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Do you wonder what I’ve been up to lately?  Well, over these past 10 weeks, I decided to get lean.  Check out my results:

Before (Monday, May 2)

Weight: 199.8 lbs

Bodyfat Percentage: 20%

After (Saturday, June 16)

Weight: 178.6 lbs

Bodyfat Percentage: 10.5%

(Measurements were taken using the InBody 520)

How I Did It:  I ate for fat loss.  I trained for fat loss.  I didn’t joke around.  My daily calorie intake was my body weight (in lbs) x 10.  For example, the first week, I weighed approximately 200 lbs, so my calorie intake that week was 2000kcal per day.  To give you an idea of how low this number is, I was eating 3500kcal per day before I started this diet.  The only things I ate on this diet were: meat, eggs, lots of non-starchy vegetables (and I mean LOTS), olive oil, nuts, and the occasional tub of plain organic Greek yogurt.  That’s it.  This may shock you, but in order to get lean, you need to eat like a human is intended to eat.

I know that you may be wondering: what about fruit?  Fruit is awesome, and is great for you.  I didn’t eat it because I wanted my body to go into ketosis (think Atkins diet).   That’s right, no carbs.  Obviously, to every rule, there is an exception.  Every 2 weeks, I had a re-feed day.  On this re-feed day, I ate whatever I wanted.  Fruit? Oh ya.  Bread?  Yup.  Cake, ice cream, dessert?  Ya baby.  These days kept my body from going too far into ketosis, and got my metabolism revving again.  It may seem counter intuitive, but these days helped me lose more fat.  (My diet was a modification of The Get Shredded Diet by John Berardi).

In terms of training, I lifted weights 3 times per week (each session lasted under an hour).  On off days, I would take my TRX to the park (if it was nice out), or I would do barbell complexes in the gym (if I felt like it).  I only ran once during the whole 10 weeks: I sprinted intervals of 10 seconds (with 20 seconds rest) for a total of eight rounds.  I bet you that if I did do long distance running on this diet, I would have lost less fat.

My stomach on the second last day of my diet.

What I Learned: 

• Even though I thought I was big and muscular before this diet, I was actually fat (in comparison).  There’s no point in being big and muscular if you can’t see your muscles underneath your fat.  From now on, I promise to not let myself get above 15% bodyfat.
• Dieting is easy if you know how to cook.  For the first 2 weeks, I only ate salad.  It sucked.  I decided to start cooking more meals (because salads suck).  I would cook steak with fried tomatoes, peppers, onions, basil etc.  I would eat this meal 5 times a week.  I loved it (and I still do).
• I learned the art of Intermittent Fasting (IF).  My caloric intake was so low that I was hungry every hour of the day.  No matter how many vegetables I ate (to try to feel full), I would still be hungry.  Thus, I started IF’ing.  This was the best idea of my life.  I would have an 8 hour eating window each day, and I would place it at the end of the day.  This way, I would go to bed feeling full.  As my ghrelin levels started to adapt, I wouldn’t even feel hungry during the fast.  (I will talk more about IF’ing in a future post.)  As of right now, I have no intentions on stopping my IF’ing lifestyle.
• I learned what over-training feels like.  On week 10 of the diet, I had progressed up to some very hard Olympic lifting on my lifting days.  This drained me and I became over-trained.  Don’t let yourself become over-trained.  You will never reach your goals (unless your goal is to be over-trained).
• I don’t enjoy the taste of food that is bad for me (with the exception of desserts).  For some reason, after finishing this diet, all I want to eat is healthy food.  Weird.
• I have the power and knowledge to make my body look the way that I want it to.

What’s next?:  For the next 8 weeks I will be transitioning my eating to back to normal (slowly increasing calories and adding in meals with starchy carbs).  Transition dieting is the lost art of dieting.  It allows you to stay lean, and not gain back all of your fat that you lost.  Basically, I’m slowly introducing carbs back into my eating patterns, and slowing increasing my caloric intake.  After this transition, I plan to slowly gain some quality lean mass.  My goal is 8lbs of muscle in 8 months (I’ll keep you updated).  I won’t let myself get fat, I promise.

Now, time for some more pictures:

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