Michigan Muscle Boy

Arnold's fallen off the wagon and so have I

So, I was talking with the Big Girl today, and she told me she had dropped the metabolic diet.  My wife had been asking me exactly why I had been doing it.  I won't speak for Nancy, but for me, it was just too neurotic.  You were constantly watching what you ate and trying to figure out if you were having too many carbs.  It was also difficult transitioning on the weekends (that's where Nancy lost it).

I also started max strength today.  Arnold and I will do it on Friday.  Here was the deal:

• Leg press (75% 1 RM): 400 lbs./8 reps X 4 sets
• Free standing rack pull (60%): 135/8 reps X 4 sets
• Bench press (75%): 145/8X4
• Seated cable row with wide bar (75%): 130/8X4
• Seated Calf (75%): 150/8X4
• Weighted crunches with 25 lb medicine ball: 10X4

The free standing rack pull is a partial stiff legged dead lift.  The seated cable row is like a bent row.

Let them eat chicken

So, on the weekends, I've taken to regalling myself in chicken dishes, a lot of times with rice and beans.  I think it has to do with the fact that I eat so much red meat during the week on the good ole anabolic diet.  We're heading into a new phase of max strength.  I have to be honest, with all these work pressures, particularly the strike that continues on in a new "fact finding" mode, I just have not had the time to update.  I wonder about the wisdom of max strength with all of this, but I promised Arnold.

Ketchup: The New Sports Supplement

As the big girl targets another bodybuilding show, I've decided to take on the role of her sports supplements adviser.  My first recommendation: ketchup, but only in quantities small enough not to blow her anabolic diet.

I think I've finally got the low carbs and lifting thing figured out.  Oddly, it seems to involve eating a McDonald's double quarter pounder with cheese without the bun and a bit of ketchup about 1/2 hour before hitting the gym (right around 500 calories, mostly from fat, my new fuel).  Timing food intake seems to be key.  I'm also thinking I might have to up carbs a bit during the week from the not more than 30 grams I'm currently doing.  Andy's given me some ideas for how to do that.

At any rate, I had a great workout today, a 15 rep per set wonder with 60 seconds rest between sets.  Today was a hypertrophy day in the medium microcycle.  Here's the workout:

• Bench (60% 1RM): 115lbs/15 reps X 4 sets
• Incline flye (60%): 30/15X4
• Dumbbell front press (60%): 35/15X4 (drop setted down to 30 starting second set)
• Cable lateral raise (65%): 21.25/15X4
• Dumbbell shrug (60%): 50/15X4
• Dumbbell incline curls (60%): 30/15X3; 25/15X1
• Calf raises (60%): 120/15X4

I've started some mild shoulder issues which I managed to fix by altering angle on some of the exercises.  I've become convinced that the shoulder thing relates back to a dislocation I had as a kid.  If I manage it and stretch a bit, I do OK.

Burning down the house for carbs

A picture might say a thousand words here, but it's too late for that.  Yesterday, in my desperation for toast, I double toasted three slices of Zingerman's sourdough bread in our toaster oven.  Well, mistake.  The bread caught fire, and then amazingly, the toaster oven caught fire, or at least parts of it.  Lots of burning plastic smell.

Fortunately, the conflagration stopped at the toaster oven.  I tried spraying it with our fire extinguisher, but our fire extinguisher had lost its charge over the years.  Fortunately, as my wife counseled, just keeping the door closed deprived the fire of enough oxygen to put it out.

What a mess.

I'm now toasting in our full scale oven.  I guess you can lead a man to carbs, but you can't give him common sense.

The Anabolic Diet is a Two Phase Diet

So, Chris D. has been wondering how you can lift on low carbs, and Andy, who I actually see in person at the gym, has been raising the same issue.  Andy even went to look up the anabolic (metabolic) diet on the web.

Here's something that I don't think I've been making terribly clear.  The anabolic diet includes a carb load on the weekends once you make it through induction.  So, it's not like a standard low carb diet because you really carb up sometimes.

Also, I've been tracking workout performance, and I may come to the conclusion that I should boost carbs some during the week at strategic times.   So, the idea is to become a strategic user of carbs vs. someone who relies on carbs as his or her main fuel source.

I Don't recommend high fat cottage cheese

So, I continue my low carb adventure, but things are going better this week.  So far, I've had two intense workouts that have gone reasonably well.  After last week's training fiasco, Arnold and I got smart and decided to do a hypertrophy cycle.  We understand hypertrophy, and it pays to reduce the unknowns while you're exploring something completely new like the metabolic diet.

Today's adventure with the metabolic diet involved eating high fat cottage cheese.  Don't eat it!  Particularly if you like low fat cottage cheese which I had developed quite a taste for during Arnold's last show prep.  High fat cottage cheese is edible, but it is for the most part dense and undesirable, more like a paste than low fat cottage which offers a very hydrated feel to the mouth.  It has some carbs, and I worried about going over quota (a bit like when I was eating 1.5 cups of roasted peanuts at the beginning of the diet).  No worry, it's just not appetizing enough.

The anabolic (metabolic) diet

So, in Summer 2003, I did the atkins diet, a low carb diet.  I more or less stayed on that for 2 years.  My main complaint was that it did not really seem to account for the very active lifestyle.  You just did not get the fuel you needed to perform well.  Food choice was also a little restricted.

The main advantages were that it was easy to follow (just avoid carbs) and not too hard on the system after the first couple of days.  I found I had a good amount of energy, just not the afterburner I sometimes wanted for the really intense workout.

Enter the anabolic diet.  Arnold (the anabolic girl wonder) has been chortling about her initial success on the diet recently.  I discovered this diet a couple of months ago after Arnold's last competition when we were looking for a better training program.  I found the book Serious Strength Training after Arnold showed me an article on periodized training programs.  Serious Strength Training recommended the anabolic diet (basically, a sport-oriented version of the metabolic diet).

The main idea of the metabolic diet is to go low carb to get yourself in a fat burning mode.  The initial goal of the diet is not to lose weight but merely to switch from carbohydrates to fat as the main source of your body's fuel.  Di Pasquale, the diet's creator, in fact recommends that you not have a target weight as your goal but rather a target body fat percentage.  Once your body is burning fat, you can manage your body composition by reducing dietary fat.

Sounds great.  We'll see if it really works.

I'm just 6 days in to the 12 day induction phase, but I think I've switched into fat burning mode.  Energy is good.  Di Pasquale recommends going two months before you try to pull any manipulations like weight loss.  Personally, I know I have lost weight during the first week.  I think it is mainly fluid, but it's pretty clear my body has undergone quite a transition and not reached a steady state.  It doesn't seem like I have the basis to play around with yet.

One difficulty with these diets is keeping proper track of how many carbs you are consuming.  Here are two good resources:

• Fit Day, a nice online macronutrient tracker, originally brought to my attention by Scott Bird.
• The carbohydrate counter is a nice resource if you don't want to go to the hassle of tracking all the details of what you eat.
• Here's another account of one person's experience with the diet.

I'm eating too many peanuts

The Scott Bird recommended fit day comes to the rescue.  I've started this insane anabolic diet with Arnold where you are only supposed to eat 30 grams of carbs per day to start.  Well, I've been doing 60.  The culprit: the 1.5 cups (0.4 liter) of peanuts I've been eating. 

I was feeling a little boost after those peanuts.  I thought it was the fat.  I've been telling Arnold that I love fat.  Well, now we know.

It's all Arnold's fault.

Going Anabolic

So, Arnold and I talked today.  I'm going to take a shot at the anabolic diet with her.  As I mentioned in yesterday's podcast, lots of analyses can flow out of this diet experiment.

Nutrition, Muscle Growth, and Body Fat

Nancy and I had quite a lively discussion yesterday based on some of the comments left on my last post about what weight goal to shoot for when you were trying to build muscle.  All commenters suggested that achieving the 10% body fat goal suggested in Serious Strength Training for the hypertrophy (muscle gain) phase was tough.

Well, 10% is below women's essential body fat (the level of fat they need to function properly).  So, it's not sustainable for them.  However, female bodybuilders target that level and below for their competitions.  Personally, I have always been a bit amazed that someone would push the envelope like that.  It seems dangerous and not worth it. 

Nancy disagrees.  We discuss what would motivate someone to drop below essential fat and what a reasonable goal might be for hypertrophy in women.  I'm not sure we came up with an answer to that last one.