, you will probably end up losing muscle mass and if you haven’t been at this long, you don’t have much of a base to work with and as a result, may end up with the “skinny-fat” look. Having said that, I have no idea what you look like either.
My thoughts, based on what I see, are that your calories are quite low (I eat more than that) and that if you’re doing that amount of cardio that you are claiming, that in itself will be very catabolic. I just don’t think you’ll get the results that you’re hoping to achieve. It’s your choice though.
Oh, I’m not doing much cardio at all. Started with a half hour a day, but I’m doing 30-60 minute workouts lifting with just a 10 minute cardio warmup to get the heart rate up. Just doing very little rest time during workouts. Thanks for the advise though.
