Ambley's Training Journal

THE NUTRITION PLAN (stolen from 4 hour workweek blog)
Rule #1: Avoid �??white�?? carbohydrates
Avoid any carbohydrate that is �?? or can be �?? white. The following foods are thus prohibited, except for within 1.5 hours of finishing a resistance-training workout of at least 20 minutes in length: bread, rice, cereal, potatoes, pasta, and fried food with breading. If you avoid eating anything white, you�??ll be safe.

Rule #2: Eat the same few meals over and over again
The most successful dieters, regardless of whether their goal is muscle gain or fat loss, eat the same few meals over and over again. Mix and match, costructing each meal with one from each of the three following groups:

Proteins: Egg whites with one whole egg for flavor
Chicken breast or thigh
Grass-fed organic beef
Pork
Legumes: Lentils
Black beans
Pinto beans
Vegetables: Spinach
Asparagus
Peas
Mixed vegetables

Rule #3: Don�??t drink calories
Drink massive quantities of water and as much unsweetened iced tea, tea, diet sodas, coffee (without white cream), or other no-calorie/low-calorie beverages as you like. Do not drink milk, normal soft drinks, or fruit juice. I�??m a wine fanatic and have at least one glass of wine each evening, which I believe actually aids sports recovery and fat-loss. Recent research into resveratrol supports this.

Rule #4: Take one day off per week
I recommend Saturdays as your �??Dieters Gone Wild�?? day. I am allowed to eat whatever I want on Saturdays, and I go out of my way to eat ice cream, Snickers, Take 5, and all of my other vices in excess. I make myself a little sick and don�??t want to look at any of it for the rest of the week. Paradoxically, dramatically spiking caloric intake in this way once per week increases fat loss by ensuring that your metabolic rate (thyroid function, etc.) doesn�??t downregulate from extended caloric restriction. That�??s right: eating pure crap can help you lose fat. Welcome to Utopia.

THE WORKOUT PLAN (also stolen from 4-hour)

  1. Follow Arthur Jones�?? general recommendations for one-set-to-failure from the little-known Colorado Experiment, but with lower frequency (maximum of twice per week) and with at least 3 minutes between exercises.

  2. Perform every repetition with a 5/5 cadence (5 seconds up, 5 seconds down) to eliminate momentum and ensure constant load.

  3. Focus on no more than 4-7 multi-joint exercises (leg press, trap bar deadlift, overhead press, Yates bent row, dips, incline machine benchpress, etc.) and exercise your entire body each workout to elicit a maximal hormonal (testosterone, growth hormone + IGF-1) response.

  4. Eat enormous quantities of protein (much like my current fat-loss diet) with low-glycemic index carbohydrates like quinoa, but drop calories by 50% one day per week to prevent protein uptake downregulation.

  5. Exercise less frequently as you increase strength and size, as your recovery abilities can only increase 20-30%, while you can often increase fat-free muscle tissue up to 100% before reaching a genetic set-point.

  6. Record every workout in detail, including date, time of day, order of exercises, reps, and weight. Remember that this is an experiment, and you need to control the variables to accurately assess progress and make adjustments.

3 Questions.

  1. What are your goals?
  2. What is your actual diet and workout plan? (not guidelines, but I’m going to eat x grams of y, and I’ll be doing squats with x lbs on monday, etc)
  3. Did you have any questions, and if not why don’t you start a log in the training log section of the forum?

EDIT=I see the mods beat me to my last question

Good luck!