Your Opinon on This Fat Loss Route

Ok, starting tommorow I am going on an extremely strict diet to try to get to single digit body fat. My question is simply this.

I will be eating nothing but animal protein, veggies, and fats from olive oil, flax, and natural peanut butter. I will be training 3 time a week total body. The sessions will be composed of as heavy as possible deadlifts and 3 other excersises, hitting the full body.

Do you think I should add fruits for carbs in the post work out window, or will I see better results sticking to the meats, veggies, and fats.

Thank you,

Matt

Hmm hard to say. How carb tolerant are you? You obviously chose the low carb approach to dieting so I’m guessing not very. I would try out a couple workouts without carbs after and see how you do. You seem to basically be following the principles of the AD without really doing it.

If you feel that you are not recovering well or just not handling it well add in some carbs. Fruit would be my last choice. Surge or a knock-off would be better.

Does winging it normally work for you?

Also- are you doing DL’s in every workout? Ever thought about doing something else?

Well, I have not been dieting for a while now. I’m at the point now where I just follow the 7 habits (tweaks here and there) and always eat clean, adjusting calories and nutrient qualities/ratios/amount to fit my goals. I have been eating alot the past few months before attempting this. I dieted a month ago for about 2 weeks to get to the shape i posted in this pic.

During this time period (minus those 2 weeks) i ate a ton of carbs, however, 90% of carb intake came from fruits and vegtables. The rest was occasional oatmeal and a cheat meal once in a while. Never bread. Infact I eat a ton of fruit. A couple apples bananas and or oranges a day + blueberres, strawberries.

When I don’t get my fruit carbs I start to lose it mentally. I get really growtchy and sluggish. As a result, everytime I’ve gone off the fruit I rationalize adding it back into my diet again.One good one I tell myself is “Matt, your not exactly a huge dude, if you want to do this you need to preserve all the muscle you can, go eat an apple.” Good god, fruit is like my friggen crack.

As far as the deads, I have been doing them 1 day a week and went 2 weeks of lower weight varations of them to kinda deload. (suitcase, dumbells, on plates, etc)

As far as why do them so much, my thinking here is since I know the my body responds to picking shit off the floor by getting stronger and growing, doing them alot while severly restricting intake will at the very least hopefully preserve what I have.

That and I just really love to do them. Its like rage cleansing on a primitive level, man lifting heavy object. I also might be nuts.

That was long, sorry for the rant.

Well fruit is fine I guess. I just don’t think it is a good plan for PWO. The fructose is not a fast-acting carb and really has a stagnant effect on insulin spiking. Now some fruits are better- berries, melon, etc. at spiking insulin. But fruits high in fiber are not, e.g. apples.

If you have to have your fruit I suggest first thing of the day, or at least early in the day. From looking at you I can’t imagine you would necessarily need to go low carb to get single digit. You can probably have your fruit as long as you stay away from breads, etc. like you’re doing and try to just bring down your overall quantities to fit within the levels you want.

Also - meal timing might be better for you (P+C and P+F) instead of strict low carb. So each your high protein moderate carb meals early in the day and your high protein moderate fat meals later in the day. This really may be all you need.

For the workouts- I hope you;re at least doing different DL variations each time instead of exactly the same. I only say that because some people who do the exact same workout really only get better or stronger at doing that specific workout and not overall, e.g. imbalances. I hope your squatting. I hope you are doing pull ups, dips, etc. All the standard stuff.

Yeah my work outs lately have been something like this (don’t have training log with me right now)

mon:
back squat 3-5 reps (315 to 340) way below parrelel

dumbell bench press 3-7 reps 70-95 pounds

close grip chin ups (25 pounds) 4x7-10 reps

romanian deadlift

overhead press

wed:
power clean from hang 3 to 5 reps 225-255
conventional dead (3-7 reps, 405-350 pounds)
chin up or pull up variation (35 pounds) 4x5-7 reps
dumbell incline 3 to 5 reps 75-95

fri:
front squat (225-255, 3 to 5 reps)
barbell bench press 3 to 5 reps low 200’s
cable rows 4 sets as many as possible 200’s
overhead press

This is an example of what I’ve been doing lately. Every few weeks I substitute respected verticle and horizontal pushing and pulling excersices for different variations and always have a squat or deadlift variation.

I wasn’t aware of fruits being inneficient post work out. What type of carbs would you suggest eating on a strict fat loss diet? Should I venture into the oatmeal? Thats as grainy as I’ve gotten in over a year. I haven’t had bread in over 7 months.

It is true that fruit, due to its fiber and fructose content will not have the glucemic load that you may get from Surge. A good website for checking out the nutrition content of foods is http://www.nutritiondata.com . Here you can see a complete breakdown of the carbs in a certain amount of fruit into glucose, sucrose, fructose … and you can also see an estimated glucemic load for the particular food and quantity.

I would still choose fruit for reaching your daily carb goals before any other food (besides veggies of course) though, because it is a natural food, full of micronutrients that you will not find in any supplement, including vitamin pills.

Regarding fats, think about incorporating coconut oil in your diet. (Christian Thibaudeau told me he uses it for all his cooking needs). Get the extra virgin cold pressed organic kind.

And BTW you already look very good and cut at 10-11% bodyfat. But sure, see how far you can take this number down.

Yeah, my philosophy on eating is that if it came came from a living animal or it is grown from the ground then eat it and eat alot of it.

I’m probably making a trip to the grocery store today, I’ll look into the coconut oil.

I wish Surge could be in my budget. Right now the only supplement I use and can afford is just big tubs of Grow! Whey. Post work out I make a smoothie with 2 scoops Grow!, a cup of milk, and frozen berries. Tastey, but not as good as Surge :-/

Thank you for the compliment. I’ve trained and ate hard to get to where I’m at. Long way to go too!