Training on Severely Calorie Restrictive Diets

Having read this article today - it’s the sort of thing I could hack for one week.

But getting by on two shakes and one meal you’re not going to have the energy to train. So how do you make this work with training?
Do you simply eat your meal and then rush to the gym so you still have some energy?

Or is it best done once every few weeks / months during a deload week?

When I did the Rapid Fat Loss Diet I trained twice per week and walked for cardio.

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What sort of training?

I’m imagining whole body, limited volume.
1 working set of 8-12 for each exercise. Just enough to stave off any losses…?

This is probably the worst ‘diet’ article I have read on TNation. I appreciate:

  1. Times are tough;
  2. Coming up with some new, insightful articles is equally tough;
  3. It is acceptable for a free and wonderful site like TNation to lightly push its sponsor’s products; however…

This just a lazy rehash of any random mainstream shake replacement-type diet. And unless you have plenty of flab to lose, you won’t shift much fat on this plan either.

As for concern about how to train on such a diet, well I think the above summary tells you you are hardly going to shrivel up and die on such a ‘plan’ for a week. Man, I hate to sound so cantankerous.

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fat lost is a marathon not a sprint. If you gain 5 lbs in a week, start to think about what your doing wrong before thinking of using this shitty diet…because if you dont change things up, you will still regain the LB you lost while going back to normal

I appreciate what everyone is saying. But day to day control of my calories is proving “difficult”. I find it easier to do a week of very restrictive food intake than a week of semi restrictive.
The moment I’m given the option to eat some rice / pasta / bread - I eat all of the rice / pasta / bread.

The plan would be 2 meals a day of 250g of chicken and broccoli & other veg. Then one “normal” high protein meal. For a week. Then back to normal eating for a period. In that period I would hopefully not regain the lost fat. So it’s a downward trend over time.

I wouldn’t be using shakes as they give me digestion issues.

This is not set in stone yet. But given my inability to eat like a grown up I need to do something.

I dont get what you don’t understand, if your in a caloric deficit for one week and the 3 others week of the month your eating like a pig yon won’t loose anything. The week your doing your stupid restrictive diet won’t change anything to your shitty life style

Same. I only walked my dogs.

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Whole body, six exercises, two to three sets.

Because (if you read what I wrote you’d know) this is not my plan. As stated in my previous post - the idea is to drop, maintain, drop, maintain ETC. The added part to this is over time I will need to do this less and less as I re-balance my eating habits. That bit I did not add in.

I have a serious question though? Whats the issue dude?
I mean sure you think its stupid. I genuinely get that. And you might be right. But do you think the aggressiveness of your post is the best way to convey this? Really? Do you talk to people like this is real life? I hope you don’t.

The real issue is - you make GOOD points. And I’m adult enough to acknowledge this, pick them out, understand them and work with them. AND be grateful for them. I really am.
But just know you didn’t need the “eat like a pig” / “shitty life style” comments for me to do that.

Thank you.

This article was ass

It’s called experience. Nothing to worry about.

Its not about you, its about your mindset, im not telling you that you an asshole right now but sometimes we have to say word like they need to be said.

I did a week or two last Tnation challenge where I had 3 shakes a day and one solid meal, really low calories. I still trained real hard, just first thing in the morning when I had energy. If you have good discipline and already a good base of conditioning you can do anything :+1:

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Well, damn it. 0 for 2.

To your point, though, I think sometimes we panic about short-term things that really don’t matter - a couple days of really low calories won’t kill you. I think, when you’re as lean as you were, you’re likely to notice the changes. I honestly did pretty well on the Slim-fast diet here and there back in college because it was easy and I could afford it. I was playing sports, too (I don’t remember if I was still really playing or down to an intramural level by that point, but either way), so I definitely had a relatively high activity level.

I don’t know that this is an amazing diet for a longer term, and I’m dubious you’d really see significant changes at a higher bodyfat level in the amount of time one could last on this, but sometimes I do think there’s value in doing something awful right out the gates. You get used to being hungry and you see some forward progress for a week or two; then maybe it’s a little easier to settle into something you can sustain and control.

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Totally agree.

And it was miserable haha

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And now I have to go look at your log to see how you’ve been putting me to shame lately. Look what you’ve done!

Why are you doing the diet though? If I wanted a blitz type diet I would go straight PSMF as @BrickHead and I mentioned. It is not easy but, it works.

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No idea what this is.