Good luck, it will be interesting to hear how things go.
Good luck, it will be interesting to hear how things go.
First thing's first. I started this 2 days ago. I had been in a caloric excess before with a vegetarian diet, consisting of milk and burritos. Despite this, I stopped making gains.
So, although I am now eating a significant amount of red meat, my caloric intake has probably gone down a bit. I find it hard to eat meat and a lot of other food.
Therefore, if this works it is especially significant, since I will have, in a way, been "cutting" and increasing strength simultaneously.
What kind of red meat? Im no expert, but fatty red meat is better than lean red meat. The fat aids in digestion and carrying nutrients, as well as gives more energy. Google rabbit starvation for a better and more in depth explanation of this.
Keep detailed records of poundage, calories, fat grams, etc. if possible Keep us all apprised of what happens. This might be useful information.
I'm varying it. Some days are leaner than others. Today, for example, I'll be having ribeye sirloin. Yesterday, I had eye of round.
I only eat as much fat as I crave. So if my stomach's feeling a bit testy, I'll probably cut a bit of the fat off. But for the most part, I crave the fat and I eat all of it.
As for consistency, I probably won't keep a record of extreme details, but I can tell you that this is basically my diet as of now:
Morning: Burrito with plenty of cheese and some beans. Probably about 500-700 calories. Also coffee.
Afternoon: Workout, and then eat ~pound (uncooked) of steak.
Later afternoon-night: Milk. Possibly another burrito or more steak if I'm hungry, but that's doubtful as of now.
So as you can see, this isn't exactly a caloric excess, but I already feel stronger. Can't discount the possibility of placebo, though.
I thought it also might be pertinent that I'm changing my programming up at the same time as diet. I know this isn't ideal for empirical testing, but I need a change.
Here's what I'm doing (I devised this):
It's texas method, but each week I'm setting a rep record, and then moving up the weight once I reach a 5 rep max.
For example, I might start a week with 5 sets of 3 squats. MY intensity might be, say, 315 for a set of 3 that week. The next week, I would do my volume with 5 sets of 4, and then go for intensity with 315 for a set of 4 (instead of going for 320 for a set of 3). Next week, I would go for 5x5 and then intensity 315 for 5.
Once I have reached 5 reps with an exercise, I will increase the overall weight by a certain amount (15 pounds in the squat, 10 pounds in bench, and 7.5 pounds in press) and then go back to sets of 3 with the new weight. So the next week after I did 5 reps with 315 in the squat, I would then go for an intensity of 3 reps with 330.
I'm basing this on the fact that my 1RM should increase by about 20 pounds by increasing my max reps from 3 to 5, and therefore I'm being a bit conservative and increasing weight by 15 pounds.
This sounds interesting. I'm always curious about vegetarians and strength training.
Were you taking creatine before this ?
(also 1lb of red meat a day is a pretty high amount. Looking at the last graph here: http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/201...of-meat-eaters suggests 1lb of red meat a day is 3x the US average if you consider pork to be red meat. If you just mean beef then 1lb a day is 6x average. That's not necessarily bad, but thought i'd mention it.)
unfortunately, i think that significantly changing your training at the same time you're changing your diet, unless you made training changes like this before with no effect, largely invalidates the experiment.