the nightmare diet

CF crew:

due to a bunch of emails and u2u’s following my fight club post requesting my nutritional/supplement program, rather than respond one by one, i thought i would do a thread instead. since i have nothing really to do at work but sit on this page all day, i will not be brief at all. in fact i may dive into more detail than is wanted so feel free to skip ahead at anytime.

brief history: highschool (83-88) although i was a 3 sport guy (football, basketball and track) i had never had an athletic upper body. legs were there from birth, but there wasnt even close to an ab to be seen, even in good lighting of our front hallway after 50 situps. back then i ate what my parents ate, cereal, sandwiches, potatoes, lean cuts of meat, rice, pasta etc. not alot of junk food, but too many carbs (esp heavy carbs) and not enough protein. and as you can imagine, no matter how many sit ups i did (500 everynight after reading a hershal walker article in SI) there were no squares.

fast forward to post university: started a triathlon carear in 1993 to settle a bar bet with my high school track coach. the bet was that “speed guys” (read that football/sprinter/jumper) were better athletes because we can do, with training of course, an endurance event, but a distance geek (sorry guys) could never be a sprinter, jumper or football player. so for the next few years i started the odessy that was my triathlon carear. now i was positive i was gonna get my six pack. i mean every triathlete i knew was bone skinny and had a nice little set of abs.

so training up to 25hrs a week , mostly cardio (swim, bike or running) done at a base building white muscle fiber shrinking/converting pace (aka “fat burning” zone 1) and eating the typcial high carb, low low fat, low protein diet, but amazing enough, still no squares.

enter a guy name billy “thunder” smith and another guy named dr barry sears…

i know my dad (pops nightmare) loves allbran. i guess its alot quicker and easier that slow cooked oats although not as cost effective. if JB says its gold, it must be gold.

i cant even recall where i came across his name, but i think it was an article in flex (yes i was a triathlete but i would still read the occasional flex that my little brother had laying around the house). it was a little blurb at the front of the magazine that has little bits and bites about this guy or this workout, nothing much but something clicked. i called 411 for santa monica (cant recall the name of the company he ran) and got hooked up with billy smith. billy, at the time was a top level amatuer bodybuilder (came really close to getting his pro card a few times) and had just finished a gloirous carear as “thunder” on amercian gladiators. he was now ruinning a nutritional consulting business, with a focus on pre contest diets for bodybuilders…well those guys have nice abs, so this guy will be able to help me out.

what i liked most about what billy did, is he didnt just write me out a diet, he made me do a complete corespondense course on nutrition first, then we did my diet together (all over the phone of course, i lived in thunder bay at the time). billy brought to my attention that there was a possibilty that i may (sorry you can here the sarcasim in my voice) be eating a few too many carbs and also, there may not be enough fat or protein in my daily carb fest called a diet…huh?

this was still about 6 months before the first edition of “the zone” came out, so this wasnt just new to me, it was new to everyone in trained and raced with. ok, i paid the guy enough, im going to listen to him, so i bought in. we balanced my diet, started taking more protein supplements these crazy things called EFAs and a multi vitamin.

the result, in an 8 week time span i went from 165lb @ 14% to 165 and 10%. progress yes, but solid sixpack, no. this was as toned and as much muscle as id ever had on me, and in good lighting i could see some abs, but not what i wanted.

we stayed in touch and he would fine tune things here and there, then he sent me an advance copy of the zone. the zone, i thought was pretty cool. some people thought it was a little too technical, but i thought it was great. i liked understanding the why and how, not just the what. this changed my diet a little bit more, dumping some of the heavier/higher GI carbs and adding more veggies and making sure i had protein at every meal.

i stayed on the zone and raced for a few more years and stayed around 165-170 10% bf for most of that time, and i had just about given up on ever having that sixpack. that was until the trip, the girl and fury…

Hey nightmare4d,

don’t mean to interrupt you, but you do seem to have LOTS of time to post during work. What is your job? Would you mind swapping for mine?:stuck_out_tongue:

after a pretty serious achiles problem i had to pull out of the 96 season and took all the 97 season off racing. without a positive athletic outlet, and some very serious lifestyle issues( read that i was partying like i was vince neil from motley crue), i got, shall we say pretty pudgy. i was lifting weights, doing little to zero cardio and working nights as a bartender, so i at christmas time, i had climbed to my all time high weight of 192lbs and who knows what my BF was.

january 98, i loaded up the family station wagon and took off for boulder CO, for the second segment of my rolfing/massage therapy schooling. long long story short, my girlfriend dumped me long distance and ticked me off so much that i vowed i would return in the best shape of my life…sound like a body for life ad? just wait…

since colorado is the land of EAS it is very easy and cheap to get eas products. this was 98, back when they had like 6 or 7 products in the whole line and everything they did was pretty good stuff, so here was what i ate everyday for almost 2 months:

5:00 a.m. 1/2 ironman bar
2 X 25mg ephedrine
2 X 200 mg caffeine

1 1/2 - 2 hr workout (weights and cardio)

8:30 am post workout 1 myoplex

10:30 green apple

12:00 myoplex
2 25 mg ephdrine
200 mg caffine

3:00 1 myoplex

6:00 8 oz of buffalo meat and mixed veggies

thats it. yes there was the occasional woody’s wood cooked pizza or ice cream, but for the most part, thats what i lived on.

end result 163lbs and skinless. i tried to get my bodyfat measured but the tester couldnt get an accurate read with the calipers, he said “anything under 5% is tough to measure with these things.” needless to say, after 2 months of eating like this and training with the fury of a guy that had been dumped for the first time of his life, i finally had the six pack!

is this how it ends…keep reading…becasue along comes john berardi and the CF forum

so fast forward again to today, as you can see i am a guy who likes to read, but i like to learn from experience. the most extreme circumstance (like getting dumped) often result in the deepest self discovery. my time in boulder (while not the healthiest or happiest) taught me a couple of things 1. my body loves the protein from MRPs 2. i am best motivated by revenge 3. my body hates processed (or high GI) carbs 4. boulder is the single nicest place i have ever been to.

so what i am doing now is an evolution (but much healthier version) of the boulder diet. ive combined what i learned early on from billy smith and “the zone”, with what experience has taught me throw together with what i have recently learned from john berardi. toss in a little influence from clemson, charlie and the others from the CF forum and this is what im doing now:

6:00 a.m. 1 scoop (30gms) protein powder mixed with 1 scoop of endurox r4 (25gms carbs, 6gms protein)
1 bio test t2 pro (75mg coleus forsklin)
1 200mg caffeine tablet (chewed)
3 caps solaray multi vit/min (spectro)
1 solaray 400 iu E

7:00 am - 9:00 train

9:01 am 2 scoops of SURGE!!!

10:00 1 cup (measured before cooking) slow cooked oats (plain)
2/3 scoop protein issolate
2/3 scoop labrada proplete (isolate, concentrate blend)
1000/500mg solaray cal/mag

11:00 am green apple or orange

12:00 pm 2 scoops low carb grow
1 tbsp udos oil or flax oil
1/2 of my tupperwear container of veggies which has a colourful blend of broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, celery, red pepper and tomato with first cold pressed extra virgin olive oil and a few almonds.

1:30 pm 1 cup of blueberries

3:00 pm 2 more scoops of low carb grow
and the other 1/2 of the veggie mix
3 caps solaray multi vit/min

6:15 pm usually 8-10oz of beef (one form or another) or buffalo, sometimes (maybe once a week) chicken. with melted cheese or some natural peanut butter. no carbs

8:30 pm 3 bio test ZMA

9:00 p.m. either cottage cheese or some vanilla grow or both blended with either 1-2 tbsp flax or udo’s oil

9:01 bedtime

so there it is, i hope i havent forgotten anything, if i do i will edit. i realize there is alot of protein from protein supplements but they work for me. everything that is there is there for a reason, so if you have questions regarding any of this, or any suggestions please feel free to post.

i also realize, the average guy/girl that doesnt own a sports supplement store may not be able to pull this off ($$$$), but because of my situation, it works for me.

right now i am 183lbs 7% bf and it is 2 1/2 months out from the beginning of football season, for which i would like to be 5%. i will make some changes to my supplements (ie fat burners, old bio test t2, L-carnitine and CLA) and i will update this thread at that time.

that’s a great story. I really liked it. Whilst eating that strictly, and living pff practically just supplements, did you get lots (and I mean seroiusly loads) of hunger pangs and cravings? Also, is it not expensive to eat like that?

maris

when i was in boulder, i could get myoplex for $1.10 so it was actually cheaper than eating whole food. as for hunger pangs, the ephedrine helps to suppress your appetite pretty good and i drank a lot of water and that seemed to help.

The ephedrine can cause problems as it’s banned in meets and can hang around in the body. Stick with coffee.

Recent changes to legal limits has increased allowable concentrations for ephedrine to 10micrograms per mL and 25 micrograms per mL for Psudoephedrine. Caffine has also been increased.

nightmare,

Why eat the fruit on its own?

Should you not be having a protein source with every meal?

(hard to argue with your results - jusr curious as to your reasoning)

Why eat the fruit on its own?

willie errr i mean wullie:

good question: i keep in mind that it takes awhile for food to digest and process and if you look at the content of the 10:00 am meal:

10:00 1 cup (measured before cooking) slow cooked oats (plain)
2/3 scoop protein issolate
2/3 scoop labrada proplete (isolate, concentrate blend)
1000/500mg solaray cal/mag

1 cup of slow cooked oats takes a pretty long time to digest ( i dont have any stats or study back it up, but the GI is low even though it is pretty calorically dense) aswell as some protein so i figure the apple or orange ( which is pretty low to mid GI anyway) will be slowed down by the food already in there.

then look at:

12:00 pm 2 scoops low carb grow
1 tbsp udos oil or flax oil
1/2 of my tupperwear container of veggies which has a colourful blend of broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, celery, red pepper and tomato with first cold pressed extra virgin olive oil and a few almonds.

1:30 pm 1 cup of blueberries

i would love to eat the blueberries with the meal, but there just isnt any room! so i wait till after 1:00 to eat them, and trust me, the noon meal is still in there. the grow is a blend (whey isolate, milk and casein) mixed with udos so it will still be moving through and those veggies break down real slow so the effect on my insulin levels is a lot lower than if they were eaten on an empty stomach.

what do you do for sugar cravings (Zoom)

I eat fruit + obey my cravings one day a week :baddevil::

NM what do you do for sugar cravings.would you have a cheat or just carry on ignoring it.

i find that the less sugar you eat, the less sugar you want. as i metioned before, i am a huge believer in the glycogen window (first 30 mintues post workout) and if i get 50 -75 gms of carbs (depending on duration and intensity of workout) im not looking for carbs later in the day. if i dont eat refined carbs then i dont crave them…

i know its not that easy to go cold turkey, so i would start by going: mon, wed, fri no refined carbs for 2 weeks, then switch days meaning mon wed fri i would eat refined carbs but none on sat, sun, tues, wed for 2 more weeks. then went down to tues, thurs and eventually down to zero.

as for a cheat day or meal, i did alot of research on whether or not i was missing out on anything by not having a regularly scheduled cheat day/meal ie could i upregulate my metabolism by having the cheat day…answer was no. i think someone posted in the old forum that it takes increasing your caloric intake for 5 days to accomplish this, so what i do instead is have a clean carb up day on sunday, which is my day off training.

what i do is cook an additonal 1 1/2 cups (measured precooked ) of plain slow cooked oats in the morning and eat them throughout the day, ususally combined with a protein source. so that gives me another 100gms of non processed carbs combined with not training (except for my microstretching) leaves me topped off for the start of the training week monday morning.

kyle:

i should have clarified, during the days that i would eat refined carbs, (that means bread, pasta, bagels aswell as any sweets) i would only eat them at one meal, not all day long. i found that tapering off them slowly and increasing the time without them helped reduce the cravings.

i would crave bread and bagels more than choclate and if i did have to have a snickers or some M&Ms i would have them right after i was done training.

nightmare,

I read an article by the late Dan Duchaine, that it takes 5 days of overeating to restore the metabolism. - It was me it posted it previously - well remember. It was an article on an Old Muscle Media (when it was good).

What is your take on Allbran?

I have noticed JB mentions it alot in his articles - usually in the solid postworkout meal.

Have you tried this in your diet?

Nighmare and others:

An other silly question: Is it possible to have to much vegetables at any ones meal, therefore, giving too many carbs for that meal, and the subsequent insulin response?
(In particular if following John Berardi’s dietary recommendations)

JB has said that something as low GI as vegetables isn’t really something to worry about. I’m sure you COULD overdo it but you’d probably have to eat like an acre of veggies

Originally posted by OorWullie
Nighmare and others:

An other silly question: Is it possible to have to much vegetables at any ones meal,

Only if you stand near a naked flame later on :smiley:

as promised, here is an update of my supplement use. its time to shed the last bit of weight and try to get down to “playing weight” by april 1st. it should read “playing bodyfat” since i dont focus on my scale weight but i would like to get to and maintain 5% BF for the entire season.

as of monday, i was 183 and around 7 or 8% and although i dont use traditional measuring methods, i use the eyeball method (my eyeball, my wifes and training partners) aswell as the carl valle “jump and jiggle” method. for ease of tracking for those reading this, i will continue to use these numbers but again, they are just guesses.

6:00 am 5mg NADH (empty stomach)

6:20 am 1500mg L-Carnitine
3 Lean System 7

6:40am 1 Bio-Test T2 (old formula)
3 Solaray Spectro multi
400 iu solaray vitamin E
2 CLA (500mg each)
5gms msm powder
1 tsp innergy (probiotic)
all taken with my pre-workout shake which is listed in an above post

10:00 am 4 Cal/Mag (1000/500)

11:30am 3 Lean system 7

12:00pm 2 CLA

3:00pm 3 Solaray Spectro
1 T2

8:30pm 3 Bio-Test ZMA

9:00pm 400 iu vitamin E
1 T2
2 CLA

my meals are all about the same as the above program, i will be cutting back alittle on the slowcooked oats though until i get to the desired BF. also, i have substitued natural flavored “pro-score 100” whey protein by “champion” for all my MRPs and the 10am protein shake. reason being, it is lower in calories and has an awesome BCAA and glutamine content and has no sweetners or flavors. ive noticed that the sweentners in MRPs make me hold a bit of water. i have cut out creatine and that should account for a few pounds of water loss aswell. i have also switched from udo’s to flax seed oil for no other reason than taste, a little variety and to continue my on going research to see how different supplements effect my body.