After my Organic Chemistry final on Wen. I am officially home for Christmas. Looks like it back to my home gym with barbells, squat rack, and bench and dip station.
With that said, I’m doing Lyle McDonald UD 2.0, to shed some bodyfat for my wrestling season. I’m a collegiate athlete.
Current stats are 180, 5.8.5’‘, 33.5’’ waist.
12/19
Incline Bench 3x15
Dumbbell Flat Press 3x12
Barbell Row (On EZ Curl) 4x14
Chins 2x12
FRONT Squats (Light) 6x13-9—> OUCH! Though I could get 15 reps but I was huffing and puffing.
I’m sadistic so I did 2x15 Backsquats @ 135 after.
Leg Curls 4x13
DB Romanians 2x14
Curl 2x12
Lateral Raise 3x12
BB Push Press 2x15
Skull crushers 3x13.
Calories are set mad low, as per his recommendations around half maintenance. I’m taking in EC 200/20 3 times per day.
Last night I had some absolutely excruciating hunger pangs. Very grumpy and just kind of curled into a ball on the couch until I passed out.
Today is supposed to be a day off as written, but the 7’’ of snow outside said otherwise. Took my ECA after my egg white breakfast and shoveled the walkway. Afterward I did light intervals for 30 minutes 3.5mph/3.5mph/10mph for a minute a piece.
Carb up is supposed to be fairly soon, but with Christmas Eve coming, I may have to make myself suffer to time the refeed with my dinner, where I’m sure ubiquitous amounts of Italian starchy crap will be present.
Holy shit, half maintenance?! That’s pretty low. :-/ What are you trying to drop your BW to? How long do you have?
Yeah tell me about it. I’d ideally like to get to the mid 175’s to make the lower weight class, but it’s going to be tough when I’m weighing around 179-180 depleted.
The whole 1/2 maintenance thing is only for 4 days a week, followed by a one day 4-5k carb up, and one day of a 20% deficit.
For those of you familiar with the diet, Lyle’s system is a 4-5kcal low fat carb up, followed by a full body low rep work out @ maintenance (to rebuild lost muscle), followed by a twenty percent deficit/surplus depending on your goals.
There are four days where you are at half maintenance kcal with excruciating 1-1.5hour depletion work outs (two of those days). A day of optinal cardio leading up to the carb up.
This week is going to be weird because I’m timing the carb up for xmas eve-- allowing myself to suffer a bit more along the way.
As a result, today was supposed to be an off day, but instead, being the masochist that I am, I decided to do a moderate rep full body work out that looked something like this:
Front Squats @ 80% max, stopping 2 reps shy of failure for 5 sets.
Bench Press @ 80% max, stopping 1 rep shy of failure for 5 sets.
3 set of 15 rep DB Rows
3 sets of 8 rep band pull ups.
A few sets of flies and front raises.
2 sets of 15 rep back squats @ very light weight (135) to get my heart rate up.
May do some more cardio tonight if I’m bored.
Random note:
I’m really good keeping my calories low during the day. In the middle of the night, I have this annoying ass problem where I get up at 3am fucking STARVED (not surprisingly) and I end up eating my breakfast then.
I’m not really hungry as a result when I wake up 5 hours later, but I still figured this was worth mentioning.
Until next time…
Taking today completely off.
Calories will be rock bottom.
May do the carb up tomorrow depending on how shitty I feel.
Sleep has been shitty. Going to look into 5 HTP.
During severe Kcal restriction 5 HTP will be a great addition.
Low serotonin levels will interfere with sleep, affect sensations of satiety and signal excessive hunger, as well as make you feel pretty shitty.
Consider supplementing with L tyrosine, Selenium, GABA, 5 HTP and viatmin B6 on your rough days. This will help address depleted neurotransmitters, help you feel more human, as well as help you sleep.
Well here’s the update on the last few days.
Yesterday I was thinking about how much of a total mess this week was going to be. Christmas Eve, Christmas, and the 27th (my birthday) meant I would most likely have to deviate a bit from close to a 1200kcal protein diet, whether I liked it or not. So this week I concluded that It would be best to not run a complete carb up, and instead run a moderate/maintenance deficit during a few of those days. Nonnetheless, my workouts I could tell were suffering so I needed SOME carbs. I decided to do a 6 hour 600carb reefed.
So, yesterday morning I ran about 2 miles through the snow (which is really a lot fucking harder than I could’ve imagined). I spaced out between 9am-4pm and ate close to 600 calories of protein.
At 4 I ran the following workout:
Deadlifts at 305lbs (no straps)
8 Reps, 7Reps, 6Reps, 6Reps, 5Reps
Benchpress at 210:
7 Reps, 5 Reps, 4, 4, 3
DB Row w/ Straps 75Lbs
6x5
Band Pull Ups Dips Supersets (4x12-10)
Afterward I ate like a fucking madman:
Boboli’s Whole Wheat Pizza (w/fat free moz and ff sauce) ~1400kcal
1/2Gallon of Skim Milk
Nearly a box of Corn Flakes w/ Splenda
Came to probably 700 Carbs and 60g fat.
Woke up this morning feeling incredible and full w/ no bloat whatsoever, with a complete lack of soreness.
Ran the following workout
Squats 240 (8x6) 8,7,6,6,5,4
Good Mornings 190 (4x10) 10,8,8,7
Leg Curls (3x8)
Front Squats 185 (5x5)
Will most likely eat little all day and eat some junk tonight to put myself at a moderate deficit.