Note to self: When doing the v-diet, do not rely on a protein blend that uses aspartame as a sweetener. Ugh…
I woulda splurged on the Metabolic Drive but it takes a while to ship to Canada and this was a last-minute decision. Oh wells.
Day one of the v-diet is over. I doubt I’ll be posting about this every day, simply because it seems silly to waste time writing “hey I drank some shakes today and yeah.” I suppose that if someone was trying to break a shitty-food addiction for the first time, the writing might be cathartic, but I’d like to think I’m sort of beyond that at this point.
Anyhow, the general breakdown of how I’m doing this is:
Training day:
Non-training day:
Just like training day, except subtract the training shakes and add one more “normal meal” shake.
Very exciting stuff.
I’ve decided to take “before” pics first thing tomorrow morning. I think it’s sort of misleading to take photos right on day 1, although in this case it probably won’t matter much because it’s not like I was eating Twinkies and Pop-Tarts before I started this.
Right now I’m predicting that a mere 1 week of this isn’t really going to do much, except to give me a taste of how it feels to follow an utterly stupid diet instead of just a mildly stupid one. Also, this week is sort of hella busy for me, and the time I save cooking is going to be handy 
In terms of training, I’m cutting my HIIT and following the same training plan that Gus Pacho did on his V-diet in the T-nation physique clinic. (I actually started following it last week, after I finished a 6-week squat-spec cycle.) I did my first official v-diet workout today on a free pass at Xtreme fitness on the Danforth — which wasn’t the nightmare that all the online reviews made it out to be — and I felt pretty awesome. I forgot how rupturing dextrose-fueled workouts could be.
For NEPA (non-exercise physical activity), I’m going to stop cycling to work and instead walk to and from there every day, which is about 10km of walking in total, more or less. (I don’t want to bike because (a) I’m pretty used to it at this point, and (b) some parts of my cycling route can occasionally be a little tough and I don’t want to boink halfway through my ride. Plus, it’s fun to change things up once in a while.) I did the walk on Friday morning and it’s a beautiful one. I like the view of the city as I walk south on Broadview, and I get this undefinable feeling when I see the workers in Chinatown East lining up at the bakeries for breakfast before they start their shifts at the food markets around there.
But I digress. Like I said, I’ll stop in to talk about this from time to time if I feel that I have something of note to say, but I don’t think that’ll happen much.
Here goes.
For the past three weeks, I’ve been on a fat-loss stint so that when I start powerlifting in the fall, my lean-muscle:fat gain will be on the happier side of 1.0. Really though, this was just for fun. The plan was to go for four weeks in total. The diet looks more or less like this, on a lifting day (I lift at 6am):
1. 0.75 scoop whey + 30g dextrose + 5g creatine (Split between pre & post workout)
2. 1 cup cottage cheese + 1tbsp flax + celery
3. 0.75 scoop whey + 1 tbsp psyllium
4. 75g white or red meat (weighed cooked) + steamed broccoli
5. 75g white or red meat + steamed broccoli
6. 75g white or red meat + cucumbers + flax
Of course there are minor transgressions — adding 1 teaspoon of olive oil to some broccoli here and there, and eating an extra spoonful of cottage cheese or something — but not much beyond that. No cheat days, they don’t really work for me. On a couple of days I’ve let myself have a handful of nuts or a couple of spoonfuls of peanut butter, or just more protein. (Right now I’m getting around 0.8g/lb of bodyweight. I find that fat loss halts for me if I go 1g/lb or higher, as is usually suggested.)
Anyhow, I was getting bored of eating the same things over and over again, which was when the idea to do a mini- Velocity Diet occurred to me. In a nutshell, the V-diet is just drinking 5-6 shakes a day (w/ milled flax or other minor additives) for 28 days. It’s for hella fat people, mostly. I figured I’d just try it for a week. When I got a brief, funny scared feeling in my stomach at the thought of it, I knew I was going to have to try it. I mean, is fear not just a physiological “good idea!” signal to the mind?
Now, I’ve read about the v-diet quite a few times, and quite frankly I think it’s stupid. I think it’s stupid for a lot of reasons, but mostly because I like to eat _real_ food, not some weirdo chemical stuff that comes out of a plastic tub. But then again, so does the author of the v-diet!
But for a whole breed of people who’ve never set dietary limits on themselves, I can see why it works.
Anyhow, I’m not about to start philosophizing about this. Michael has no time for trivialities like ‘doubt’ and ‘reflection’. It seems like a fun way to end this 4-week stint, so I’m going to give it a shot. 7 days is nothing, really.
Since everyone who does the v-diet seems to feel the need to post their progress online, I figure I’ll play along. So, starting Monday, I’ll have a 7-day log of how things go.
It’s gonna be awesome.
I’m grinding towards a kinda tough fitness goal right now, and so I’m always poking around for little reminders and galvanizers to keep me focused. Some quotes in the bank that are great to run through one’s mind while staring at the bar in the squat rack at 6am:
We improve ourselves by victories over ourself. There must be contests, and you must win.
– Edward Gibbon
Hesiod, the Greek historian, noted, “Observe due measure, moderation is best in all things.” Yeah, but what could Hesiod bench press? Plato, noted for underperforming in the squat, said, “We should pursue and practice moderation.”
– Dan John
“If you always put limits on yourself and the things you can do, physical or anything, you might as well be dead. It will spread into your work, your morality, your entire being. There are no limits, only plateaus. But then you must not stay there. You must go beyond them. If it kills you, it kills you.”
– Bruce Lee
Inspirational? Well, I find them to be so. But of course, those aren’t reasonably what is going through my mind when I’m about to duck under a heavy-ass weight. Usually, it’s closer to something like:
WHAT A SPLENDID PIE! PIZZA PIZZA PIE!
– Serj Tankian
I mean, who really ever waxes existential before 7am? (And hell, Tankian is downright eloquent when shoved up against, say, Tom Araya. They both get the blood up, though.)
Despite all the ribbing that Arnold takes for being a simpleminded, thick-skulled musclehead, he’s really quite a smart guy. This comes through in the sections of his bodybuilding writings that are associated with motivation, mindset, and discipline.
Education of a Bodybuilder is split into two parts, with the first ostensibly being an autobiography and the second about how to train. However, the first part of the book is really about Arnold’s ability to focus on something with such intensity and confidence that it almost inevitably comes to be. This is the meat of the book, in my opinion, and is incredibly inspiring. I’d recommend it to anyone who has a goal or two collecting dust somewhere and needs a swift kick in the turbine to get them on track.
There are some great pithy lines in there for you to throw at your friends — or in your Facebook quotes page, as you like it. (Sigh.)
Arnold on Austria:
There seemed never to be enough space. Even people’s ideas were small. There was too much contentment, too much acceptance of things as they’d always been. It was beautiful; it was a great place to be old in.
And on discipline:
Every day I hear someone say, “I’m too fat. I need to lose twenty-five pounds, but I can’t. I never seem to improve.” I’d hate myself if I had that kind of attitude, if I were that weak. I can lose ten to forty pounds rapidly, easily, painlessly, by simply setting my mind to it. By observing the principles of strict discipline that bodybuilding taught me, I can prepare myself for anything. I have developed such absolute control over my body that I can decide what body weight I want for any particular time and take myself up or down to meet it.
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