Stuffed Superdud: Bumpy road to respectable lifting

[DV]

Great PR! That must be awesome. How is BW moving these days? Which weightclass are you eyeing for your comp, I might've missed it?

Also - you should really vid some of your lifts. There are precious few WL vids on this site.

[stuffedsuperdud]

The weight is creeping down: I am hovering around 220, down from 231 two months ago, though I could definitely be more aggressive about tightening up the diet. Heck, Andy dropped like 50lbs of fat in that timeframe, right? I'm signed up to compete in the -94s, but it's a very informal meet and the organizers said we can feel free to slide up or a down a weight class after weigh-ins, so if I don't make it, no big deal.

I'll get some videos going in the near future. I always figured there wasn't much interest in vids of some guy snatching 1/2 the world record and PR-ing once a year, but if you folks are down, I've been known to cave to peer pressure.

[Oldman]

I always have to give up the wine, beer and bourbon to lose any weight. What's your approach been?

[Oldman]

Vids would be a huge addition to the already fine storytelling!

[Cody]

I'm still sad we didn't see the AB workout video!

[DV]

Andy lived off small portions of tilapia, lean ground turkey, whey, and a couple of tbsp of PB and olive oil per day for months. If you do the same you will come in way below 94 I am sure. But that takes some goddamn dedication. I have done shorter stints of similar, RFL-type approaches, and it's rough. Really rough.

+1 for vids. Especially the AB one.

[stuffedsuperdud]

I always have to give up the wine, beer and bourbon to lose any weight. What's your approach been?

I've just been focused on keeping my calories reasonable and protein reasonably high. More recently though I've been sloppy thanks to working long hours and eating lots of meals with my co-workers. Literally 0 of them give any thought to what they eat, and I've sort of been following them wherever they go; in the interest of being social I've eaten a lot of pizza, pasta, and desserts. I know, I know, as my mother says, "your mouth is attached to YOUR brain and no one is force-feeding you," so of course it's my fault in the end, but when you're surrounded by guys who aren't ashamed at all to stand up, smack their lips, and go, "Hmmmmm I am craving something....something sweet!" it's extra tricky to stay on target.

As for the booze specifically, I'm not a wine drinker, fortunately, but I do enjoy a good imperial stout from time to time...okay all the time....and I can't say no to a good bourbon or Scotch. You should have seen me this past Christmas; it was the first time ever that I didn't visit home (since I was just there for that gigantic mess of family badtimes in October/November and we all just wanted to decompress, i.e. no one had the energy for celebrations) and CG hadn't gone home either, so we spent about three weeks consuming bourbon in all its glorious forms, including in pie and ball form, along with a few gallons of nog. Oy vey her kitchen smelled like bourbon till February......and I was hung over till March............ Looks like that's all over now though:

Andy lived off small portions of tilapia, lean ground turkey, whey, and a couple of tbsp of PB and olive oil per day for months. If you do the same you will come in way below 94 I am sure. But that takes some goddamn dedication. I have done shorter stints of similar, RFL-type approaches, and it's rough. Really rough.

YEEESH yea I just listened to his podcast. Sounds miserable. I've never gone full-ketard, but I have had luck before with cyclic keto dieting, based mostly on Mauro DiPasquale's books: six days of 30g or less of carbs, and then on the seventh, I ate whatever I wanted. Ended up leaning out from 220lbs down to about 205, while my lifts stayed the same, or, in the case of the press, went up a bit. The diet itself was never a problem, as I love meat and veggies and don't really crave carbs in general. I ended up going off of the diet after several months though because I had a surprising run of good luck with the ladiezZz and let's just say dating is awkward enough without having to explain why I only ate meat and veggies without sounding like a weirdo. Also, it seems like every girl in LA aged 25-30 is a vegetarian, including one who was visibly annoyed with me on our first date.....blah. Down here, dating is a suck-fest; the moment you come across as unusual, you're out of the game and the tall good-looking WASP-y pharmaceutical sales rep gets the rose (fuck that guy, btw), and I'm weird enough as is, even without strange dietary habits......

Well, in any case, that run of luck is dead now so I guess it's a good time to eat weird again. I know the trend around here is to go with Jordan's macro-counting, but I'm too lazy to track things to that level so I'm probably just going to go ckd again, and be stricter about it than last time. I get that Andy restricted himself aaaaalll the way down to like three foods to minimize confounding variables, but I don't see myself staying sane on that, plus I don't have 40lbs to lose the way he did, so I'm just going to eat whatever I want as long as I don't exceed 30g of carbs a day. I'll also vary caloric load depending on training volume. The carb-up day will probably be Friday, both for social reasons and because that's when we do heavy CJs.

The one annoyance I have is that I hate to do this during peach season (my favorite non-meat food) but hey, maybe I'll just gorge on them during the free day or something.

Last time around, I would nibble on bits of carbs if needed to maintain social normalcy, which I bet pushed me over 30g a lot, and I might get carb-day started 12 hours early if there was something going on on Fridays; I bet both these things blunted the effectiveness of the diet, so I'm putting this here for accountability.

I think this is the first post in the entire log in which I am taking training seriously???? Crazy.

[Oldman]

I think this is the first post in the entire log in which I am taking training seriously???? Crazy.

My fault, man. Sorry about that.

I've used (and am using now) the Jordan macro-counting approach. I sit at a desk all day, when I'm not attending meetings, sitting at a larger desk. Most often, during the day I eat one or two Quest bars and a two scoop shake. Sometimes I can get lunch, but only when I can get something that's not too hard to count in the macro system.

My nightmare is the "lunch meeting," which usually consists of "wraps" (those cold burritos made out of turkey and lettuce) and salads made out of carbs. I have to have something, or else I look like an asshole, so a grab a few wraps and then proceed to perform surgery on them, so that I can dislodge the protein from them. By the time I'm done, my plate looks like a pile of compost and I look like a maniac anyway; the upside is that I don't get invited to a lunch meeting for a few weeks.

[stuffedsuperdud]

HA! This reminds me of pretty much every time in grad school that we got a free meal. Usually it was some lame event put on by an ambitious assistant professor so that he could add "Chair, 2nd Annual Symposium on Biolectromechanical Systems for Microinformatichormal Signal Processing" to his CV, and he'd need to fill the room with warm bodies to avoid embarrassing the invited speakers, so some dept. admin would send out a "Refreshments will be provided!" email and I'd fall for it every time, showing up to a platter of those same wraps you describe if it was lunch (this is California, so the skins were green for some reason), or worse yet, some sort of croissant-wich. I used to also show up at 7AM for the free breakfasts prior to the plenary speaker, only to learn over and over again that they meant stale bagels and cookies.* I still don't really know how respond to, "Oh come on, man, it's just a cookie!" without sounding like a jerk.

Ahem, back to the present:
Welp I kicked it off today. Dr. DiPasquale said to go full ketard for about two weeks, so here we go. Last few times I did this, I recall feeling fine for a bit, then woozy the 3rd day or so, and then fine again for the rest of the two week induction period. Towards the end of the two weeks, I was craving some weird stuff I don't even like, like whole wheat pancakes and sweet potatoes, but nothing too shocking. I'm definitely training harder this time around though so let's see how it goes. If I feel bad, I might dial up the fat.


Will also log the food and emotional status here, i.e. get ready for even more whining. You know how they gave Bruce Jenner an award for putting on a dress? They'll be giving me two for how much bitching and moaning I plan on doing here.

Today I dry rubbed about 5lbs of short ribs with whatever spices I found in the kitchen, tossed all of it into the slow cooker, and just dipped out of that all day. For one of the dippings, I added a blob of BBQ sauce, which added maybe 10g of carbs. Still under 30 since I didn't eat anything else.


*There was one glorious meeting once during my first year in the PhD program that had for breakfast bacon, eggs, bacon, bratwurst, pancakes, waffles, biscuits, oatmeal, fruit, and, out of nowhere, grits, much to the delight of the one person in the entire conference who hailed from Tennessee. According to her, the only taste of home she couldn't find was the molasses for the biscuits. "Wait you've never had molasses?!? Wow...." But that day was the exception to the rule.

[DV]

My nightmare is the "lunch meeting," which usually consists of "wraps" (those cold burritos made out of turkey and lettuce) and salads made out of carbs. I have to have something, or else I look like an asshole, so a grab a few wraps and then proceed to perform surgery on them, so that I can dislodge the protein from them. By the time I'm done, my plate looks like a pile of compost and I look like a maniac anyway; the upside is that I don't get invited to a lunch meeting for a few weeks.

Hahaha. I can totally relate. I prepare all my lunches and dinners on Sunday (slow cooking etc., like SSD). I deliberately set my macros "too low" in order to account for the 1-2 times per week I will not be able to control what I am served. It seems to work fairly well.

You know how they gave Bruce Jenner an award for putting on a dress? They'll be giving me two for how much bitching and moaning I plan on doing here.

Good on you for taking on this challenge. I am sure it will be entertaining in any case.