COMPLETE OVERHAUL PART 1: NUTRITION

This is going to be a large undertaking and I may end up writing it in a few different parts as a result, but since its my blog I get to write what I want, and this is what I want to write about right now.  People that follow my training log already know what’s going on, but to catch you up: after I ran Super Squats for a third time in my life (with my second time resulting in me tearing my hamstring after contracting RSV, then taking 6 weeks to run a higher intensity program wherein I tore my lat/tricep, then another 6 weeks of Super Squats capping out with a 20x405 squat, crippling elbow pain, a swollen right knee and hip and a pinched nerve in my back that took another 6 weeks to heal), I was in desperate need to do something different.  Alongside my various physical ailments that came with effectively tearing my body apart every time I trained and then eating as much as possible to put it back together: I was dealing with the fallout that came WITH eating that way.  I had forgone the recommended gallon of milk a day with Super Squats because it wasn’t nutritional behavior I wanted to model for my kid, but, in turn, I was ALWAYS EATING. The sheer volume of food necessary to support the training was absurd, and my whole life revolved around food.  Buying it from 4 different grocery stores/online, bringing it all home, cooking it, storing it, eating it, cleaning up after it, and passing it through my system: I had no time for anything else.  

Change was needed.

Something more than just switching from regular to chocolate

VELOCITY DIET/APEX PREDATOR DIET INTERVENTION

High velocity apex predator you say?

Ever since I read “Never Let Go” by Dan John, I’d been interested in “The Velocity Diet”.  A super quick overview of that is: a 28 day fat loss diet comprised of protein shakes and fish oil capsules and that’s it.  I dug the idea behind this protocol because it sounds like something I would do: intense and ridiculous.  BUT, as a parent and husband, the idea of spending a full month NOT sharing meals with my family was a non-starter.  That time is precious, and they already deal with enough of my insanity on the daily.  I try to minimize my burden by training before they wake up and committing my nutritional deviance away from them while I’m at work…which is why, when an updated version of the Velocity Diet was released that included a daily “Healthy Solid Meal”, things became a LOT more viable.

Alongside that, readers of the blog know that I’ve reviewed Jamie Lewis’ (of Chaos and Pain/Plague of Strength fame/infamy) “Issuance of Insanity 3” wherein he lays out the details of his “Apex Predator diet”, which, itself, was based around the OG Velocity diet and given Jamie’s personal spin.  Rather than being specifically a fat loss diet, Jamie’s approach was more modular, and could be adapted for a variety of goals.  In turn, his approach allowed for up to TWO solid meals a day alongside a battery of shakes. 

I relate too well to this

And herein I re-discovered something that has been pretty successful for me in the past: have TWO.  Here, it’s two diets, but it also works with two training protocols.  By having at least two options, I double my chance of success, because if I fail to meet ONE protocol I can still work to achieve the other.  In that regard, I went on what I deemed my “family man Velocity/Apex Predator Diet”, as I was taking the two diets and mashing them together to meet my needs.  If I “failed” on the Velocity Diet by having “too many” healthy solid meals in a day, it meant that I could still meet the Apex Predator diet’s protocol.  And if I “failed” on Apex by having too many carbs in a meal, it could STILL be a “healthy solid meal” ala the Velocity Diet.

I will now lay out in greater detail the specifics of my deviance, alongside observations and lessons learned.

A TALE OF TWO DIETS

If only...

* Breakfast with my kid every morning is precious, and I still wanted to sit down and EAT with my kid vs drink a shake with them.  There was a “cool tips” section on the Velocity Diet that talked about mixing in just a small amount of water to make a pudding out of the powder.  I was able to accomplish a similar feat making “oatmeal” by taking a tablespoon of riced cauliflower, nuking it in the microwave for 55 seconds and then mixing 2 scoops of protein powder and a trickle of water.  Stirring the water in slowly would create a paste-like texture which answered the mail completely.  I’d throw in some cinnamon and salt and the charade would be complete.  With that, I already had ONE meal solved and still complied with the intent of shakes for my meals.

* Alongside that, the Velocity Diet is 4 shakes a day: breakfast, lunch, midday and bedtime.  I get up between 0300-0400 to train, and if I have my “breakfast shake” then…I’m not gonna have it when it’s time to have breakfast with my kid.  Alongside that, if I push it off and DO have breakfast with my kid, that’s still like 0600.  It’s a LONG time between breakfast and lunch then, and I’m “post training”, so I’m wanting protein.   A few solutions: I move the midday shake to a mid-morning shake, as I found that I was really forcing the midday shake down anyway with a lack of appetite while I was RAVENOUS come mid-morning.  But the other solution I took was to steal from Apex Predator and have a shake in the middle of the night when I’d get up to pee (which I could rely on, since I was stupidly hydrated through this process).  This would just be a 1 scoop shake, but it meant I wasn’t training fasted and ALSO allowed me to speed up my pre-training ritual in the morning by being able to just roll out of bed and get after it.

Pretty much that

* Jamie recommends some sort of multivitamin to cover nutritional basis during the Apex Predator Diet alongside Omega 3 supplementation, which the Velocity Diet cover through use of “Superfood” and “Flameout”, which is what I used.  It honestly IS reassuring to use those products.  When I have a more diverse diet, I don’t ever sweat vitamins, but now that I’ve almost entirely phased out vegetables, nor am I getting in my whole eggs all that often, the inclusion of these supplements allows to push on without worry.  Also, Dan John, Jon Andersen, Jamie Lewis and Chris Shuggart are all onboard with sugar free Metamucil too.  That helps a lot.

* On my “normal” work weeks, I’d have midday meals on Tues, Wed and Fri.  Those are the days I could meet my wife for lunch.  I’d make this meal an Apex Predator style “meat on the bone” meal: typically chicken drumsticks.  Dinner that evening would be a leaner meat and trace veggies (running opposite of Jamie’s suggestion of a leaner midday meal and meat on the bone in the evening).  Mon and Fri was typically 1 solid meal a day, more akin to the Velocity Diet, and when possible I’d try to make it meat on the bone, but otherwise it’d be a lean meat and veggie meal.  Some weeks, I managed to get in the Protein Sparing Modified Fast ala Apex Predator or a Velocity Diet 1.0 day of pure shakes (same thing basically) 1 day a week.

I mean, the precedent is there (man, lotta Simpsons on this one)

* Weekends were where the “family man” aspect shone through, but ALSO where Apex Predator really helped make this all work.  Jamie has a “Rampage day” and a “High calorie keto day” in his diet.  The Rampage day is a basically the reverse of the entire diet: moderate carbs meals through the day followed by a 3 hour “rampage” window that is a lot of carbs and calories to top off glycogen stores and reload for the rest of the week, alongside cycling calories in the diet to keep the metabolism humming.  For me, this meant a social meal with the family on the weekend where we got to eat some fun food, alongside solid meals through the day.  I’d have shakes for snacks, but that’s about it.  The high calorie keto day would be my other day of that weekend: a meat and egg heavy breakfast and then meat centered meals for the rest.  These were days where I was with my family all day, which meant having meals with them the whole time, and these two days were perfect for that.  Jamie prefers these two days to NOT be run right next to each other, but Chaos remains the plain.  I was absolutely still getting results from this.  However, those Rampage days definitely did a number on me: I am so NOT carb adjusted that a little bit goes a LONG way.   Spent a lot of weekends sweating profusely from the insulin shock and trying my absolute hardest not to slip into a coma.

* Because my carbs are so low, I had to start adding salt to all of my protein shakes.  Low-carb dudes know this exact problem: your body is bad at holding water and balancing electrolytes without carbs.  On the plus side, the salt actually enhanced the sweetness of the shakes, which is a baking trick.

EXPERIENCES, OBSERVATIONS AND LESSONS LEARNED

Sorry to let you down Stan!

* I have become stupidly lean, and fat loss wasn’t even the goal.  I dropped 11lbs of bodyweight in the first 26 days of NOT supergreat compliance, as the second week of the protocol I had family in town and spend 5 consecutive days eating 3 solid meals a day on top of the shakes.  I’ve stayed on the protocol for even longer, currently in my 6th week of the protocol, with no real intention of stopping.  This is less a “diet” and more a lifestyle.

* I’m experiencing ZERO performance degrades with this approach.  Now, sure: I’m not running Super Squats off of it, and if I were to try to take on a hypertrophy block I’d have to do some tinkering (more on that later), but I’ve been seeing weights go up in the gym while bodyfat goes down, I ran a 10 mile race with minimal prep (a 5 mile run 2 weeks out and a 5 mile run 1 week out, preceded by 50 weeks of no running), and I do not feel beat down or fatigued.  This has also taught me just how little I “need” to perform.  I used to have a HUGE meal before bed every night…

Big omelet, cottage cheese, veggies, meat, lotta nut butters on celery, toast, and other keto junk

*…thinking that I “NEEDED” that food to help me sleep through the night AND have fuel to train off of in the morning.  These days, I’m eating 2 scoops of protein powder in an oatmeal before bed, having my “wake and shake” in the middle of the night, sleeping well and training hard first thing in the morning.

* This approach totally gels with my “no counting calories” approach.  There’s no thinking nor is there any doubt: drink the shakes dummy! I KNOW I’m getting enough protein to spare my muscles and I know fat loss is going to happen unless I eat the STUPIDEST HSM possible, at which point I’ve most likely dropped the “H” from it.  It’s really just “set and forget”, which clears up a LOT of mental bandwidth.  That was the big goal OF this undertaking: I needed food to STOP consuming my life, and this totally did that.  I have to think about ONE meal a day, and when I co-opt Jamie’s approach even THAT meal is simple.  “What are we eating today?  4-6 protein shakes and chicken drumsticks.”  One week, my wife was away on business, and I had no issue making my kid “to order” dinners while I just batch made a BUNCH of chicken drumsticks and had them every night.  It was the simplest week ever.

"Meal prep" really doesn't get easier

* “Packing” for work is just so much simpler now.  I used to have to bring a cooler FULL of food, which I’d pack every morning, and it’d eat into so much of my morning time.  Now, I’ll throw a bag of protein powder in a bag, bring that to work, and it makes up the majority of my meals through the week.  When the bag runs out, I bring another.  I make sure to have my other supplements, and a few times a week I pack a solid lunch…but that’s it.  Once again: less bandwidth.  I also GET to work much earlier now, because I don’t have to spent 30 minutes cooking and cleaning up breakfast.  It ALSO means I get MORE time to train, because, again, it’s time I don’t have to spend on food.  To say nothing of the time I save SHOPPING for the food.  Which, from the “family man” perspective, is a huge win.  I have SO much more time with my family now.  THAT has been one of the biggest draws to this overhaul, and why I have no real plans to change course.

* My digestion is the best it’s been in YEARS.  Introducing Metamucil to my life was huge in the first place, but the sheer volume of food I was eating was just tearing up my guts something fierce.  A primarily liquid based diet with 1-2 solid meals a day is SO much more manageable, and, once again, it means less time spent voiding the food.  Wins all around.

* My relationship with food is ALSO substantially repaired.  I’m no longer food obsessive, because the majority of the nutrition is already decided.  And when you only eat 1-2 meals a day, you learn to APPRECIATE those meals.  Food tastes and smells delicious and is absolutely enjoyable.  I need no artificial sweeteners or science fiction/Frankenfoods: REAL food is a treat.  I had so much “keto junk” in my diet: keto bread, keto wraps, keto syrups, keto cookies, etc etc.  It’s all just re-branded junk.  Now, I get such limited opportunities to have food that WHY would I waste it on that junk when I can have some REAL eggs, some avocado, some real meat, etc?  Even my Rampage meals tend to be just hearty real food.  A decade ago I was doing low carb all week with 1 weekly cheat meal, and it was always a fast food binge.  And “binge” is the right word: I would eat as FAST as possible so I could eat as MUCH as possible. That is NOT healthy in SO many ways.  Now, I savor my food, enjoy the taste, and enjoy the company.  I’m enjoying the EXPERIENCE of food: I’m re-discovering humanity.  I’m also NOT afraid of those things that I can find in nature.  My LDL scare a while back had me TOTALLY dietary fat phobic, with animal fats in particular triggering some serious anxiety.  Now, I’m not going to let cheese or chicken fat get in my head, because I’m not LIVING off of that: it’s my 1-2 meals a day.  Knowing that nutrition is “on point” so much means that any deviation isn’t even worth worrying about.

A "healthy solid meal"

A "Rampage" meal, that is still pretty darn healthy

* Alongside that, I’m trying out things I had previously written off in my life.  I used to lean primarily on diet soda for my caffeine source, having not cared for coffee.  Now, plain ol’ black coffee is fantastic, which is great, because Jamie wants you to put away a lot of caffeine for Apex Predator and this makes it easy to comply.  And I’m pretty happy to not be putting away a bunch of chemicals from drinking a gallon of diet coke a day.  

As predicted: this grew HUGE and I haven’t even scratched the surface of how I’ve changed up my training or my random spitballing and theories to follow.  I’ll write that section in a bit and release these in pieces so they’re a bit more digestible (hah!  Nutrition pun), but allow me to throw in a quick summary.

SUMMARY AND TAKEAWAYS

No you idiot!  We were so close!

* Eating to sustain 2 rounds of Super Squats forced me to seek a change, and in order to satisfy my desire to take on challenges, I leaned toward the Velocity Diet/Apex Predator Diet.

* Having TWO diets to follow allowed me to have more ways to succeed rather than more ways to fail.  It also allowed me to meet my goals of making this approach fit in while prioritizing my family.

* Some might theorize that a diet of primarily protein shakes with 1-2 solid food meals a day would create a damaged food relationship/body, but it did the opposite.  The food I get, I value, my body is performing well, and I have more time with the family and less time obsessing over food.  This is also a great fit for non-calorie counters, and, in turn, if you find yourself obsessing in THAT regard, it might be worth trying that way too.