sunshne, thanks very much. have cut my kcal ALOT in the last month, feeling like i dont want to eat for up to 5 hours sometimes. dont know why this is. do yo think its slowing my metaboism? half a stone is 7 pounds. i am leanish lol 119 pounds at just Over 5"2. will take on all you have said. try mixing up my food to keep me interested. thanks
[quote]Jack Urboady wrote:
I have also started to develop some spots round about the eye and nose area. My lips also have spots at the sides which makes it a little sore to open my mouth. Never ever got spots until I started this diet. [/quote]
No idea, but that sounds bad.
[quote]tams88 wrote:
sunshne, thanks very much. have cut my kcal ALOT in the last month, feeling like i dont want to eat for up to 5 hours sometimes. dont know why this is. do yo think its slowing my metaboism? half a stone is 7 pounds. i am leanish lol 119 pounds at just Over 5"2. will take on all you have said. try mixing up my food to keep me interested. thanks[/quote]
Fat is very satiating, will definitely keep you fuller.
[quote]sunshne wrote:
[quote]tams88 wrote:
Hey guys, getting bored and loosing motivation. have been on three months have in total lost half a stone. No muscle loss,apart from my arms which i have stopped training. am still bigger than i want to be. changed training completely to bodyweight, pull ups, push ups,kb circuits, running. still feel best eating p and f. getting bored of the food though i practicaly have to choke down broccoli. any one give me some ideas of where i can go from here. perhaps a bowl or two of oatmeal on a wed and sat night to break things up a bit, instead of carb day.
thanks any help appreciated
[/quote]
Ok, I have no idea how much weight a stone is. 
I’m guessing it’s maybe a pound or two? Either way, I’m going to trot out the same advice you’ve no doubt heard a million times… Don’t go by the scale, use measuring tape and the mirror to help judge your progress. Slow weight loss is often healthier than rapid loss, and if you’re already lean the process can be very slow. Also, you may be gaining muscle, which can make scale weight very deceptive. Blah, blah, blah, I’m sure none of that is new advice to you. I can tell you that I personally weigh 135 punds at 5’4", but I look like someone who weighs 115. So the scale is a terrible liar, lol.
I totally understand about the boredom and frustration, I have been on the AD for over a year and it has evolved quite a bit for me over time. Here are some things that have helped me:
-
Get in the kitchen and experiment. I still miss baked goods from time to time, so I’ll get out the almond flour, flax seeds, shredded coconut, eggs, and other tasty ingredients and just play around. Weigh all your ingredients and keep track of the macros in case you come up with a yummy treat that you want to replicate later.
I use xylitol or stevia as the sweetener in my goodies. -
Expand your veggie options - try asparagus, zukes, cauliflower, spagettie squash, sweet peppers, jicama… play around, make a huge veggie stir-fry, roast them with garlic… I have found that as long as they’re not legumes or roots nearly any veg is fair game.
-
Try switching up your meals. For example, I hate the typical p + f breakfast foods, so I eat chilli-seasoned ground beef and peppers for breakfast. I like to eat a very light dinner instead of the heavier meal that is typically favored, so I’ll have a small amount of chicken and steamed veggies for my second-to-last meal. Find what works for you.
-
You might need to drop you kcals. I hate to say it, becuase it sucks to hear. I was frustrated when I stopped losing over the winter. I got extremely anal about weighing my food and cutting my kcals, and I had to go much, much lower than I thought before I started to loose again. Obviously I wasn’t cutting hard enough before. But be warned!!! You pay a price for rapid weight loss!!! My lifts suck ass, I am cold all the time, I am constantly sore, and I am seriously cranky. After 6 weeks like this, I get dizzy and feel faint every time I stand up. I am slowly adding calories back in at this point, as I physically can’t keep this up much longer. Was it worth it? Sure, I’ve gotten noticeably leaner in 6 weeks, I’ve lost inches and the lying scale is my friend again. But it was hell and I’m not eager to repat the experience.
Hope that helps you some. Oh yeah, and don’t drop the carb re-loads. Poeple are always so eager to cut them out, but they are necessary for the diet to work optimally. I personally feel that a 12 - 36 hour clean refeed works best. And the bigger your defecit during the week, the more crucial the re-load. Your body needs the glycogen and excess energy to prevent muscle loss and keep your metabolism up. If you time the re-load to start after a killer workout, you’ll really take advantage of the anabolic window too.[/quote]
Hi Sunshine, you have a recipee for dem der chili? I need a beef change.
[quote]DJS wrote:
Hi Sunshine, you have a recipee for dem der chili? I need a beef change.[/quote]
lol, to call it a “recipie” would be giving far too much credit to my cooking skills! I basically take about three pounds of lean ground beef and brown it up with a crapload of cumin. At least 4tbs of cumin, I love that stuff. When the beef is nicely browned I throw in a 1lb bag of frozen mustard greens and a can of diced tomatoes, and maybe a hot pepper or two if I’m feeling crazy. Then add whatever chili seasonings float your boat, personally I like to use the powdered stuff from McCormick. I haven’t bothered to tally up the macros recently, but it has maybe 2g carbs total, with maybe half a gram of fiber. I prefer very lean ground beef, so when I heat it up in the morning I slice up about 1/4 avacado with it for my fat. One batch will last me about 7 - 10 days of breakfasts.
tams, I do full-body weight training myself, utilizing heavy weights and short rest periods, and body-weight plyometrics. Generally when I am done training, I can’t eat for a few hours, and it is all I can do to choke down my shake. Is that similar to what you’re experiencing? Or have you just lost your appitite in general? If it’s the former, I wouldn’t worry about it as long as you’re eating enough once you get your appetite back. If it’s the latter, then I would be suspicious that your metabolism is starting to slow down. How low are your calories right now? Even at your petite height and weight, anything lower than 1400 kcal will start to mess up your metabolism if you stay there too long. And really, a weight loss of 7 pounds in three months is a lot for your size. It’s not like you’re a fatty!!! When you are already fairly lean, your body is going to resist like hell letting go of any more fat, and rightfuly so. Unless you’re getting ready for a contest or something, a gradual body recomp is the healthiest way to go.
[quote]Snydiesel609 wrote:
[quote]Artemisia wrote:
For everyone: how are you structuring your training? Lately I’ve been doing my heaviest day Mon., moderate Wed., lightest Fri. HIIT or tabata on Tues./Thurs…may add some steady-state to Saturday morning - not sure if that’s a bad idea? I’m trying to cut at this point.
I realize that since I’m a female doing full-body work 3x/week my schedule is going to be different, but I’d like to hear what you all are doing.[/quote]
Artemisia, I am doing 5/3/1 (seems very popular with the AD crew…and everyone else for that matter). 5/3/1 seems to fit in perfect with the AD, you lift 4 times a week, short 45 minute workouts. I jump in the gym, foam roll, do warm up sets for my main lift, hit a PR (knock on wood) and do some assistance work and get out. I feel like my glycogen gets spread out throughout the week and I don’t lose much power if any. I also do 2 sessions of hill sprints a week.
[/quote]
Thanks! Yeah, it does seem pretty popular - I like that you can do it that quickly. I might check it out.
Tams, my weight hasn’t fluctuated a whole lot, either, but what Sunshne said - 7 pounds over three months is a little over .5 lbs/week (assuming three full, 30-day months) - which is great when you’re smaller height and weight-wise to begin with, and is not below the range for healthy per week weight loss.
Wanted to share a biscuit (or muffin) recipe I’ve been using, found here - http://healthyindulgences.blogspot.com/2008/08/low-carb-gluten-free-biscuits.html:
1.5 Tablespoons (21 g) of unsalted butter
1 cup + two Tablespoons (135 g) of almond flour/meal (I get it from Trader Joe’s for super cheap)
1/4 teaspoon salt
3/4 teaspoon baking powder
4 egg whites (I use 3/4 cup liquid whites)
- Preheat oven to 400 degree F
- Cut butter into dry ingredients with fork tines until you have approximately pea-sized chunks throughout
- Chill mixture in the fridge for about 10-15 minutes
- Whisk the egg whites until a bit foamy
- Stir egg whites into dry ingredients; it will be very runny
- Pour mixture into a greased, foil-lined (or not lined - this just makes clean-up easier) muffin pan
- Bake for about 15 minutes
Makes 5 at 2.5 g net carbs each.
I sometimes add vanilla extract, and 10 g thawed from frozen blueberries to each biscuit, and cinnamon into the dry ingredients - it makes them 3.5 g net carbs each.
As per the original website, you can also mix in some shredded cheddar, and sprinkle some on top before baking, add some garlic powder and pepper to the dry ingredients - kind of Red Lobster biscuit-esque.
I should probably add this to the Cucina Anabolica thread, but I’m not sure if you all read that one! The blueberry ones are so yummy to have with breakfast in the morning. I sometimes do add about 1.5 Tablespoons of sugar-free vanilla (DaVinci) syrup to the egg whites before I add them in (which adds 0 g carbs), but if you’re not a fan of Splenda you’ll have to figure out how much stevia or other non-caloric sweetener to use (and factor in the carbs).
sunshne
def no appetite afetr training, have tried upping my cals a little bit. prob roughly 1700 now. not getting ready for comp but am getting easily obsessive about whats going in my gob. controling it is so much easier with fewer calories even though im a pt and i dril in to peoples heads all day long ‘dont cut cals too much’!! will get my act togther though still want to be bit smaller for summer.lol. thanks for all your advice
xtamsx
Hey everybody, I thought I would finally chime in after giving up on reading the entirety of these threads. I am on day 9 of the break in period and just got done with a workout. Even with less than 30 carbs a day I had an incredible pump today in the gym. I can’t wait to see what happens after a carb up weekend! I just finished the Velocity diet so I have gained about 5 lbs this last week while transitioning to whole foods on the AD. So far I am loving the food and the fact that everyone I tell about it laughs in my face and calls me unhealthy! Ha! Can’t wait to start seeing results. Thanks to everyone who has posted in this forum I feel very confident about this way of eating and plan on sticking with it for a minimum of six months.
Also I am planning on starting a training log and documenting my results as I already have plenty of before pictures from the velocity diet. I don’t know if many people have done this yet but it seems like enough people are interested in this diet for it to have its own training log section (like the v-diet). Just throwing that idea out there. Sorry for the moderately long opening post I just get so excited about this stuff!
Anabolic diet is the way to go! living this way changed my life! maintaining a steady blood sugar level and insulin sensitivity is all you need for an excellent physique… i’m on the diet now for about 3 months and it feels very good. i don’t really do the carb-up thing… i feel like i don’t need that anymore after the first month into the diet. i can cycle or run on and on and it does not tire me. even after a full hour of training hard with bodyweight training i don’t feel exhausted. the diet is amazing!
my main foods are:
peanuts, olive oil and caseine protein!
Hi, I just started my second week on the AD and I’m currently reading the old threads, but there’s something that really bugs me right now and I thought I just ask it instead of wait and see if it was answered. So, I’ve yet to see anyone mention kohlrabi as an AD-friendly vegtable, which seems kinda wierd to me since my kcal calculator tells me kohlrabi is pretty low carb and decent fiber, 2 other calculators showed the same reasults more or less. So is it wrong or does people simply not like kohlrabi all that much in other countries?
Also, are carrots ok? They don’t seem to have that many carbs in them too.
[quote]vatoslocos wrote:
Anabolic diet is the way to go! living this way changed my life! maintaining a steady blood sugar level and insulin sensitivity is all you need for an excellent physique… i’m on the diet now for about 3 months and it feels very good. i don’t really do the carb-up thing… i feel like i don’t need that anymore after the first month into the diet. i can cycle or run on and on and it does not tire me. even after a full hour of training hard with bodyweight training i don’t feel exhausted. the diet is amazing!
my main foods are:
peanuts, olive oil and caseine protein![/quote]
Welcome! Congrats on your progress. Can you elaborate more? You mentioned you don’t “really” do the carbup thing. Does that mean you have been eating low carb for 2 months straight or do you have a carb meal here and there? Once a week or something? How low have you taken your calories?
No offense but trying to figure out if your joking or not. You don’t carb up, don’t lift weights, you do tons of cardio, and you mainly only eat peanutes, olive oil and protein shakes? No meat?
Hey, guys and gals. I did the Anabolic Diet about a year ago, and felt that it really suited me. I could, however, have gone about it more sensibly. Now that I’m a year older and wiser, I think I’ll be able to implement it in a more sustainable fashion (e.g. EATING VEGETABLES) this time around. I’m just coming off of a successful-but-miserable diet, so I’m excited to be able to eat at maintenance again! I’m off to the grocer now. Tomorrow morning…coffee and cream!
Anyway, sorry for the long-winded intro. I’m looking forward to learning from, and hopefully contributing to, the epic T-Nation AD thread legacy.
[quote]DJS wrote:
[quote]vatoslocos wrote:
Anabolic diet is the way to go! living this way changed my life! maintaining a steady blood sugar level and insulin sensitivity is all you need for an excellent physique… i’m on the diet now for about 3 months and it feels very good. i don’t really do the carb-up thing… i feel like i don’t need that anymore after the first month into the diet. i can cycle or run on and on and it does not tire me. even after a full hour of training hard with bodyweight training i don’t feel exhausted. the diet is amazing!
my main foods are:
peanuts, olive oil and caseine protein![/quote]
Welcome! Congrats on your progress. Can you elaborate more? You mentioned you don’t “really” do the carbup thing. Does that mean you have been eating low carb for 2 months straight or do you have a carb meal here and there? Once a week or something? How low have you taken your calories?
No offense but trying to figure out if your joking or not. You don’t carb up, don’t lift weights, you do tons of cardio, and you mainly only eat peanutes, olive oil and protein shakes? No meat?[/quote]
i am new to this forum… well i don’t really do much cardio but i only said it to mention that the fat-burning machine is a limitless supply of energy!
all my life i’ve been doing pushups and pullups and keeps me in shape! overall i’m living a really healthy life for the last months because i quit smoking(weed) and changed my food intake to mainly ‘healthy fats’.
i said those were my MAIN food sources… of course i eat meat and other stuff but rarely. i used to drink a lot of milk but i quit it because of the high sugar content.
Stopping by to say how much I loved the big bowl of oatmeal and raisins I had this morning. Yum!
How closely do you all stick to the carb-up ratios in the book - 30-40% FAT/10-15% PRO/45-60% CHO?
[quote]vatoslocos wrote:
[quote]DJS wrote:
[quote]vatoslocos wrote:
Anabolic diet is the way to go! living this way changed my life! maintaining a steady blood sugar level and insulin sensitivity is all you need for an excellent physique… i’m on the diet now for about 3 months and it feels very good. i don’t really do the carb-up thing… i feel like i don’t need that anymore after the first month into the diet. i can cycle or run on and on and it does not tire me. even after a full hour of training hard with bodyweight training i don’t feel exhausted. the diet is amazing!
my main foods are:
peanuts, olive oil and caseine protein![/quote]
Welcome! Congrats on your progress. Can you elaborate more? You mentioned you don’t “really” do the carbup thing. Does that mean you have been eating low carb for 2 months straight or do you have a carb meal here and there? Once a week or something? How low have you taken your calories?
No offense but trying to figure out if your joking or not. You don’t carb up, don’t lift weights, you do tons of cardio, and you mainly only eat peanutes, olive oil and protein shakes? No meat?[/quote]
i am new to this forum… well i don’t really do much cardio but i only said it to mention that the fat-burning machine is a limitless supply of energy!
all my life i’ve been doing pushups and pullups and keeps me in shape! overall i’m living a really healthy life for the last months because i quit smoking(weed) and changed my food intake to mainly ‘healthy fats’.
i said those were my MAIN food sources… of course i eat meat and other stuff but rarely. i used to drink a lot of milk but i quit it because of the high sugar content.
[/quote]
Well welcome to the forums and all that. I want to come out and say this, if not for any other reason than to stop anyone that is new to the diet from getting confused…the way of eating you just described is not the Anabolic Diet. I am not saying it is wrong by any means, keep doing your thing I fully believe that everyone needs to find the way of eating that is right for them as an individual.
Weekly carb-ups are integral to the Anabolic Diet, they keep everything flowing the way it needs to and keep us that are in the gym lifting heavy shit 4-5 times a week running clean and efficiently with loads of glycogen (plus, few things beat the monday and tuesday morning pump). Also, red meat is the lifeline of this way of eating. If you do not eat red meat on the AD than you are selling yourself short in more ways than you know.
But you are not on the AD…so like I said, rock on.
[quote]Artemisia wrote:
Stopping by to say how much I loved the big bowl of oatmeal and raisins I had this morning. Yum!
How closely do you all stick to the carb-up ratios in the book - 30-40% FAT/10-15% PRO/45-60% CHO?[/quote]
I am also wondering a bit about the carb-ups. I know that this aspect of the diet is highly subjective depending on when you feel like you are getting “smooth”. I am in the middle of my first carb-up and I feel like I have already smoothed out a bit after only having 350 carbs over a 6 hour time period… Any real life feedback on this subject would be appreciated.
[quote]Alon32 wrote:
Hi, I just started my second week on the AD and I’m currently reading the old threads, but there’s something that really bugs me right now and I thought I just ask it instead of wait and see if it was answered. So, I’ve yet to see anyone mention kohlrabi as an AD-friendly vegtable, which seems kinda wierd to me since my kcal calculator tells me kohlrabi is pretty low carb and decent fiber, 2 other calculators showed the same reasults more or less. So is it wrong or does people simply not like kohlrabi all that much in other countries?
Also, are carrots ok? They don’t seem to have that many carbs in them too.[/quote]
I know I should just be patient and wait until I’ll get an answer, but this is pretty important.
and besides that, I have another question:
In a few days, I’m going to have a really rough 2 days of hard training at a place away from home that would require alot of energy from me, and the second and harder day is also supposed to be the first carb-up day and the begining of my second carb-up yet. I also don’t have much control over the variety of food I’ll have where I go. So, what should I do? Should I carb up as usual? Should I wait 'til I get home? What do you guys suggest?
[quote]Alon32 wrote:
[quote]Alon32 wrote:
Hi, I just started my second week on the AD and I’m currently reading the old threads, but there’s something that really bugs me right now and I thought I just ask it instead of wait and see if it was answered. So, I’ve yet to see anyone mention kohlrabi as an AD-friendly vegtable, which seems kinda wierd to me since my kcal calculator tells me kohlrabi is pretty low carb and decent fiber, 2 other calculators showed the same reasults more or less. So is it wrong or does people simply not like kohlrabi all that much in other countries?
Also, are carrots ok? They don’t seem to have that many carbs in them too.[/quote]
I know I should just be patient and wait until I’ll get an answer, but this is pretty important.
and besides that, I have another question:
In a few days, I’m going to have a really rough 2 days of hard training at a place away from home that would require alot of energy from me, and the second and harder day is also supposed to be the first carb-up day and the begining of my second carb-up yet. I also don’t have much control over the variety of food I’ll have where I go. So, what should I do? Should I carb up as usual? Should I wait 'til I get home? What do you guys suggest?[/quote]
-
Never heard of Kohlrabi. Just watch your carbs. And no, you do not count the carbs from fiber in your daily count. Subtract daily fiber intake from daily carb intake.
-
Carrots. Don’t drive yourself crazy with can I eat this veggie can I eat that veggie. Just keep an eye on your carbs and remember, variety is good. The majority of us get most of our carbs and veggie intake from green fiborous vegetables like broccoli, spinach, green beans and dark lettuce.
-
Do you feel you have the energy to do these hard workouts? Will the carbs bog you down that the workout will be lame? If you get real lethargic with carbs, and you probably do since you are just starting out and your fat adaptation is in its erarly stages, then it might be a good idea to hold off on the carb up for a day. I make the AD work for me and my schedule. If I have something going on Friday but I usually carb up on Saturday, I carb up a day early and go back to low carb on Saturday. Make it work for you, there is some flex in the AD.