KingIndy, could you tell me your skinfold measurements at the suprailiac, horizontal abdominal, and vertical abdominal sites?
I just got an Accumeasure caliper a month ago. It took me two weeks to observe the slider on the measurements, so my first two readings were 4-5mm off! “How did it get this bad,” I thought.
I saw John Berardi’s skinfolds on his vegan experiment and was amazed they were so tight.
[quote]Evil1 wrote:
The trouble is that most people see the AD as a way to drop body fat fast without dropping a lot of muscle in the process and enjoying the comparative freedom.
That aside, I can assure you that plenty of people stay on the AD for years. Of the people here on T-Nation, Dish Hoss(>15 years), Tribulus, Avocado, Il Cazzo, Me etc.
It’s just that most people don’t post very often or at all.
Other than that, I guess some people just prefer one diet over another or they feel the gains don’t come as fast.
I intend to stay on the plan for life. To me it just makes a ton of sense.
[/quote]
at this point, i too, intend to stay on this diet/lifestyle for life, though i must admit that i have only been doing it for a couple of months.
once i adjusted my mindset, i find the shopping, the preparation of food and the “sociability” of this diet far easier than anything i’ve tried before.
in the short term i have lost 14cm off my waist so i still have a long way to go but once i have achieved my goal why would i want to change a lifestyle that allows , nay forces, me to eat the foods i absolutely love while giving me energy that lasts all day as well as having one day a week where i can include those “special” treats. other diets i’ve tried, didn’t allow me this day so i ended up opting out and continued to put on fat irrespective of how much excercise i engaged in
[quote]nz6stringaxe wrote:
KingIndy, could you tell me your skinfold measurements at the suprailiac, horizontal abdominal, and vertical abdominal sites?
I just got an Accumeasure caliper a month ago. It took me two weeks to observe the slider on the measurements, so my first two readings were 4-5mm off! “How did it get this bad,” I thought.
I saw John Berardi’s skinfolds on his vegan experiment and was amazed they were so tight.[/quote]
I’ll have to get back to you on those sites but 22 mm on the vertical abdominal site. 10 mm on the diagonal pectoral and 10 mm on the quad.
I get pretty aggressive with my pinching and I sit down to allow for a better fat grab on the abdominal. I’d rather maximize the reading and go from there. As long as I’m consistent, that’s all that matter for tracking progress right?
Saw an interesting paragraph on bodyandfitness.com in regards to carb loading:
Carbohydrates turns into glycogen in the body. Glycogen is stored in the muscle for fuel and the muscle needs fuel to grow. When you take away the glycogen (crabs) from the muscle (this is done with cutting crabs and adding high protein) the muscle, like anything else will get paranoid.
Now when you feed the muscle of something that it hasn’t had for a couple of days, the first thing it is going to do is take more then it needs to satisfy. This is called “carbo loading”.
Glycogen depletion followed by glycogen replenishment, which is also known as carbohydrate loading, causes the muscles to increase their water content considerably. When glycogen replenishment is complete, the increased body weight may induce the muscles to feel heavy and stiff.
When you have been training and dieting hard for a contest, your body will be glycogen depleted. The body is programmed to over compensate when there is a depletion. It will already be predisposed to store larger than normal amounts of glycogen that you ingest.
With proper diet manipulation, you can exaggerate this over compensation ever further by first restricting your carbohydrates intake. Normally, the body stores about 2 grams of glycogen for every 100 grams of muscle weight.
But when you become carbohydrate depleted and then take in carbohydrates it will then stored 4 to 5 grams of glycogen per every 100 grams of muscle weight. The results: BIGGER, HARDER, and more DEFINED MUSCLES. Because of the differences from one body to another, only generalizations can be made as to the amount of carbohydrates required to carb up.
A 200 pound bodybuilder could use 5,000 to 6,000 carbohydrate calories over a 3 day period in preparation for a contest. The body cannot absorb excessive amounts of carbohydrates at one time. An acceptable rate would be 100 calories of carbs per hour.
The body needs approximately 3 days to fully carb up. this means start on the 4th day before the contest. Eating an average of 100 calories of carbohydrates per hour over a 16 hour period will almost equal this amount.
Because you will be striving to lower your sodium intake, make sure these foods are free or low in salt content the 3 days before the contest. Because of the extra carbohydrates, you should be drinking approximately three times as much water by “weight” as you are taking in carbohydrates.
This flies into the face of some of what Thib was saying, as long as you keep the carb ingestion slow and don’t go crazy with it, sounds like muscles can store A LOT of glycogen. Drink your water!
Don’t you just wish you could compile a big list of these multifarious contradictions and differences in opinion we all inevitably seem to find so that we could bring in Chad Waterbury, Thib, Darden, Bowden, Berardi, etc. and just hash this stuff out? Those roundtable discussions were absolutely wonderful. I wish there were more.
Indy, I completely understand your urge to sit to take a skinfold because it’s something I would do, that is, measuring by the harshest standard. However, I feel like that sort of thing defeats the purpose behind a “standard”. Do you see what I’m getting at?
I wish I could have a doctor or some fitness professional take my skinfolds just once so I could watch and more accurately perform the measurements myself.
This thread helps set T-Nation apart from other forums.
[quote]KingIndy wrote:
Saw an interesting paragraph on bodyandfitness.com in regards to carb loading:
The body needs approximately 3 days to fully carb up. this means start on the 4th day before the contest. Eating an average of 100 calories of carbohydrates per hour over a 16 hour period will almost equal this amount.
Because you will be striving to lower your sodium intake, make sure these foods are free or low in salt content the 3 days before the contest. Because of the extra carbohydrates, you should be drinking approximately three times as much water by “weight” as you are taking in carbohydrates.
This flies into the face of some of what Thib was saying, as long as you keep the carb ingestion slow and don’t go crazy with it, sounds like muscles can store A LOT of glycogen. Drink your water![/quote]
I think the reason Dipasquale and Thib differ on Carb loading is that Thib comes at the problem with the view of a bodybuilder looking to recompose the physique fast (i.e. cut). He also, uses insulin spikes via glycine, glutamine etc PWO.
Dipasquale does not look at short term recomp. He is shooting for long term fat adaptation. And while doing so, he is making sure you have the enough glycogen to last you the entire week without insulin spikes in the middle.
Also, if you look at the sample diets in the original AD e-book, you’ll notice that calories stay the same through the week and only the ratios switch around. In this lies the biggest lesson for anyone who thinks the 2 days of carbs is too much. I.e. its not a carb-‘load’ its a carb ‘day’
Thibs also, looks at the carb day as a kind of ‘cheat meal’ to keep you on the straight and narrow the rest of the time. While that is certainly a large part of Dipasquales recommendation, he also, sees carbs as merely providers of fuel for anaerobic work.
So, Thib focused on Speeding up the re-composition process
DiPasquales focuses on an alternative metabolism.
I think I have to go back to DiPasquale´s Metabolic Diet an some Pre- and Post-WO-Carbs. I crashed again on thursday. So I think I will go back next week to 75g of Carbs per day. So I will eat an apple Pre-Workout and 25g of maltodextrine and ALA PWO. It really works much better for me. For friday I will stay at <30g of carbs and then go to the carb-up-weekend.
KingIndy this was such a nice post!It made me look at carb ups as perhaps one of the most essential parts in the diet.I would also like to post something that Thibs posted
When carbing up every 3 or 4 days instead of every 5-6 days I suggest not carbing up as much and staying mainly with clean carbs. I would recommend no more than one “junk carbs” meal (none is preferable) on the carb-up day and around 300-400 total carbs for that day.
I suggest starting the carb up with fruits (to refill liver glycogen ASAP). The best choices being:
These should be your only carb source in your first carb up meal for a total of around 50g of carbs (which comes up to around 3 portions of fruit).
The second carb up meal should be based mostly on complex carbs that are absorbed relatively fast … rice, potatoes, bagels, waffles, whole wheat pasta or bread, etc. As well as one portion of fruit. Around 75-100g of carbs from rice, potatoes, etc and 15-25g from fruits.
The third and fourth carb up meals should be based on both fast-absorbed complex carbs and slow-absorbed complex carbs (50g of carbs from each). Slow-absorbed carbs in that meal could include sweet potatoes, oatmeal, yams, cream of wheat, veggies, etc.
The fifth carb up meal should be based mostly on veggies of all sorts, 50-75g of carbs from veggies.
If you want a true “junk carb meal” have it early in the day.
Tomorrow i carb up!Oh boy i cant wait!
[quote]Philo wrote:
I think I have to go back to DiPasquale´s Metabolic Diet an some Pre- and Post-WO-Carbs. I crashed again on thursday. So I think I will go back next week to 75g of Carbs per day. So I will eat an apple Pre-Workout and 25g of maltodextrine and ALA PWO. It really works much better for me. For friday I will stay at <30g of carbs and then go to the carb-up-weekend.[/quote]
Have you tried increasing the fat as a remedy?
On this point, I was reading about guys taking whipping cream with their Post WO shake… Are any of you guys doing this, or have more effective solutions?
~M~
[quote]Max888 wrote:
On this point, I was reading about guys taking whipping cream with their Post WO shake… Are any of you guys doing this, or have more effective solutions?
~M~[/quote]
I use low carb milk and olive oil with my PWO shake but i do use heavy cream in my morning coffee. Get a little fat in the system before I workout. It doesn’t really matter if you use reg heavy cream or heavy whipping cream. Just whichever you prefer.
Well since Im lactose intolerant, anything milky is a real pain!!
Ive got all my cholesterol testing kits (+some free glucose & keto stix), got the Omega3 fish caps, and flax seed oil…and just stocked up on about 5lb of red meat, 30 eggs, and all the other AD ‘goodies’…so ready to hit the 12 day start up period on Monday!!!..well excited…
Any last minute tips guys?
Since there have been TONS of questions about saturated fats here are some guidelines from one reputable source.
Berardi’s thoughts on saturated fats:
I think that only 10 to 15% of your total fat intake should come from saturates. But when trying to increase mass, you need to take the saturates up to about 30 to 35% of total fats. I say this because there’s data to suggest that saturated fat intake can increase T production. With all of the fears of saturated fats out there, I can understand why some would be cautious. But the bottom line is that if you train, you can get away with higher levels of saturated fats from a health perspective and you’ll probably grow, too.
[quote]Evil1 wrote:
Philo wrote:
I think I have to go back to DiPasquale´s Metabolic Diet an some Pre- and Post-WO-Carbs. I crashed again on thursday. So I think I will go back next week to 75g of Carbs per day. So I will eat an apple Pre-Workout and 25g of maltodextrine and ALA PWO. It really works much better for me. For friday I will stay at <30g of carbs and then go to the carb-up-weekend.
Have you tried increasing the fat as a remedy?[/quote]
Yes, but I´m allways crashing on thursday. Don´t know why! I´m feeling great from Mon-Wed and Fri-Su again. It´s always Thu. No power, no energy, soreness…When I´m on 50-75g of Carbs there are no problems and everything works great!
Well, whatever works for ya I guess.
How long have you been at it?
[quote]Philo wrote:
Evil1 wrote:
Philo wrote:
I think I have to go back to DiPasquale´s Metabolic Diet an some Pre- and Post-WO-Carbs. I crashed again on thursday. So I think I will go back next week to 75g of Carbs per day. So I will eat an apple Pre-Workout and 25g of maltodextrine and ALA PWO. It really works much better for me. For friday I will stay at <30g of carbs and then go to the carb-up-weekend.
Have you tried increasing the fat as a remedy?
Yes, but I´m allways crashing on thursday. Don´t know why! I´m feeling great from Mon-Wed and Fri-Su again. It´s always Thu. No power, no energy, soreness…When I´m on 50-75g of Carbs there are no problems and everything works great!
[/quote]
Have you tried the Glutamine, BCAA, Leucine combo DiPasquale wrote about (and Thib practices).
I could post it up if you want, since I have both books.
Sorry…I don´t know this Combo…can you explain it for me?
And what do you think about training during Carb-Up?
For example carb-up on Sat & Sun and training on Sun a.m.
[quote]Philo wrote:
Sorry…I don´t know this Combo…can you explain it for me?
And what do you think about training during Carb-Up?
For example carb-up on Sat & Sun and training on Sun a.m.[/quote]
The original AD mentioned a combos of Glutamine, Leucine, choline, inositol, Taurine, OKG, Ketoisocaproate for peri- workout on Thursday and Friday if you are feeling fatigued, with glycine PWO.
He didn’t list nay specific dosages though.
General Rec’s that I gave gathered:
Pre Workout: Spike/Xtend BCAA or something similar (i.e. Energy drink)
During: Whey Protein(30g)
Post Workout: Glutamine(20g)+Leucine(5g)+Glycine(10g)
These are from Thibs Prep discussions
I don’t believe there is a real need to tailor your workout specifically to the AD unless you are really keen on dropping fat. That being said, I like to do 20 min on the recumbent bike.
Some people do workout on carb days but be warned of feeling tired due to the insulin spikes and falls.
You could go the CKD route and have an apple or some other fruit 2 hours before working out in the morning of a carb up.