My Experience On the Anabolic Diet

I’m not arguing at the efficacy of circuit workouts to deplete muscle glycogen- they are very effective for that. This is why many variations of the AD include a circuit workout the day before the carb up; that way your muscles are fully depleted and are act like sponges when you do start to carb up.

As to the low carb periWO nutrition, you’re preachin to the choir here. When I tried the AD last fall I made my shake of 30g whey, 10gBCAA, 15g glutamine, 5g glycine, all based on that exact quote by CT. Did it do an adequate job of repairing my muscles? sure.

But if you’re working out with any sort of intensity, and pretty active on a daily basis like I am, a little bit of glutamine post workout just isn’t gonna cut it for your energy needs. I found myself hitting a glycogen depleted state about wednesday every week, and feeling like total ass till the weekend carb up. It made my sessions go into the shitter.

In the end, I found that moderate carb ups, as recommended by CT in another thread worked better for me. The AD was too much like a PMSing girl; 3 days a week I felt great and blew my workouts away, and the other 3-4 days I felt like total shit.

Bottom line: A small carb up did a better job of keeping me energized, fat adapted, and still tricked my endocrine system into not thinking I was running in a hypocaloric state. If 69 minute circuit sessions work for you, then dont stop on my account. Just find what works for you.

I’m going to do a 200g carb-up next weekend, max. Maybe less considering my training has not happened yet this week due to feeling like complete hell.

So you don’t recommend full carb-ups on the weekends, just maybe about 150g centered mid-week and split between post workout and a few meals after?? Makes sense, maybe I wouldn’t crash hardcore after Wednesday, which happened last week, good workouts on Monday, couldn’t finish my workout on Friday, by putting the “carb-up” if you wanna call it that, mid-week energy levels should be decent throughout the whole week?

I’m going to add that my recovery time is absurd right now. When I started, it was much longer, but I also just shifted training back into lighter weights with more volume and muscle group specificity. My entire body except my back is annihilated. I understand a big part of this is the shift in training style, but is there anything you guys do to reduce intense soreness, particularly in the legs? I feel pretty incapacitated at the moment.

Just a quick update. I’m on day 9 of induction and have yet to feel any sort of crash. However yesterday and today I do feel a bit groggier than normal but blame it on lack of sleep (~6 hours). I didn’t expect much of a crash since prior to the induction I already did 1 week low-carb with a weekend carb load.

[quote]nz6stringaxe wrote:
I’m going to add that my recovery time is absurd right now. When I started, it was much longer, but I also just shifted training back into lighter weights with more volume and muscle group specificity. My entire body except my back is annihilated. I understand a big part of this is the shift in training style, but is there anything you guys do to reduce intense soreness, particularly in the legs? I feel pretty incapacitated at the moment.[/quote]

Its funny you say that… my chest was soooooooo friggin sore last week that i figured i was screwed. It was soo much worse then it had been for the “same” workout the weeks prior. Im thinking i did too much in this state and blah blah blah… long story short… i did my 4th set of DB bench last week with 95’s for 6. My last set this morning was 105’s for 5. That is a 20 lb jump my friend. All i can say is my legs are sore as hell today and i’m pretty excited about it! Maybe the soreness means good things are afoot!

By the way, i know you guys have been talking a lot about carbups and mid week carbups etc. Just to throw in what I am doing…

I have only dropped a couple hundred cals a day from the original 18x bodyweight. I eat a little more on the weekends. I use a two day carbup but its not insane. It comes to about 1000 grams over the two days. So can’t see how thats worse then some guys doing 900 or 1000 grams in one day.

I have not been working out on the carbup days. Just soaking up the glory my friends.

I reserve arm day for friday since its easiest. Last friday i was a little stronger. Unless i start stagnating, im not going to mess around with mid week refeeds etc.

I am definitely leaner and around the same weight as when i started. Aproaching 3rd carbup on saterday.

Hm.

How fat would you say you are/have been, DJS?
Height/weight also, if you don’t mind.

I don’t know if the times I feel fatter are just a result of being too fat for my liking to begin with, thereby making me think I was leaner yesterday or something and got fatter, y’know?

[quote]nz6stringaxe wrote:
Hm.

How fat would you say you are/have been, DJS?
Height/weight also, if you don’t mind.

I don’t know if the times I feel fatter are just a result of being too fat for my liking to begin with, thereby making me think I was leaner yesterday or something and got fatter, y’know?[/quote]

Lets see… well first of all there are a few before pics in my profile from day before i started. body fat somewhere beteen 15 and 20% i am guessing. was getting different results with different skinfold methods and im a novice at it so really wasn’t sure. I am 5’ 10"

From what i could remember i was 192 the day i started.
after 12 days induction i was 188. After first carbup i balooned to 197 ish.

On friday before second carbup I was 191
On sunday I was 199!

I’ll let you know where i end up on this friday before my 3rd carbup.

my arms and legs are definitely leaner then before even when carbed up. stomach looks 10x better when depleted and maybe the same when bulked up. not sure about progress there yet. maybe just upper abs are better. need to give it time.

DJS - I like how you just control your carb-intake over the two weekend days, I plan on doing the same, especially as I start to drop cals, just go for clean complex carbs, maybe one dirty meal, thinkin around 400g per day, and eventually cut that to just 400g for one day, I guess it all depends on your body type and how you react, but it makes sense not to over-analyze and just go with how you feel/look…takes time.

Oh, DJS, I remember when you first posted with your pictures. I didn’t remember the name/body association.

How long have you been training?

Ha well that’s a short question with a long answer. Unfortunately.

I am 32 years old, and was a meathead in my youth. Started lifting when I was 14. I was a fast grower (height wise) and was full height (5’ 10") at 126lbs!! I think i had 12 or 13 inch arms!! Ha

As is common, I didn’t know what i was doing for the first couple years but i lifted hard. I didn’t even start squating till my senior year in high school out of fear of hurting my back. ugh!

Anyway, by end of high school i was about 160 and cut. Typical kid who looked good with shirt off but couldn’t tell i lifted with a sweater on.

Made more gains in college and finished around 190 with abs. I was pretty big for me. I have a light frame with small wrists/ ankles and not very broad shoulders.

I never really surpassed that. Work life begins and I was never as consitant with eating or lifting. I had some major injuries that set me back. Dislocated left shoulder. I stayed in decent shape intil 2003 when in the same shoulder i got some weird injury where i paralized my rotator muscle.

I had mri’s and saw several docs and no one knew what caused it. I did not have a tear. This took years to heal (i didn’t think it ever would). During this time i could not do a lying external rotation with more then a 2.5 lb weight. a 5lb dumbell was unmovable. I couldn’t even do it on a cable machine because i couldn’t do 1 plate. So basically i figured my lifting career was pretty much done.

Thankfully after a few YEARS it got a lot better and started lifting consistent again but i was not exactly lighting things up. Nerve injuries take forever to hear.

Ended up taking an entire year off after first baby was born. I just couldn’t find time to get to a gym as i commute an hour and a half each way to work and don’t get a lunch hour in my job. Gyms were not open early enough for me to go in the morning and i understandably wanted to see my wife and daughter in the evenings.

As a commercial gym guy i was always just trying to figure out how i could fit it in. Should i join a gym and just go on the weekends?

I don’t know what took me so long to start thinking outside the box but i finally got my answer. About a year ago i bought a ton of home gym equipment. bench, pull up bar, adjustable dumbells to 120’s and began getting up at 4:00am every work day to workout at home before work. Not to long ago, i also picked up an Olympic set and squat stands.

So, sorry for the long story, excuses but thats the truth of my lifting life. I have been lifting as consitently for the past year as i did the first 8 and my shoulders have been feeling great! How about you?

I’ll get back to you with an answer as I need to go to class and then hit the deads haha.

I didn’t know you were 32, you could’ve passed for someone closer to my age but with a more mature body from your pictures.

Alright, nice sets of heavy deads are behind me.

So, I was that skinny kid who was into the nerd activites (and still am, but to a lesser extent). I never played sports and as time went on, whenever I had any desire to ‘try,’ I reasoned that everyone was good by [then] and I was too far behind (skillwise) to keep up. That kind of thinking was stupid I realize now, but then again, I was pretty unskilled with the throwing of balls and such haha.

I saw everyone around me start changing their bodies (starting in middle school) and it hit me that your body isn’t a constant, it’s a variable. I went to Target on my bike and backpacked home with a 40lb DB set. I would do exercises at my leisure, using my intuition to figure out what to do.

Around this time (freshman year) my school had been building a nice new lifting facility. It didn’t take long before I started using it as often as I could…then I joined a gym with the help of my friend (free of charge ;)) and would go every Friday come hell or high water. That’s probably where my discipline first began.

I kept upping the ante gradually until the summer between junior and senior year. I wanted to get more cardio in, but hated running and used to be big on skateboarding so I figured why not skate more again!?

Well, it would figure that I broke my foot that day I started skating again. I was devastated because I was JUST transitioning into being a ‘bodybuilder’ mentally. An older guy (but looks like a younger guy; fountain of youth baby) turned me onto Nutrient Timing. I started reading and searching for more informational resources.

This site probably wasn’t far away, but bodybuilding.com helped me more in the beginning as I think it should since the language and content is more suited to beginners.

Well I used my time on the bench to bone up on the ‘studies’ so I’d have a whole new outlook and intensity regarding diet and training when I healed. I even went to the gym with my cast on once I could walk. Before that, I just tried to get inventive with that old dumbbell set and chairs for upper body work.

So that was about 3 years of varying, yet ever increasing, degrees of lifting.

FYI, no squats or deadlifts were ever performed prior.

So I ripped my cast off with my bare hands a week early and effected my self-written training program using tons of big lifts and specified many new things to my diet, always trying to add new foods into it.

That was when the ‘bodybuilding’ set in, and continued until the idea of competing set in, and full on dementia was realized. Ha!

So I’ve been bodybuilding for 2.5 years I suppose, having just competed for the first time last October. I’m turning 20 this month.

Good stuff NZ6. Congrats on your first show. It takes a lot of guts to get up there on stage.

On a side note… just did the weigh in and measurements on last day before 3rd carbup.

teetering between 189 and 190. i have a crappy needle scale.

Oficially down one inch on my waist since starting.
Lost another 1/4 inch since last friday and am now at 35 in. even.

Wow, good news.

I’m having some difficulty in getting the ‘diet’ portion of this diet together because I still had bacon and pepperoni around. I just opened the final pound of bacon today, and I finished the pepperoni last night so they shall plague me no longer.

I’m trying to only eat the bottom round and eye of round beef steaks I prepare. Their protein-fat ratio is pretty good for being delicious beef. I still have several lbs. of 20% chuck, but I’ll try to just tap into that little by little.

My calories haven’t dropped much this week because I kind of decided it’d be better to just get the bacon and other foods out of the way so I can jump into it properly when they’re gone.

I noticed something odd the other day or week. I use an IronMan bodyfat scale and like to keep track of the bodyfat trends, whether they’re accurate or not. Around my competition, I would receive a range between upper 10 to 13%. When I got fat and decided to start the anabolic diet a month ago, my ranges were pretty typically 18-19%. If it ever shows me 20 I think I may need to be taken to the emergency room for unexplained organ failure. So, my dieting down has gotten off to a slow start as I ease into it, changing the way I approach the diet accordingly. I think in two weeks I may have lost 1-2 lbs. and no visible reduction in suprailliac skinfold.

One time last week, my bodyfat measurement on the scale was like, 17.4. This surprised me quite a bit. Your body’s processes have a lot to do with the number it gives you. (i.e. if you just wake up, your bodyfat will be higher, but if you just finished training hard and ate a significant meal, it will be much lower). The measurement was taken before I went to bed, so I had some food in me, but it was a ‘metabolically inactive’ time.

I can’t wait until I can finally get that scale to read me below 10%. It may not be 100% accurate, but the trends match the mirror.

I’ve been thinking about the training that pre-ceeds the carb-up.

The general recommendation to now has been to work the lagging parts early in the week to take advantage of glycogen stores fir growth.

However, Isn’t it true that glycogen compensation is higher in muscles that were worked recently?
If that is true then to bring up lagging body parts does it make sense to perform a circuit of exercises focused on the lagging part?
eg: Lagging shoulders → last workout would be military press, upright row, lateral raise(s), shrugs

so you’d get preferential storage in those muscles which you could use on monday again.

Additionally, I am curious as to when you guys start the load? after total body work?

[quote]Evil1 wrote:
I’ve been thinking about the training that pre-ceeds the carb-up.

The general recommendation to now has been to work the lagging parts early in the week to take advantage of glycogen stores fir growth.

However, Isn’t it true that glycogen compensation is higher in muscles that were worked recently?
If that is true then to bring up lagging body parts does it make sense to perform a circuit of exercises focused on the lagging part?
eg: Lagging shoulders → last workout would be military press, upright row, lateral raise(s), shrugs

so you’d get preferential storage in those muscles which you could use on monday again.

Additionally, I am curious as to when you guys start the load? after total body work?[/quote]

I have been following the lagging/hardest body parts begining of the week(legs)/ easiest stuff at end of week(arms). I have not been lifting during the load.

Your idea sounds like it might be beneficial. I have not been on the diet long enough to start experimenting yet. Why not try it for 3 or 4 weeks and let us know your results?

Also, I think I finally understand why the AD allows us to consume more total calories.
We run along the two most inefficient metabolic pathways.

1 )Eating tons of proteins which take the most energy to breakdown in digestion.
2) Fueling that digestion and all else with fat, which is inefficient in the sense that only part of whats available can be used for energy.

i.e. We create a kind of double deficit as far as energy production and storage are concerned.
Add the regular muscular trauma and the body’s preference in rebuilding torn fibre with glycogen. The body eventually uses all available ketones in the bloodstream for essential functions(brain, heart, metabolism, digestion etc) and saves glycogen exclusively for anaerobic exertion.

that’s why after full adaptation you no longer test positive for ketones in urine.

[quote]DJS wrote:
Evil1 wrote:
I have been following the lagging/hardest body parts begining of the week(legs)/ easiest stuff at end of week(arms). I have not been lifting during the load.

Your idea sounds like it might be beneficial. I have not been on the diet long enough to start experimenting yet. Why not try it for 3 or 4 weeks and let us know your results?
[/quote]

I’m on it chief. Did more shoulder work the last 2 days (Thurs: shoulder/arm day; Fri: 3 rounds of a shoulder circuit)
Took some pics yesterday so lets see what happens.

Hi Fellow AD’ers

After initially reading the first 100 pages of this thread and eating the AD way for 5 weeks i thought I’d share my experiences.

firstly, thanks to all who have contributed, the combined knowledge and sharing of that knowledge with all has been inspiring.

My reasons for starting the anabolic lifestyle/diet are quite simple and probably mirror some of yours. I was sick of yoyo dieting and fluctuating weight and waistline.

i wanted to get back to enjoying an active life like i did in my youth, i wanted to look healthy, not just be able to lift heavy things and lastly, i want to be a good role model for my children when they’re born in a world that seems to say “being overweight is ok”.

my stats

i am 35, and, drive a desk for a living
starting weight - January 5, 2009
141kgs(310lbs) now 5 wks later 138kg (303lbs)
waist circumfrence at start - 131cm (51in)
waist now - 119cm (47)

i am of fijian heritage and so have descended from cannibals and fish eaters. (this diet is perfect for me)

when designing my excercise routine i decided that i wanted to get out into the sunshine as much as possible and so designed my programme around that.

i also wanted to retain as much muscle as possible so that by the time i had burnt my fat off, i could take some photos to brag to my kids about. i have, at this time, no intention of competing in any BB or PL type competitions.

my routine
Day 1 = HIIT - Sprinting (this is how i get my sunlight)
Day 2 = Chest/Bicep/Tricep
Day 3 = HIIT
Day 4 = REST
Day 5 = Legs/Abs
Day 6 = HIIT
Day 7 = Back/Shoulders
Day 8 = Rest

as you can see my 8 day routine is out of sync with a 7 day AD diet cycle. This was deliberate and is intended to cycle all my body parts into days of the week at varying levels of glycogen stores.

as you can imagine, if fridays are a gym day then my weights are lower and so i use this day for dynamic effort lifting instead of Maximum effort lifting and i use this day for isolation excercises. My current girth means i only run with a 24 hour carb up, which i generally start on saturday night which fits my lifestyle.

sorry for the long post but after losing 12cm in 5 weeks and retaining 98% of my body weight i am pumped. just wish i had taken starting photos.