First, a little background; I'm 5' 10", about 237 lbs. as of 7/26/04 (beginning of diet), 230 lbs. currently. I've been lifting for maybe 3 or 4 years on and off, almost as much off as on. I started back in January 2004 after about 6 months off. I was hitting the food pretty heavy from January until I started the diet, just trying to get back to where I was before. I ended up doing pretty well in that regard, but along with being stronger than ever before I was fatter than ever before. I don't know my BF % but my waist was around 42" at the start of the diet, chest was about 47", arms 17.5", calves 17.5".
I planned my diet for 12 weeks. As far as goals, I want to see my abs... all of them... so maybe 10% BF, but I'm not going to measure BF%. If it takes more than 12 weeks I'll extend the diet. Less, and I'll still probably go the whole 12 weeks.
My workout program is HST, so I'm going to do two cycles of 15,15,10,10,5,5 for a total of 12 weeks, with no SD between cycles this time. I think taking a week off of lifting between cycles (as the program calls for) would cause too much muscle loss on a diet, so I'm not going to do it.
My diet consists of two things; Power Butter (natural peanut butter fortified with egg whites, flaxseeds and flaxseed oil) and chicken wraps consisting of boneless chicken, salsa and low carb tortillas (3g net carbs per tortilla). I started using dark meat chicken and switched to chicken breast this week. Average calories so far is 1800/day. Average breakdown is 83g. fat, 58g. carbs and 202g. protein. I know this is pretty low, but hopefully the Avant Labs sups will help out there. I'm planning not to do any cheat meals or carb ups during the 12 weeks.
Supplements are as follows: Heat 9 capsules/day, Sesathin 3 servings/day, Leptigen Basic 3 servings/day (started after first week). I'm probably going to do a 7 week cycle of Ergopharm 1AD/Androdial during the last 7 weeks of my diet, to prevent muscle loss. (I have proper PCT).
As for the results, so far I'm very pleased. I've done low carb diets before, and this is the first time I don't feel like I'm dying. On the contrary, I feel great on this diet. I'm never hungry, have no cravings at all, which for me is a miracle because I love to eat like shit and always have intense cravings when I'm dieting. On previous diets I'm constantly thinking about food. So far, it's not a problem at all this time. Part of it might be the fact that I like the food I'm eating, but I have to give most of the credit to the Avant Labs sups. I don't know which of them is responsible, or if it's a combination of the three, since I've never used any of them before, but something is working great. On previous low carb diets, I also had problems just thinking, concentrating at work, but so far no problem there either. I have noticed the loss of libido with the Sesathin.
Even in the gym, I have enough energy to finish my workouts, which is pretty incredible on the low carbs I'm eating. I just finished my second week of 15 reps (for those who don't know HST, it's 3 fully body workouts per week, the first two weeks are 15 reps per set, then 10 reps per set, then 5 reps per set) and the only time I felt like I could use more energy were dong 15 reps on squats, barbell hack squats and SLDL's. Even then it wasn't that bad, but I could feel that the lack of carbs was a bit of a hindrance there.
As for results, I'm down about 7 lbs. so far, and have lost about 2 inches from my waist. So I'm pretty happy with that as well. I think I've actually gained some muscle on my legs, thanks to the high rep leg exercises. For the past few months the only exercises I've done that involve the legs are single rep deadlifts, which caused my legs to atrophy a little.
I'll post an update every week or so; when the diet is done I might post a pic... not sure yet how I feel about posting a half naked pic of myself on the internet.
