Anabolic Diet

[Happy Panda]

I had a lot of success dieting down with a low carb/high fat diet a few months back, so I thought I'd give the Anabolic Diet a shot. I'm hoping to maintain or gain weight while staying very lean (single digits) year round, so that when fight time comes around I don't have to worry about significantly changing up my diet.

I'm finally nearing the end of the 12-day induction period, and so far, things really suck. I lost 3-4 pounds in a couple days, but now that I'm eating practically as much as I can I'm hovering just a little below where I started. Very little variety in my diet and I'm getting serious carb cravings, probably because I'm so used to eating lots of bread, rice, oatmeal, fruit, etc.

As far as physical problems, I stopped getting migraines after the first couple days, but I have been noticing that my resting heart rate is higher than normal. I notice it mostly in the morning since I always have to piss like a racehorse an hour or two before my alarm goes off (high sodium = lots of water), and my heart is beating like it's going to break through my ribcage and attack me. It's definitely higher throughout the day too though.

Anyway, I'll probably be feeling a lot more optimistic about all this after the carb-up this Saturday, but I was just wondering if anyone here has any experience with the diet. Advice, criticism, and questions are all welcome. Success stories are especially welcome since I'm definitely going to stick with the diet for at least another 2 months regardless of how many people tell me I'm going to kill myself, and I'd like to think that there's at least a chance in hell of this working out without any serious side effects.

Here's a link if you don't know what it is:
http://stronglifts.com/anabolic-diet/


Edit for more info: Feb 23, body fat at 8.5% (calipers). Weight is roughly the same as when I started. Will get tested again in another 2 months or so.

[TheRuss]

Subscribing, and thanks for the link. I look forward to hearing your results.

I'm not so sure about this, though.

[Happy Panda]

Well, it looks like nobody has an opinion on the diet, so I'll just update this periodically as things progress. Very periodically, as the length of this post may suggest.

It has been about 23 days since I started, so I've had a couple carb-loading weekends at this point. They weren't as good as I had hoped, partly because I gave myself a little more leeway than I should have. Nothing too bad, but pizza and blueberry bagels (not whole grain) probably weren't the best choices. Chocolate may have been involved as well. In short, the weekends tend to make me feel sort of sluggish and weak, but it'll probably be better once I figure out a routine and quit eating random stuff.

During the week, I'm very strict about what I eat. I don't cheat, at all, ever...except for whipped cream, but I keep it limited. My biggest problem right now is that most meals involve red meat, and red meat always needs cooking. It eats up a lot of my time, and it would be very difficult to manage if I were training regularly on top of school. Also, my kitchen always smells like meat.

23 days isn't much time, but as far as visible physical changes so far, I'm sitting at about 2 pounds above where I started and I can see my abs again (faintly). This is encouraging, because I haven't been exercising much for the past couple months, and I've been watching my body slowly deteriorate up until now.

The thing I'm really happy about, though, is the way I feel. Lately during the week, I've been feeling significantly more awesome than usual. It was kind of a sudden change, and I can't think of any other changes in my lifestyle which would have spurred it. I have much more energy, I feel stronger, and I feel much more comfortable putting off school work to go exercise (this may not be a good thing).

Basically, I'm feeling a lot better about this diet than I was when I first started. Hopefully I'll learn to deal with the weekends better, but I can't remember the last time I felt as good as I do during the week. In case anyone's interested, and in case I forget and need to check on it later, this is what I eat during the week. I would love to see the look on a nutritionist's face:

Breakfast: 4-6 eggs w/ green pepper and shallot, 4-6 slices of bacon
Lunch: about half a pound of ground beef (75% lean) with a good-sized block of cheese
Dinner: about a pound of steak (whatever kind is on sale)
Post-Dinner: part of a packaged beef sausage thing with another (smaller) block of cheese

Supplements: 4000mg flaxseed oil, 4000mg fish oil, a multivitamin, and 2-3 scoops of whey if I feel like it.

Everything is fried in excessive amounts of olive oil except for the post-dinner. I realistically eat about 1/2 to 2/3 of a freezer bag of broccoli throughout the day at random. On Monday and Tuesday I generally kind of miss sweet/carby things, so sometimes I get strawberries or a little whipped cream to help out.

If there aren't any questions or comments or anything, I'll probably update again when there are more objective changes in my physical appearance/strength.








tl;dr: It's going well. You'll probably be a better person if you eat more red meat.

[TheRuss]

Has your total caloric intake/exercise regime changed?

[Happy Panda]

I'm trying to roughly match my previous caloric intake, but it's harder without fast food and milkshakes. Initially I lost a few pounds, so I just started eating more. I imagine my calories are close to where they were before, maybe a little higher since I've gained some weight.

My exercise regime for the past couple months has consisted of doing push ups when I feel like it and wrestling about once a week on average. The only changes to that have been in the past week or so, when my strength jumped a little, so now I'm doing more reps more often.

[honesty]

Interesting. I missed this thread before, and would like to hear ongoing results. I like Stronglifts, but sometimes I find the stuff Medhi says on diet a little off (e.g. http://stronglifts.com/7-things-you-...t-cholesterol/ ), so would be interested in anything you say here!

[danniboi07]

Subscribing as well. I've never gone on a serious diet, so I'm interested in seeing how and what you do.

Best o' luck to you

[honesty]

Actually I'd be interested in starting this myself reading up on it now. Some questions, did you do a loading period, if yes how long for?
Your doing 4 meals rather than 6, was that just for convenience?

[Jack Rusher]

things really suck. [ ... followed by ... ] The thing I'm really happy about, though, is the way I feel. Lately during the week, I've been feeling significantly more awesome than usual. I have much more energy, I feel stronger

This is really common when someone moves to a low-carb diet. There's often around 2-3 weeks of feeling shitty, after which everything suddenly goes awesome.

Just for the record, although this way of eating is superior to the American Standard, I don't think it's the best diet of its kind for general health or athletic performance. Some complaints: demonizes all carbs (insufficiently nuanced view), gets the post-workout vs weekend carb intake thing wrong (Golden Hour vs Ketosis Ping-Pong), it's a boring and anhedonic way to eat, and it's inconsistent with the evolutionary history of our species.

The best and most pleasurable variation on this theme is The Paleo Diet for Athletes, though it requires a few caveats: ignore his bias against saturated fats; depending on your genetics, dairy might be fine (it is for me); the legume situation is more complicated than he makes it out to be.

[Kentucky Fried Chokin]

I read the book a while back and tried to do a variation on the diet called Natural Hormonal Enhancement

[Kentucky Fried Chokin]

[Happy Panda]

Actually I'd be interested in starting this myself reading up on it now. Some questions, did you do a loading period, if yes how long for?
Your doing 4 meals rather than 6, was that just for convenience?

I'm not sure what you mean about the loading period. If you're talking about doing something before going on the diet, no, I just jumped in. 4 meals a day is for convenience and because I'm used to eating as much as possible when I take time to eat.

This is really common when someone moves to a low-carb diet. There's often around 2-3 weeks of feeling shitty, after which everything suddenly goes awesome.

I experienced something sort of similar (to a much lesser degree) last time I was doing low carbs, but I can't really compare them since I was restricting my calories last time. It may just be because of how bad my diet was before I started, but for whatever reason, I am objectively much stronger than I was before starting, and I have hardly been exercising.

The best and most pleasurable variation on this theme is The Paleo Diet for Athletes

Thanks for the suggestion, I'll look for it next time I'm at the bookstore. Regardless of whether or not this diet's any good though, I'm going to stick to it for another month and a half at least to see what happens.

Honestly I wasn't planning on turning this into a log at first, I was just depressed because I missed carbs and wanted to talk about it. I started the diet on a whim and didn't think to record anything but my weight and some less-than-comprehensive 'before' pictures. I normally just go by the scale and the mirror and how I feel when I'm experimenting with stuff.

That being said, I realize I'm not being very objective, and since this is kind of turning into a log, I'll do what I can to fix that. I'll see if I can get a BF measurement sometime soon.

[honesty]

I think it might be interesting/useful to others if you were to log any changes you see.

I'm going to start this on Monday next week. I'll stick my numbers and thoughts in this thread as I go.

[War Wizard]

4 weeks in here.

Down 15 pounds (mostly water weight 4-5 real fat pounds). Lost 1 inch off my waist.

Honestly it's not hard to stay on. Stronglifts has 3 articles of recipes here, here, and here. Use those recipes to get started and then use the food list here, a decent cookbook, and Nutritiondata.com.

I would also strongly advise checking out this thread at T-nation. It's REALLY long but there's an incredible amount of info about the diet and people's adventures with it in there.

[Deadmeat]

*subscribes*