The V-diet has caused quite a stir on T-Nation, and rightly so, with a little will power its impossible to screw up (provided you did your sums right) and produces great results, as well as breaking bad habits. But there is another side, after all, it is a short term program, suited to between 2-6 weeks, after which it would be silly to keep eating like that. So what happens? Ok, at least your not reaching for cookies every five minutes now but will you start cooking 5 times a day to sustain your new, lean body? Probably not I’ll bet. I suspect many will just yo-yo (that age old dieters problem). Except my experience of the V-diet gave me a bit of an epiphany. On my forth day in, my breakfast shake didn’t go down too well, I shrugged my shoulders and went to university as normal. My second shake made me throw up (I’ve always had a bad relationship with protein shakes, even though I LOVE Grow!). That day I had to do a presentation via video-link with a university in Alambama so I did that and sat down afterwardand and thought ‘What the f**k am I going to do now?’ It just so happened I’d bought a beef stew in for my presentation (to illustrate some aspects of globalisation) so I began picking through and eating the chunks of meat. I then thought why not just prepare a load of tupperware boxes like the stew one filled with salad of the same macronutrient profile as my protein shakes? This is not exactly a new concept (taking a pack lunch has been around for a while I’ve been told). So now here I am 3 weeks in and I now spend 30 minutes every 2 days cooking lean meat on the George Forman then dispensing it into little boxes, topped of with seasoning blend, organic mayo and either spinach, rocket, watercress or lambs lettuce leaves. For breakfast I eat ‘athletic cookie dough’ (1.5 scoops of Low-Carb Grow! with 50g of organic peanut butter and a splash of water, mixed into a fantastic ‘dough’ and eaten) And once a day I eat an omlette. Guess what, far from just ending this after my diet phase ends I know I’ll keep eating like this, maybe throwing in extra meat, or fat, or doing something with carbs because I know that this style of eating is sustainable indefinately. Preparing food in advance isnt rocket science, and it doesnt just break habits, it replaces them with new, positive ones. I graduate in 2 months and have 22 thousand words to write before then, plus going to classes and playing hockey for my univeristy. If I can squeeze 30 minutes of cooking in every 2 days I’m sure many others can. I’m not saying don’t V-diet, but maybe use its concepts to come off it at the end with whole foods.