My Experience On the Anabolic Diet

Nutrition
9283

[quote]bigdaveo1988 wrote:
Thats awesome DJS, I read through like the first 100 straight, 220 is impressive. My energy through the induction phase (I’m on day 12 today) has been amazing, I get sluggish and tired with high carbs.

Last summer I went low carbs and low fat, shriveled up like a twig, but i was CUT. Excited for my carb up tommorow too, going to keep it mostly/all clean with clean sources such as oatmeal, bread, pasta, rice. Taking in about 3,500 calories while bulking, prob up that to around 4,000…full mostly all the time compared to when i was starving at about 2000 calories and below 100g of carbs and fat. Can’t wait to cut using this diet and lower my fat to around 120g and calories slowly down to about 2,000. hoping to get down to like 6% by summer and then use some techniques to get around 4% for a short period of time. (ex: the article shredded in 6 days).

Have any of you guys read the “Shredded Diet” on T-Nation, looks like this one, just strictly aimed at cutting over a 12 week period.[/quote]

Thanks! I highly recomend to keep reading when you can. You can see a lot of the people that quit and those that are sucessfull. Best of luck!

9284

[quote]KingIndy wrote:

Just keep net carbs under 30g. It is definitely normal not to lose any weight when you are going into the induction. First of all your body has not switched over to burning fat yet. Don’t assume it has until you are fully through the induction. Secondly, you are eating maintenance level calories right now. That is just to get your body fully adapted to burning fat for energy. The term maintenance assumes that at this caloric level, you will maintain your current weight. 18x your body weight may not even be your maintenance level, it is a rough generalization for everyone to start on. That is something you will have to watch and tinker with.

Once you get through induction start reducing your caloric intake. I’d cut it to 3500 the first week and continue to lower it from there until you are comfortable with your weight loss progress. When you start lowering your calories make sure not to over train, you’ll just catabolize your muscles, maybe a total body twice a week with good interval cardio added in. Look up a good cutting program on here as a guide. [/quote]

The last few pages of this thread seem to be full of bad advice like this.

Why do you guys need to complicate things so much?

9285

[quote]hardgnr wrote:
KingIndy wrote:

Just keep net carbs under 30g. It is definitely normal not to lose any weight when you are going into the induction. First of all your body has not switched over to burning fat yet. Don’t assume it has until you are fully through the induction.

Secondly, you are eating maintenance level calories right now. That is just to get your body fully adapted to burning fat for energy. The term maintenance assumes that at this caloric level, you will maintain your current weight. 18x your body weight may not even be your maintenance level, it is a rough generalization for everyone to start on. That is something you will have to watch and tinker with.

Once you get through induction start reducing your caloric intake. I’d cut it to 3500 the first week and continue to lower it from there until you are comfortable with your weight loss progress.

When you start lowering your calories make sure not to over train, you’ll just catabolize your muscles, maybe a total body twice a week with good interval cardio added in. Look up a good cutting program on here as a guide.

The last few pages of this thread seem to be full of bad advice like this.

Why do you guys need to complicate things so much?[/quote]

A. How is that even close to complicated?
B. Instead of just calling people out why not explain yourself? Or is that too complicated?

9286

Heartburn is destroying me right now. I need to make sure I’m not gorging myself at any meals with so much fat in my diet. I’ve tended to gorge myself on the carb ups which I need to stay away from.

9287

It’s funny…I find it hard to eat a lot on carb loading days. My caloric intake is about the same or less. Yesterday was kinda weird and I only took in 2500. I didn’t feel very good.

I’m starting to cut back on my portions, trying to find my cutting intake in there.

I still don’t really know what to do in terms of training. I just used yesterday as a ‘playtime’ session. I still work hard as all hell, just doing things I want to. Power clean and press with a full squat destroyed me; I was red and sweating profusely the entire workout just from doing 5s with bodyweight.

9288

Update:

I had my first somewhat carb load this past weekend. For those of you following, recall that I started with 5/2 and will do 12/2 starting this week because I had plans to be in Disneyland this past weekend.

Saturday was great and had plenty of energy to last me all day and through the night. Started off with some French Toast and pancakes with lots of syrup, from IHOP. After that it was hard to eat clean at Disneyland but I kept it decent with a chicken sandwich and fries, a churro, and a roast beef plate.

Sunday was pretty bad as far as food choices and I therefore started to crash hard halfway through the afternoon. I had a hot dog, chips, popcorn, ice cream sandwich, turkey sandwich and a clam chowder bread bowl.

After the low carb phase I definitely lost some girth around my waist and felt my jeans get looser. But then again, they tightened up again somewhat after the carb load. Today will be the first day of my 12 day induction. We’ll see where this takes me.

9289

[quote]nz6stringaxe wrote:
It’s funny…I find it hard to eat a lot on carb loading days. My caloric intake is about the same or less. Yesterday was kinda weird and I only took in 2500. I didn’t feel very good.

I’m starting to cut back on my portions, trying to find my cutting intake in there.

I still don’t really know what to do in terms of training. I just used yesterday as a ‘playtime’ session. I still work hard as all hell, just doing things I want to. Power clean and press with a full squat destroyed me; I was red and sweating profusely the entire workout just from doing 5s with bodyweight.[/quote]

I get full very quickly with the carbs, definitely harder to keep the kcals up with carbs.

How is your weight doing? I was up 5 pounds from last Saturday. Interested to see what is going to be today post carb-up tonight.

9290

I do not have time to go throught 375 pages.

I am carb sensative and will be trying out another clean bulk this Fall.

Anyone who has been on the AD for a couple months feel like posting your results?

Thanks

9291

[quote]DF85 wrote:
I do not have time to go throught 375 pages.

I am carb sensative and will be trying out another clean bulk this Fall.

Anyone who has been on the AD for a couple months feel like posting your results?

Thanks[/quote]

Hello there. Personally, its only been about 2.5 weeks for me so far but going well. You can get a lot out of just the first 20 pages or so when you have some time. Good luck!

9292

into week 3 and a half and am back to feeling really tired, ive been doing fasted cardio 2-3 times a week and training 3 days a week also. This week i dont know what happened i started off doing cardio and then the last 2 days could not be fucked getting up.
Is this just the lack of carbs and a combination of cals in verses cals out,or ant one else feel this way too??.

Mentally im starting to feel like its not working, yet some days i feel tighter and look leaner, its a real mind fuck!!.

any one got any similar experiences with these mind games?, i wanna just blow out on some carbs mid week sometimes but im 13 percent @ 250 n wanna get below 10 and this will crush me if i quit now.

Would appreciate comments or first hand experience from long time a.d dieters.

thanks

9293

Indy, I think my weight has gone up in recent weeks. It’s been hard to track, even when I feel like it. I normally like to monitor the high end (being full at the end of the night) and the low end (long sleep, completely empty after urinating and defecating), but my bowel movements are so seldom now that it’s hard to take that low end measurement.

I was getting about 3500kcal for most of the time, and I wonder if that is the same or more than what I took in before starting this diet. The AD has totally refreshed my realization that I tend to eat like a bird (sometimes even after fixing, you slide back and lose track). Right now, since I’m fatter than I’ve been in a long time, probably ever, I’m starting to drop cals and am shooting for 2400-2600 right now. I’m going to try my best to see if that brings me down in scale weight this week as well as keeping a rough sketch from the calipers I just got.

I’m planning on taking it down slowly and not even adding cardio in until I require ‘something else’ to be thrown into the mix. I’m really hoping the nature of the AD will allow for noticeably efficient fat loss.

I’m also taking a bit more liberty with my vegetable carbs right now because to be honest, if a diet is restricting your vegetable intake then it’s bullshit. I don’t feel like 40g of carbs is going to throw me out, and even so, I overestimate my carbs just to be safe for the slips I may not realize. (I count fiber towards the total unless it’s in the form of a supplement, but thankfully, I don’t even need to take those anymore!)

9294

Just found this on an old post by DiscHoss:
It’s about macros during the carb-load.

Make sure you get at least 20% of your calories from FAT too. In fact, I like about 30% better.
Why you ask? Well two reasons. (1). It tastes awesome to eat some cake and ice cream. (2) Once you ADAPT, fat actually increases the insulin surge instead of the often held belief that it slows down the release of macronutrients. Not so on a carb load boys! Ain’t life grand!

he also states in the same post, that 70% of the carb be from starchs while the rest can be pancakes/fruity pebbles/waffles etc.

9295

The following is an old post by DiscHoss from page 26 of this thread and its about the carb loads. (Its a second attempt to post it btw)

“Make sure you get at least 20% of your calories from FAT too. In fact, I like about 30% better.
Why you ask? Well two reasons. (1). It tastes awesome to eat some cake and ice cream. (2) Once you ADAPT, fat actually increases the insulin surge instead of the often held belief that it slows down the release of macronutrients. Not so on a carb load boys! Ain’t life grand!”

He also states in another post that 70% of carbs be from starch.

9296

Yo ADers… just wanted to say i did it! Just finished the entire 375 page thread!

ok, …carry on

9297

Thanks for that information, Evil. My carb loads have been shots in the dark so far.

9298

Damn DJS, that’s impressive. I haven’t had the motivation to get past page 20. Any significant discoveries??

9299

That’s why I love the granola I eat in mass quantities on the weekend so far. It is somewhat of a treat and has the exact macro profile I am looking for on the weekends! Moderate fat, high carb, some protein, and whole grain!

9300

[quote]TITI MATIBAY wrote:
Damn DJS, that’s impressive. I haven’t had the motivation to get past page 20. Any significant discoveries??[/quote]

Yeah there is a ton of stuff. In the first 20 pages you see a lot from like DH, Il Caso posting on how the diet works etc which is really great stuff. But as the hundreds of pages go on you see others like Tribulus, Haggar, Sasha, OvalPhine, PaulieD, to name a few who start off with posts just like ours…

“Hey there, day 2 in the induction phase is this right?”

Then they go on to literally being on the diet for years and really making good progress with it. You get to see from the begining. That was the most enjoyable part for me. I feel like I know these people now from reading their 2 year old posts. lol.

There were also countless people who don’t seem to make it. A couple posts in their first few weeks and never heard from again. A lot of these people were determined to change some aspect of the diet. Maybe they wanted to carb load only every 2 weeks, or they wanted to have their post workout carb shake… etc.

One take home message I got was that pretty much everyone who used the diet and had great sucess had some sort of reservations about it at some point in the first month or two. They all worked it out and made tremendous progress.

So that is a reminder to me to try and stay objective… if i gain a couple lbs of fat one week for example, i will tweak my cals or change my carb ups etc before i write the diet off.

It really takes your body a while to get used to it. Other more advanced stuff that i can go back to later but i think this message was the most important.

DJS

9301

bump

9302

I keep having problems on this diet.

The first time I went on which was March-August 09’ I dropped weight instantly, but my strength went way down. I even had to come off the diet because I was eating 3k over maintenance and still dropping weight when I decided to bulk up. So I switched to a traditional clean bulk, i.e. 50% carbs, 35% protein, 15% fat.

So once I finished bulking up, which I saw my weight shoot up incredibly fast I decided to move back into the AD. I started off slow with under 100g carbs, and didn’t see much of a difference, and went into a carb up after 5 days to see if I could adapt as quickly. I didn’t have much of a drop off, so I went back to the original under 30g, and went another 5 days… Weight didn’t change. So after a few weeks of this I went for 11 days to adapt, and had the same results, and then after a carbup I went the required 2 full weeks of adaption, and still got nothing. I’ve added in Animal Cuts which always cut me down, and I even added in the ECA stack. I went back and checked all of the other little things out such as my %'s and my diet which is spot on still. I train 5-6 days a week (cardio/speed/agility session in the morning, and lifting at night), gallon of water a day, and 7-8 hours of sleep. I honestly have no idea what’s going wrong here. I just don’t feel like I am fully adapted, and I don’t know the reason why.

I don’t have the complete macro’s right now, but it’s around 2,800 calories.

9:30AM (After cardio session)
5-6 eggs
1 cup of cheddar cheese
2 Hot Dogs

12:30PM
1 Lg. can of chicken breast
3 TBSP of mayonaise

3:30PM
5 Hot Dogs

6:30PM
4 scoops of protein powder (104g protein)
1 Cup of Heavy whipping Cream

8:30PM
1/2 pound of Ground Beef
3 TBSP mayonaise
1 cup of cheddar cheese

10:00PM
1 Cup of 4% Cottage Cheese

Can anyone throw out any ideas at all? Why am I so completely stuck right now? I’ve even increased the volume in my training sessions, and I still have the same rebound. After a 24 hour carb up, I’ll get up to 252, drop down to 246 by Thursday, and then go up to 247-249 by Saturday Morning. Each week it is the exact same thing. I mean it doesn’t even seem as if I am dropping water weight from this diet. The first time I got on this diet I dropped 10 pounds in two weeks, and the second week I was off and not even training. I’ve emailed the doctor 3 times in the past with various questions and never received an answer back. I am way behind my current goals, and I really need some help. So I would really appreciate something here on what is going on.